2022 Baseball Bookstore Awards

An annual tradition!
The owner of the Baseball Bookstore has arbitrarily selected the most interesting baseball book read in 2022!
We will arbitrarily announce one grand prize winner and four runners-up!
No pandering!

【Grand Prize Winner】

“The Sand-Covered Great Manager: Katsuya Nomura’s 1140 Days”

(Shinchosha / Hiroshi Kato)

Following the previous year's Baseball Bookstore Award winner, “Testament” (Emi Iida / Bungeishunju), this is another award for a work about Katsuya Nomura.
While “Testament” depicted the purity of Katsuya Nomura—who, even after becoming wealthy as a professional baseball player and manager, never forgot his days of extreme poverty and kept his promise to his mother—this work depicts Nomura's purity regarding “baseball” itself.
Katsuya Nomura loved baseball and loved being a manager, even while draped in Versace from head to toe and wearing luxury watches. The students from his Shidax era who received his guidance are now passing on the Nomura-ism as managers of high school and university baseball teams.
“Did I leave people behind?”
Katsuya Nomura kept the promise to his mother, which was also noted in “Testament,” even in amateur baseball and at Shidax.
We hereby decide this work as the 2022 Baseball Bookstore Award winner.

【Runners-up】

“SHO-TIME: The Man Who Changed the 120-Year History of Major League Baseball”

(Jeff Fletcher / Tokuma Shoten)

Most of the content is something you have already seen, heard, or known somewhere. Even so, you can learn about the unique perspective and analysis of an Angels beat reporter, as well as how Shohei Ohtani is viewed from the American side. Also, the impact of the great achievements Shohei Ohtani left behind last year and this year was so strong that I had completely forgotten about his injuries, slumps, and struggles in 2019 and 2020, and this book helped me recall them and realize once again how amazing Shohei Ohtani is.
The only regret is that because this book was written in 2021, it does not cover 2022, the year he pulled off the extraordinary feat of reaching the qualifying number of innings and at-bats as both a pitcher and a hitter.
If your brain is numb and you can no longer grasp how amazing Shohei Ohtani is, you should read this.

“Wanting to Meet Kiyohara: Lions Blue That Is Infinitely Close to Transparent”

(Yasutaka Nakamizo / Hakuyosha)

As represented by works like “We Were All Adults” and “We Made a Beautiful Bouquet,” we see many movies and novels lately that look back on the era when the creator felt they were shining the brightest, mainly in the 80s and 90s. This baseball book rides that same wave. It is not a heavy non-fiction work, but rather a light and witty look back at the era of “Kiyomaru,” when Kazuhiro Kiyohara was not yet the “Bancho” (boss) and still had a sense of cuteness, while overlapping with the trends and social conditions of the time and the author's own elementary school days. The owner was also one of those elementary school students who never doubted that Kazuhiro Kiyohara would one day break Sadaharu Oh's home run record. This is a work I would like to arbitrarily dedicate to those elementary school students of that time who read “CoroCoro Comic,” were obsessed with “Dragon Quest,” and dreamed of Kazuhiro Kiyohara.

“Testimony: Hiromitsu Ochiai, The Truth About the ‘Isolated Manager’ Who Stuck to His Own Style”

(Masahiro Yamamoto (Author), Kazuhiro Wada (Author), Hitoki Iwase (Author), Kenshin Kawakami (Author), and others / Takarajimasha)

This book feels like an answer from the players' side to “The Hated Manager” (Tadahei Suzuki / Bungeishunju), which was a big hit last year and won the Baseball Bookstore Award alongside “Testament.”
It is interesting to be able to know Hiromitsu Ochiai from multiple angles, as it includes testimonies not only from star players but also from supporting players and coaches like Junichi Kawahara, Shinya Okamoto, Nobuhiro Takashiro, and Kazuhiko Ishimine.
However, one cannot deny the feeling that the testimonies are biased toward those who affirm Ochiai, and I was left with the impression that if we could have heard the “testimonies” of Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Motonobu Tanishige, and Hirokazu Ibata, whose conflicts were also reported, we could have known the mysterious ecology of Hiromitsu Ochiai in a more multifaceted and three-dimensional way.
The only mystery is why this book, which is interesting, was not published in hardcover.

“The Power to Lead: Building a Self-Propelled Group”

(Kenji Nagao, Takamatsu Commercial Baseball Team Manager / Takeshobo)

A book by Manager Kenji Nagao, who dramatically turned around the traditional Takamatsu Commercial High School after a long slump. Books of this type often have a strong aspect of being know-how manuals for baseball coaches to learn coaching theory, but this work begins with Manager Nagao's bitter experience as a new junior high school teacher when a student attempted suicide in the classroom and the parents shouted at him, “Never stand on the podium again!” I think that structure makes the reader feel like they are reading an autobiographical novel, leading to an interest that makes it impossible to stop turning the pages, even if you are not a baseball coach. Also, throughout the book, Manager Nagao's stance as an educator before being a baseball team manager is depicted, and there were many parts I empathized with. A book that talks about the parts you don't want to touch or talk about is one that attracts readers; this is a book that made me realize that once again.