* TWIBB — October 16

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, October 16.

Title	Rank
General
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
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
The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci	4
Perfect: Don Larsen’s Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen, by Lew Paper	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
Fantasyland: A Sportswriter’s Obsessive Bid to Win the World’s Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball, by Sam Walker	4
Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, by S.L. Price	5
History
The Machine	1
Perfect	2
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mike Frost	3
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye	4
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, by Mike Vaccaro	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	1
The Bill James Handbook 2010	2
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tango et al	3
The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches, by Rob Neyer and Bill James	4
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010	5

Analysis: Four of the top five in the “history” category share a World Series theme (look for my interview with Mike Vaccaro later today). And Paige also pitched in a World Series, so if your stretch it, all five include the Fall Classic.

S.L. Price’s book on Mike Coolbaugh returns to the top five in the “essay” section. Fantasyland also appears after a long absence, perhaps fueled by recent coverage on NPR.

The always-interesting Hardball Times comes out with its 2010 new edition, ranking 53,242 in all books.

By the way, Amazon has a new feature which denotes how many weeks a book has been in the general top 100. No baseball titles this week, nor are there any among the NY Times top 35 non-fictional titles.

Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress