Author appearances: Michael Long and Dan Gilbert

Dan Gilbert, author of Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency, will be the featured speaker at the next Varsity Letters event hosted by Gelf Magazine on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m. at The Gallery at LPR, 158 Bleecker St. Gilbert, will be joined by Michael O’Keeffe, Teri Thompson, and other members of the NY Daily News I-Team, “reporting back from the front lines of A-Rod’s fascinating legal battles.”

Admission is free but you have to be 21 or over.

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The Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, located at 67 East 11 Street in Manhattan, kicks off its fall season with a program featuring Michael Long, editor of Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life After Baseball.

The event will take place Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m.

From the Bergino press release:

One of the most revered public figures of the 20th century, Jackie Robinson is remembered for both his athletic prowess and his strong personal character. The world knows him as the man who crossed baseball’s color line, but there is much more to his legacy.

At the conclusion of his baseball career, Robinson continued in his pursuit of social progress. Beyond Home Plate, an anthology of Jackie Robinson’s columns in the New York Post and the New York Amsterdam News, offers fresh insight into the Hall of Famer’s life and work following his historic years on the baseball diamond.

Robinson’s syndicated newspaper columns afforded him the opportunity to provide rich social commentary, while simultaneously exploring his own life and experiences. He was free to write about any subject of his choosing, and he took full advantage of this license, speaking his mind about everything from playing Santa to confronting racism, from loving his wife Rachel to despising Barry Goldwater, from complaining about Cassius Clay’s verbosity to teaching Little Leaguers how to lose well.

Jackie wrote to prod and provoke, inflame and infuriate, and sway and persuade. With their pointed opinions, these fascinating columns reveal that the mature Robinson was a truly American prophet, a civil rights leader in his own right, furious with racial injustice and committed to securing first-class citizenship for all. Jackie believed that his life after his baseball career was far more important than all of his baseball exploits. Beyond Home Plate shows why he believed this so fervently.