Friday, May 22, 2015

Baseball best-sellers, May 22, 2015

Posting a bit earlier than usual today because Rachel has her second graduation ceremony today. Where did the time go?


NEW STUFF: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So…


Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); because I’m old school.


Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But it’ll be close enough for government work.


Caveat 3: Sometimes they’ll try to pull one over on you and include a book within a category that doesn’t belong. I’m using my discretion to eliminate such titles from my list. For example, for some reason a recent listing included Tarnished Heels: How Unethical Actions and Deliberate Deceit at the University of North Carolina Ended the “The Carolina Way”, which, far as I can tell, is not at all about baseball, at least not in the main. For the sake of brevity, I will be omitting the subtitles, which have become ridiculously long in in some cases in recent years, also at my discretion.


  1. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51118XdLgVL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgPedro, by Pedro Martinez and Michael Silverman

  2. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen

  3. Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik

  4. The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes, by Posada with Gary Brozek

  5. Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington

  6. The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers, by Jon Pessah

  7. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis

  8. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman

  9. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams

  10. The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes, by Gary Cieradkowski

A book about the Pirates?Refreshing. Have this one on my ever-growing pile of things to read.


Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. As of this post, the ranking is 235,774, up nicely from last week’s 776,220. Maybe that fifth-grade classmate I re-met on Facebook actually did buy the book. Still, we can do better. If you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. There haven’t been any in awhile. Doesn’t have to be long (or even complimentary, if you didn’t like it), but anything would be appreciated. And thanks to those who have.


 



Baseball best-sellers, May 22, 2015

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