This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Friday, January 1. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Title	Rank
General
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci	1
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	2
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski	3
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler	4
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, by Bill Weber	3
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton	4
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons	5
History
The Machine	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye	3
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost	4
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Mike Vacarro	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010	1
Baseball Prospectus 2010	2
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tango et al	3
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	4
2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster)	5

Semi-shameless self promotion: this assessment was written by James Bailey and yours truly.

Titles include:

• Heart of the Game: Life, Death and Mercy in Minor League America
• As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires
• Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend
• Catcher: How the Man behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero
• Sixty Feet, Six Inches
• The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes and History at the College World Series
• The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds
• Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress
• The Fifth Season, Tales of My Life in Baseball
• The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants and the Cast of Players, Pugs and Politicos Who Re-Invented the World Series in 1912

Possibly the most interesting book of the bunch, ‘Sixty Feet, Six Inches’ was co-authored by two of the most amazing baseball talents this game has ever seen – Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson.

These guys have done it all – Hall of Fame induction, World Series heroics, legendary status, and now writing of books!!!

Gibson and Feller have come together to offer the reader a unique chance to tell how the game was played from their eyes, their very talented eyes at that!! 

The book’s format is unique in that it looks like a 1-on-2 interview between the writer and these 2 Hall of Famers.  With chapters devoted to pitching mechanics, power hitting, and game play, this looks like a surefire winner to me!!!

While its facts and stories may be a little outdated since it was printed in 2006, ‘Big League Trivia’ should lend a big hand toward my being able to continue the ‘Did You Know’ series on this blog.

What I find most intriguing about this book is the oddities section….  I’ve always found that having a ton of useless information stored in your brain is a wonderful thing!!

While the title of this book can be misconstrued to cover several different topics, this book focuses on big league players and their debuts in the major leagues.

Chock full of stories from more than 100 big league players, this book will share their thoughts and feelings as they made their way onto baseball’s biggest stage - the Major leagues.  While some found success quick, some faltered just as fast…

This book has contributions from recent stars like Craig Biggio, Tony Gwynn, Chipper Jones, and Albert Pujols.  I also saw that the table of contents included some of my favorite old-school guys like Jim Palmer and Reggie Jackson.  Based on my first glimpse at the content, this one will be a quick and great read!!!

I also noticed that this book offers the box score from the player’s debut game.  What a great idea!!!

Written by Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer in 1996, this book offers a glimpse into the partnership between star player and manager.

Both Jim Palmer and his baseball manager Earl Weaver had very successful careers.  2 Hall of  Famers, the duo is linked together as they won games, won World Series championships, and fought each other every step of the way.

Before media explosions ruled the sports world, many stories have been left untold.  This one is being told by Palmer and it covers his relationship with his coach for more than the 20 years that their lives were intertwined.

I sure do hope that the title of this book lives up to its name…

Put together by the team at Sports Illustrated, this book includes the writing of more than 30 of SI’s baseball writers while they covered the sport from 1954-2004.

And while I have let all of my magazine subscriptions expire as the Internet has become my media of choice for sports news and stories, there is no doubt that this book will be an enjoyable read!!!

I have heard more stories about this book and its effect on anyone who reads it than any other baseball book ever written.

Penned in 2009, ‘Heart Of The Game’ tells the story of Mike Coolbaugh and his sudden death on the baseball field after being hit in the head with a foul ball.  Coolbaugh, a father of two with another child on the way, was just 35 years young when his life was taken from him. 

What promises to be a heart-wrenching tale, it is made even more personal as I sit here as a 34-year old man and father of two.  I may need to take my time with this one.  It promises to be a great and hard to read story all at the same time.

On Christmas, Nick decided to post a tease for his review of Rogers Hornsby’s auto-biography, “My War With Baseball,” at Baseball Happenings.

It sounds like it would be a fascinating read, but it is long out of print and the used copies I’ve found for sale online seem a bit pricey.

It’s going on my “I want to read eventually” list, but I’m not quite sure how soon that will be.

