Baseball Best-Sellers, October 17, 2025

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (i.e., 12 and under). Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I had with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list. And a “Ω” means it’s an award winner.

PRINT

1. Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, by Jane Leavy (My review on Bookreporter.com)
2. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
3. 72 Stories: From the Baseball Collection of Geddy Lee, by Geddy Lee
4. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
5. The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball, by John W. Miller. (My review on Bookreporter.com)
6. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keen (Paperback; my review here)
7. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton
8. The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform–and Maybe the Best, by Jeff Pearlman
9. The Ultimate Baseball Trivia Challenge, by Hank Patton
10. Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas, by Jesse Cole

KINDLE

1. Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown: A Baseball Memoir, by Bill Madden
2. Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien
3. A Giant among Giants: The Baseball Life of Willie McCovey, by Chris Haft
4. Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert Creamer
5. It’s a Beautiful Day for Baseball: The National Pastime in the 1960s,by Doug Kurkul
6. Pete Rose: An American Dilemma, by Kostya Kennedy
7. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig
8. Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter and Always Will, by Scott Miller (my review on Bookreporter.com)
9. You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond , by Robert Whiting

AUDIOBOOKS

1. Calico Joe, by John Grisham
2. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told, by Jeff Silverman
3. The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game, by Tim Brown
4. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
5. Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, by Eric Nussbaum (my review of the print edition on Bookreporter.com)
6. The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter, by Ian O’Connor
7. The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik
8. Summer of ’49, by David Halberstam

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 1,865,098  overall (#60 in Literary Bibliographies and Indexes); last time, 938,456.  Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,250,487; last time, 1,869,898.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

BUT…

Some exciting news (now we’ll see who’s paying attention and reading down this far).

Necessity is the mother of invention. Thanks to emergency surgery in which I said goodbye to a recalcitrant gallbladder, I have a couple off months for recuperation during which time I will be working on a revision of 501.

The new version will include all the original stuff but as you know if you’re a baseball reading fool, there have been a lot of great books published since 501 came out a dozen years ago. So since this isn’t a ranking where one title might be pushed off the list, the new material will appear as an added chapter.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.