Baseball Book Talk and Signing Thursday

Leonard Cassuto, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Baseball, will talk about the book and sign copies at Borders Books at Columbus Circle on Thursday, March 31 at 7 pm. The book is a collection of essays on topics such as baseball in the movies and baseball in Japan and Latin America. Interspersed are features on iconic baseball characters such as Pete Rose and Walter O'Malley.

I contributed a piece on the origins of free agency, with the focus on Charlie Finley, George Steinbrenner and Andy Messersmith. It was a fascinating time in baseball and I had a great time researching and writing about it. Readers of this blog are quite familiar with Steinbrenner, but for those less familiar with Finley, the A's owner might have been an even more vivid character.

Hope to see some of you Thursday. If you can't make it to the Borders event, you can check out The Cambridge Companion to Baseball on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.