Speaking of baseball books, I’m about half-way through Chris Coste’s “The 33-Year-Old Rookie.” It’s not a bad story, but Coste is a ballplayer, not a writer. I understand why he’d want to clean up the clubhouse language, but nobody really talks the way they do in “The 33-Year-Old Rookie.”

If you’re looking for a story about a long-time minor-leaguer’s journey to major league baseball, I’d recommend “Things Happen for a Reason: The True Story of an Itinerant Life in Baseball” by Terry Leach and Tom Clark. It’s a much more polished tale.

Ah, the perfect book for a guy like me.  Tons of baseball facts, stories, interviews, and anecdotes packed into page after page.  Packed with fresh content and published in 2008, this book guarantees that my ‘Did You Know’ series will continue into the new year!!!

Books like this are sometimes filled with fluff – I think I did my homework when adding this one to my X-mas list.  Only time will tell but I believe that this bad-boy is filled with fun trivia and stories that I look forward to sharing once I crack it open!!

Authored by one of my favorite ESPN personalities, this one is sure to be a hit with me.  Written in 2007, Tim Kurkjian offers us a glimpse of what a guy with 25 years of insight in the sport of baseball can only provide.

From first-person accounts, to interviews, to experiences only a reporter can encounter, this books is begging to be the first one I pick up and read…

Having kids has changed my outlook on holidays.  And none has been more impacted than Christmas.  While it was extremely enjoyable before, the pleasure I get on the holiday has been multiplied as I get to watch my two young boys establish their own Christmas memories.

So, while the wife and I still get gifts for each other, 90% of our focus goes to the boys!!

My list was very basic this year.  A 2010 planner, some clothes, a few Cd’s, a ‘U-Owe-Me’ for Marlins/Cubs tickets for the upcoming season and books.

But when I said books, I had no idea that this stack would be the end result:

WOW!!!  Pretty great huh??  This stack of 10 books will keep me occupied for the next calendar year.  I like to read, and reviving my love for baseball has also rekindled my love for reading about the sport, its stars, and its incredible history.

I gave my wife a list of 14-15 books to choose from as I know she’d hunt down the best prices on each before committing to buy.  I just didn’t expect to get so many, and all at one time!!

Stay tuned as I will be unveiling each book I received today in a post on ‘30-YOC’.  And while I still have about half of my Ron Santo book to go, I am eager to jump right into these too…

This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com on Saturday, December 26.

Title	Rank
General
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	1
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci	2
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress	3
Baseball Prospectus 2010	4
The Bill James Handbook 2010	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler	2
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons (3,135)	3
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, by Bruce Weber	4
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton	5
History
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	1
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost	3
Now I Can Die in Peace	4
Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies, by Jayson Stark	5
Statistics
Baseball Prospectus 2010	1
The Bill James Handbook 2010	2
Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects (Baseball America Prospect Handbook)	3
2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster)	4
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010	5

Sorry, almost done with this catching up business, so bear with me.

• For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s my take on the November session of Yankees Fantasy Camp in the Dec, 17 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News. In addition, My teammate Ira Jaskoll wrote this piece for the Jewish Magazine after his first experience with Yankee Fantasy Camp in January of this year.
• The Dec, 28 issue of Sports Illustrated takes some final glances back at the last decade, including “Ichiro’s Greatest Hits;” a David Halberstam/”Summer of ‘49″ reference to Derek Jeter; a decade’s worth of “They Said Its,” with some baseball said-its in there; L. Jon Wertheim’s “An Imperfect Ten,” an overview of the last 10 years as well as other articles that really make this issue worth the expenditure. Going back a bit, here’s Joe Posananski’s review of MLB for the decade.
• For those of you who would like to get into all the numbers you find in books like The Bill James’ lineup or The Hardball Times or Baseball Prospectus, “Big League Stew,” a Yahoo sports blog, has some good primer work on some of the formerly obscure statistics, including “batting average on balls in play” (BABIP), “Adjusted On-base percentage Plus Slugging” (OPS+), “Fielding Independent Pitching” (FIP), “Weighted On Base Average” (wOBP), and “Win Probability Added” (WPA), with more on the way.
• Enroll with Baseballisms.com for the 2009 Playoff Collection: True Fan’s Commentary in 140 Characters, a free and unique e-book of tweets from the post-season. Surprisingly well done.
• In a previously entry, I wrote about Peter Gammons leaving ESPN. Here’s a transcript/audio of an interview he gave to WEEI, a New England-based radio station.
• Guess he didn’t make enough money playing in the Majors from 200-1-03, so here’s Tsuyoshi Shinjo on the Japanese version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? via TedQuarters.net. Notice the agonizingly long tme until the emcee tells him the results of the final question.
• Looks like the movie version of Moneyball is not dead yet.

