Baseball Best-Sellers, January 2, 2026

First one of the year? Where does the time go? As I will proudly state with regularity, 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the Bookshelf in this format. There were a couple of versions prior to that, but once I found WordPress, what you see is what you get.

Amazon keeps changing the way they report, so that will be mirrored here. Sometimes there will be rankings of Kindle and audio-books on baseball, other times, not.

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. 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)
2. The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball, by John W. Miller. (My review on Bookreporter.com)
3. Baseball Obscura 2026, by David J. Fleming *
4. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski (My review on Bookreporter.com)
5. The Baseball 100, by Posnanski
6. Ron Shandler’s 2026 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics (available January 13) *
7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
8. Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, by Jane Leavy (My review on Bookreporter.com)
9. The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker
10. Fairfield American: A Legacy of Little League Dreams, by Matt McGuire *

Congratulations again to John Miller for winning Spitball Magazine‘s CASEY Award for 2025. Look for a Bookshelf Conversation with him in the near future.

David Fleming’s Baseball Obscura returns to the BBS for the third year. See if you agee with me that the author seeks to become this generation’s Bill James.

With three new books on this week’s list, we may well be seeing the end of Ray Walker’s dominance on the charts with his team-centric trivia. And with more new material on the way, I’m neither surprised nor embarrassed to see my own work drop down in the overall rankings and I’m going top keep on reporting those numbers because baseball is all about the stats.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 3,055,016 in Books overall; last time, 2,909,939.  Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 3,305,424; last time, 3,162,729.

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.