Baseball Best-Sellers, June 26, 2026

Headnote: Last Week Tonight — one of my favorite shows — did a bit with newscasters ruminating about how quickly the year has gone by (unfortunately I can’t find a clip of that segment). That’s how I feel: July already??

Moving on (one of John Oliver’s signature lines)…

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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, almost always in the print version.

PRINT

1. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene (my Bookshelf review here)
2. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis Ω
3. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
4. Crossroads: A Memoir in Baseball and Life, by Dusty Baker (look for my review on Bookreporter.com in the weeks ahead)
5. The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball’s Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses, by Addy Baird
6. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski (my review on Bookreporter)
7. Nolan: The Singular Life of an American Original, by Tim Brown (my review on Bookreporter)
8. The Baseball 100, by Posnanski
9. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
10. The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball, by John W. Miller. (My review on Bookreporter) Ω

KINDLE

1. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler
2. The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship, by David Halberstam
3. Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, by George F. Will
4. The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball’s Most Historic Record, by John Eisenberg

AUDIO BOOKS

1. 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 (narrated by the author)
2. The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports , by Jeff Passan
3. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant

Not much in the way of non-print editions again this week; I wonder if people are leaning towards physical books for “beach reading?”

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,755,375 in books overall; last time, 2,552,727.  Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 3,143,526; last time, 2,988,556.

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.