The current issue of ESPN the Magazine includes a cute feature titled “Over the Top,” by Amanda Angel.

The Greatest Story Ever Told is about Jesus himself, but these days you’d half-expect to find that title on a bookseller’s spoets shelves. A quick glance at the genre  shows many true, real and seemingly impossible epic teales of triumph, glory and agony, way too many, actually. Here, our survey of the most hyperbolic sports titles current in print.

Among the baseball titles included on the list:

• Under the category “Soul Searchers”: Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball
• Under “Falls from grace”: Where They Ain’t: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth of Modern Baseball
• Under “World Shakers”: Miracle Ball: My Hunt for te Shot Heard ‘Round the World
• Under “Redemption songs”: Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself and Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars and the Battle to Save Baseball

No current baseball works fall into the article’s “Perfection” category, but a quick look at my library shows the following (That’s a nice thing about Library.com; you can search by key words):

• Perfect I’m Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball, by David Wells
• Snap Me Perfect, by Darrel Porter
  
• I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect, by Denny McClain
• The Perfect Game: Tom Seaver and the Mets, by Seaver
• Tomorrow I’ll be Perfect, by David Steib
• The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball’s Greatest Year, by Tim McCarver
• Perfect Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me, by Phillip Hoose
• Baseball . . . The Perfect Game: An All-Star Anthology Celebrating the Game’s Great Players, Teams, And Moments
• The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball, edited by Elizabeth Warren
• The Perfect Game: A Classic Collection of Facts, Figures, Stories and Characters from the Society for American Baseball Research
• Perfect : The Inside Story of Baseball’s Sixteen Perfect Games, by James Buckley Jr.
• The Perfect Game, by Craig Weincek
• The Perfect Yankee: The Incredible Story of the Greatest Miracle in Baseball History, by Don Larsen

(That’s the nice thing about Library.com; you can search by key words.)

• Mike Silva of NY Baseball Digest recently posted this 2007 audio interview he did with former major leaguer Terry Leach. Leach, a side-arming reliever who pitched for several teams, including the Mets, wrote about his experiences in Things Happen for a Reason: The True Story of an Itinerant Life in Baseball.
• Long-time baseball analyst Peter Gammons, 64, is calling it quits with ESPN. The Boston-based writer who suffered a stroke in 2006, wrote or contributed to such books as Roger Clemens’ autobio Rocket Man and Beyond the Sixth Game, about the Red Sox’ 1986 season. Gammons wrote his farewell address for ESPN.com. He also took time to record a music CD, Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old. Not great stuff, but I give him major props for doing it. Richard Deitsch conducted this interview with Gammons for Sports Illustrated. The way writers jump back and forth, could we see this as a job interview?
• Former Yankees pitcher Fritz Peterson, author of Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven was the subject of this audio interview on Jimmy Scott’s High and Tight. Look for a Bookshelf interview with Peterson in the very near future.
• This recent “thought bubble” provided by Rob Neyer reminds me of the old Mad Magazine shtick, “When they say___, they really mean___.” Thanks for the memories, Rob.
• Don’t know how this review of Baseball Americana in the Dec. 3 Sunday Times Book Section slipped by me.
• The Baseballisms.com site has its own channel on YouTube. Here’s a show-and-tell review of Baseball’s Greatest Hit. What do you think, is it time for the Bookshelf to take the video route?

SWEET SPOT, 125 Years of Baseball and the LOUISVILLE SLUGGER

David Magee and Philip Shirley.  Triumph Books, 2009. 182 oversized pages.  Copiously illustrated with archival photos.

