If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.

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. It’s All About the Players, by Peter Gammons
2. Touching All the Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx, by Dave Winfield with Alan Maimon
3. Hardball Retro’s Compendium of Baseball Tabletop Simulations, Derek Bain et al *
4. The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman
5. Nolan: The Singular Life of an American Original, by Tim Brown (my review on Bookreporter)
6. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski (my review on Bookreporter) Ω
7. 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)
8. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton
9. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H. A. Dorfman
10. The Baseball 100, by Posnanski

KINDLE

1. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy
2. The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness, by Andy McCullough
3. Rogers Hornsby: A Biography, by Charles Alexander
4. Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong, by Baseball Prospectus
5. Bushville Wins!: The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball, by John Klima
6. The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America, by Posnanski (Kindle Unlimited, see note)
7. Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself, by Michael Shapiro
8. The Boston Globe Story of the Red Sox: More Than a Century of Championships, Challenges, and Characters
9. The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers, by Michael Leahy Ω (Kindle Unlimited, see note)
10. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence Ritter

AUDIO BOOKS

1. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (narrated by Scott Brick)
2. Crossroads: A Memoir in Baseball and Life, by Dusty Baker
3. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
4. Summer of ’49, by David Halberstam
5. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
6. The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter, by Ian O’Connor
7. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
8. Unhittable: How Technology, Mavericks, and Innovators Engineered Baseball’s New Era of Pitching Dominance, by Rob Friedman
9. Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball, by Bob Tewksbury and Scott Miller (narrated by the author)
10. The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan (see note)

Baseball between the Numbers is 20 years old. Interesting how much we know is wrong has increased. I would have imagined this one would be rendered obsolete, given the amount of new metrics since then.

Last but not least: Three titles on the BBS list employing that word.

Note: These books are included as Kindle Unlimited titles. See the books’ pages for details.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 3,166,002 in books overall; last time, 3,069,447. For some bizarre reason, the Kindle version is almost $12 more than the print edition.  Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 3,524,673; last time, 3,455,852.

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.

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