This wonderful book blends the histories of the Hillerich & Bradsby company with that of Major League Baseball, starting in 1884, when Pete Browning accepted Bud Hillerich’s invitation to make a replacement for the bat he had just cracked.

John “Bud”  Hillerich was the black sheep of the family, and his love for baseball soon diversified their lines of butter churns and bed posts.

Browning, the hard of hearing Louisville outfielder who refused to slide and caught flies standing on one leg, would soon win a batting championship with Hillerich’s bat.  Hillerich catered to professional players and gained a share of the professional bat market.

In 1884, the business was called J.F. Hillerich Job Turning.  Father would begrudgingly recognize the son in 1897 by re-naming it J.F Hillerich & Son.

It seems Bud Hillerich deserves 99.9% of the credit for creating his legendary family business.  Those who came before him rejected baseball.  Those who came after him were good stewards that recovered from their rare mistakes.

The bat that Bud made for Browning and others in the early days also had a different name.  It was called the “Falls City Slugger” in tribute to Louisville’s location at the Falls of the Ohio River.

Bud Hillerich replaced production of wooden churns & bowling balls with baseball bats -against his father’s will.  Overtime, Louisville Slugger, which Bud trademarked in 1894, became a high quality brand.

Bud conducted business in The Polo Grounds, Baker Bowl, the Huntington Avenue Grounds and their like.  He built relationships and made bats for the best players in the majors.

Company history took a shocking turn in 1910 when a fire decimated their spring stock just as it was to be shipped to retail stores, a niche that drove 74% of their revenue at that time.

Recovered but wounded financially, the Hillerichs pondered whether to fold the business, sell it, or attempt to manufacture something else entirely.

J.F. Hillerich, the founder, decided to sell the business in 1911.

In his 60’s and unwilling to hand over the company to son Bud, J.F. accepted $125,000 for “controlling interests in all facets of the business, including machinery, brand, and receivables, to 33-year old Frank Bradsby.”  The company was renamed J.F. Hillerich & Sons.

Bradsby, a super salesman who helped to build the Simmons Hardware retail chain, “had as much business acumen as he did sales savvy.”.  He knew Bud was the backbone of the bat business, so he sold him back part of the business and made him President of the company.

Smart guy, that Frank Bradsby.

Bradsby collaborated with Bud to sign players to autograph model contracts for retail stores.  This caused total sales to soar by 600% by 1916.  The addition of golf equipment (Powerbilt) that year added even more revenue to the growing company.

Bradsby worked with Bud and his family up until his death in 1937.  Under pressure from rebuilding their flood ravaged LVS facility in the midst of the Great Depression, Bradsby suffered a fatal heart attack aboard a train bound for Baseball’s Winter Meetings in Chicago.

He left behind a company that supplied 80 % of the bats in pro baseball and 60% of all other bats sold in the U.S.A.

LVS would be the dominant brand in bats up until 1970 when a tannery in Tullahoma, Tennessee decided to produce a bat made from Aluminum.

Prior to 1970, Worth had only made leather covered baseballs and softballs at its tannery.  But an employee named John Parish sensed that there was a new market in a very old idea, one that could challenge LVS’s stranglehold on the bat market.

Aluminum bats were first patented in the 1920’s, but players did not then warm to them.  Worth received a completely different reaction when they brought them to market 50 years later.  Little League players quickly purchased aluminum bats, preferring the cost effectiveness due to the bat’s durability.  They didn’t break !

Little League officially accepted the aluminum bat in 1971, and the NCAA did the same in 1974.  Within a year, H & B’s all time bat production peaked…..and then it dropped.

Easton soon entered the aluminum bat market, too.

By 1976, H & B production fell from 7 million to 1 million bats annually.

H & B didn’t see all this coming.  They were slow to react.   8 years after Worth took the first bite out of them, H&B finally bought an old Alcoa plant in California and launched their first all in-house aluminum bat production.

In between the utter domination achieved in 1916 and the cataclysmic losses in 1976, the Louisville Slugger story is packed with fascinating associations with Babe Ruth, Gehrig, Musial, Ted Williams, Mantle, Killebrew and many others.

Page after page details the history of baseball and the H & B company, from Alexander Cartwright to Longoria and Jeter.

______________

Embedded in this book among the photos of knob ends, superstars, and model records are tantalizing nuggets of baseball lore past and present.

Here are a few……….

Babe Ruth & Johnny Bench both used an R43 model.  Babe’s weighed 37 to 40 ounces.  Bench’s weighed far less.  Bench was strong and had massive hands, but he couldn’t swing the same weight as the Bambino.  Time, and the chubbiness of Babe in his later years, obscured just how powerful Ruth’s body was.

Dustin Pedroia, the little guy with the big swing, uses a black finished, maple S318 cupped LVS which is 33.5” long and weighs 30.5 ounces. This web-site has for 2+ years consistently been asked to share what size and weight bat D.P. uses.  It’s a mystery to so many because what they see visually just doesn’t compute.  The bat looks disproportionately large and it is illogical to think he can control the lumber.   Thanks to the authors, we now know specifically what he swings.

Ken Griffey, Sr. was liberal when introducing his young son to different bat brands, even the ones he himself did not use.  Junior tried Cooper, Adirondack, and others.   But Ken Griffey, Jr. chose & stuck with LVS model C271 as he smashed 630 HR (5^th All Time) and 1,829 RBI (16th All Time).  He used the C271 to become the only player to hit the B & O Warehouse behind right field at Camden Yards with a bomb.

Red Sox Scout Early Johnson cultivated a relationship with Harmon Killebrew long before he appeared on the radar of the Washington Senators.  Johnson put the hook in Killebrew for good when he gave the teenaged Killer a LVS model W166, the same model that Ted Williams used.  Soon, Killebrew gave the Sox the inside track to match the $12,000 bonus he was offered by the Nats.  Incredibly, the wealthy Red Sox passed on the $12,000 investment and the 573 career HR’s that went along with it.

Two photo pages of model records are eye-popping.  Mantle swung a K55, but he also ordered M110 and B220 as he went head-to-head with Maris in ’61. Yogi Berra went along with Bench and Ruth in the use of the R43.  Rod Carew ? H185, R161 and C243. Gehrig frequented a 37 ounce A-1 in ’31.

——————–

Bat lovers and baseball historians alike will love this book.  After you read it, you can supplement the experience with a visit to the web-site of the Louisville Slugger Museum at http://www.sluggermuseum.org/default.aspx.

Still trying to catch up from Yankee Fantasy Camp, so we’ll take it a few steps at a time:

• Richard Barbieri writes an intersting “This annotated week in baseball history” for The Hardball Times that deserves mention. The same can be said for Rob Neyer’s postings at ESPN.com, in particular his daily doses (Friday Filberts, Wednesday Wangdoodles, etc.) on his Sweet Spot blog.If you’re gonna get technical on me and say these are not books, etc., I would remind you that a laptop or netbook fits nicely on a bookshelf.
• Baseball Past and Present (“A historical look at the national pastime”) posted this review of The Boys of Summer.
• Bruce Markusen (A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s,  The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Tales From The Mets Dugout, and The Orlando Cepeda Story) contributed this profile of Satchel Paige on Hardball Times. Markusen is currently working on a book about iconic baseball cards since the 1960s.
• Michael Hankison at BaseballReflections.com wrote this review of Sixty Feet, Six Inches. Upshot: “a great baseball book.”
• I quite enjoy it when baseball cards return to their roots. Wish they would do it more often (and cut back on these hundreds of subsets).
• Pirates broadcaster Nelson King has self-published his memoirs in Happiness is like a Cur Dog: The Thirty-Year Journey of a Major League Baseball Pitcher and Broadcaster.
• Here’s a shocker: baseball owners back in the day were racists. Film at 11.

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 18.

Title	Rank
General
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci	1
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski	2
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	3
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler	4
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress	5
Essays and Writing
Sixty Feet Six Inches	1
Moneyball	2
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons (3,135)	3
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, by Bruce Weber	4
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton	5
History
The Machine	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost (2,471)	3
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye (2,373)	4
Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain,by Marty Appel	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010	1
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	2
Baseball Prospectus 2010	3
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tango, et al	4
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010	5

Analysis: Josh Hamilton’s book returns to the list, perhaps as a nod to the Christian values for the holiday season. I have dispensed with the baseball rankings in comparison with the general numbers. Suffice it to say, there can be thousands of regular books between the top baseball title and the second.

Once again, there are no baseball titles in either Amazon’s top 100 (although Baseball Americana and The Yankee Years are in the top 25 sports bestsellers) or The New York Times‘ non-fiction best seller lists.

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 11.

Title	Rank
General
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (448)	1
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski (649)	2
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler(857)	3
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (942)	4
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (1,018)	5
Essays and Writing
Sixty Feet Six Inches	1
Moneyball	2
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons (3,135)	3
Sports Illustrated: The Baseball Book (3,157)	4
101 Reasons to Love the Red Sox (Revised),by Dave Green(4,313)	5
History
The Machine	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost (2,471)	3
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye (2,373)	4
Now I Can Die in Peace	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010 (1,662)
Baseball Prospectus 2010 (5,044)	2
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 (7,349)	3
Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects (Baseball America Prospect Handbook) (10,032)	4
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tango et al (10,591)	5

Analysis: The sales rankings are returning to where they were prior to last week, although the numericals remain pretty much the same. A new title since I’ve been making these lists: 101 Reasons to Love the Red Sox (Revised Edition). As I wrote awhile ago, I have no love for these types of revisions. There’s no real new information, so it just seems like a money grab.

Once again, there are no baseball titles in either Amazon’s top 100 or The New York Times‘ non-fiction best seller lists.

Philadelphia Phillies Broadcaster, Chris Wheeler is coming to The BrynChester Luxury Condominiums!

Chris will be signing his new book View From The Booth, Four Decades With The Phillies

Sunday, December 13th from 1-3

What a great gift for that special Phillies fan! Only $20.00 Signed and personalized by Chris.

Reserve your book today. Call: 610-353-0100 or email: MegSheaRealtor@comcast.net

The BrynChester is located at 3503 Rhoads Avenue, Newtown Square PA

(corner of Bryn Mawr Avenue and West Chester Pike)

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, December 4.

Title	Rank
General
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (565)	1
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (731)	2
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski (1,020)	3
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler(1,192)	4
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (1,597)	5
Essays and Writing
Sixty Feet Six Inches	1
Moneyball	2
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons (3,856)	3
Sports Illustrated: The Baseball Book (4,428)	4
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, by Bruce Weber (4,807)	5
History
The Machine	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost (2,492)	3
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye (3,552)	4
Now I Can Die in Peace	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010 (2,746)
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 (7,368)	2
2010 Baseball Forecaster, by Ron Shandler (8.809)	3
Baseball Prospectus 2010 (10,476)	4
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample (11,932)	5

Analysis: Baseball Americana jumps to the top spot, since it’s getting down to the wire for gift-giving time. Perhaps that’s why most of the rankings are so much lower. Gift books and overall bestsellers leap to higher slots, pushing these older titles down. new season draws nearer.

Larry Tye’s Satchel returns to the top 5, aided, no doubt, by its inclusion on The New York Times‘ list of notable books for 2009.

Joe and I have been neck-deep in baseball books lately.  For a school project, he began to read the series by Dan Gutman that began with Honus & Me and continues with a whole bunch of books where a kid named Joe can magically

Testing the Ice, by Sharon Robinson

go back into time to interact with the likes of Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle.  I read a couple of them, and although it’s hard for me to get past a whopper of a children’s book device (“Mom, I’m going back in time.”  “Well make sure you bring some warm clothes and a sandwich!”), the historical details were great and the stories moved along.  Joe loves them.  Also just saw this review for “Testing the Ice,” a book by Jackie Robinson’s daughter Sharon, that talks about her dad’s fear of swimming and tells his story in a way that kids will enjoy.  Joe would like that one, too, and it might just wind up in his stocking.  He has gotten tons of mileage out of “Players of Cooperstown: Baseball’s Hall of Fame,” a big, oversized volume that we found at a garage sale that devotes two pages to every player inducted into the Hall of Fame until about 1998, with bios and stats that he memorizes.  And BoSox fans will enjoy “Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures” by Boston newspaper columnist Dan Shaughnessy, although the essays are more geared for adults.  Joe digs the pictures and the memories it brings of our own visit to Fenway.

Happy reading.

I haven’t read all of the great books on America’s Pastime, but I’ve read quite a few. Of my personal collection, here are the 10 best baseball books I’ve read so far (listed alphabetically by author):

The Long Ball by Tom Adelman - This is not the easiest read in the world, but Adelman provides an excellent look not only at the 1975 baseball season and World Series, but also at how free agency was beginning to change the game.

Ball Four by Jim Bouton – What is literally a day-by-day chronicle of the 1969 Seattle Pilots season functions more like a hilarious memoir of baseball in the ’60s. Bouton’s stories about Mickey Mantle and the fun-loving Yankees left him ostracized from the organization for decades and drew harsh words from then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Stengel: His Life and Times by Robert W. Creamer - I only recently read this book, but wish I had done so sooner. From Casey Stengel’s upbringing at the turn of the century to his playing days in the National League to his management of the 1950s Yankee dynasty, Creamer proves he is one of the sport’s best biographers. (Note: As per my own rule, no author can appear on this list twice, otherwise Creamer’s Babe: The Legend Comes to Life would have surely made the top 10 as well).

Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams – Co-authored by the two San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters who first broke the story, this quick and engrossing read details the steroids scandal which implicated Barry Bonds, BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) and several medal-winning Olympic athletes.

Summer of ‘49 by David Halberstam - This is one of three terrific baseball books Halberstam wrote before his untimely death in 2007, but it is far and away the best of the bunch. No other book I’ve read has examined the importance of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams on their respective teams, and “Summer of ‘49″ takes an excellent look at the baseball press corps to boot.

October Men by Roger Kahn – Like Halberstam’s work, this is yet another in a long line of books about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and this might just be the best. Kahn has a very colorful cast of characters with which to work (including Bucky Dent, Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner and Don Zimmer) and does great justice to the 1978 season.

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy by Jane Leavy - One of the best baseball biographies out there, Leavy’s book is a fascinating study of the reserved left-hander who led the Los Angeles Dodgers to glory in the early 1960s. From his youth in Brooklyn to his preemptive retirement in 1966, Koufax remains one of the most intriguing figures in baseball history.

The Bad Guys Won! by Jeff Pearlman – I remember looking at this title in the SMU bookstore and thinking it must be about one of the recent Yankee teams, but I was wrong; it’s about their cross-town rivals, the New York Mets, and Pearlman tells with great detail the story of their 1986 bad-boy championship squad.

The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter – Right on the front cover, none other than the late Red Barber calls this “The single best baseball book of all time.” First published in 1966, Ritter’s work uses in-depth player interviews and a terrific collection of photos to chronicle baseball early in the 20th century.

The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell – Though this book examines one of the most tragic incidents in any sport, it is nonetheless a page-turner and a compelling read. Sowell not only reviews the events leading up to Ray Chapman’s fatal beaning, but also the three-team race for the American League pennant in 1920, which included Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie and Babe Ruth.

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, November 27.

Title	Rank
General
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski (490)	1
Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (625)	2
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (674)	3
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler(989)	4
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (1,063)	5
Essays and Writing
Sixty Feet Six Inches	1
Moneyball	2
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons (2,758)	3
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 (4,023)	4
Sports Illustrated: The Baseball Book (5,437)	5
History
The Machine	1
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost (2,475)	3
Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, by Marty Appel (2,538)	4
Now I Can Die in Peace	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010 (1,585)	1
The Hardball Times Annual 2010	2
Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects (6,012)	3
Baseball Prospectus 2010 (11,367)	4
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample (10,847)	5

Analysis: The new Baseball Americana and the old Sports Illustrated Baseball Book both make fine gifts. And 2010 titles will only increase in sales as the new season draws nearer.