Charlie Hustle: A Conversation with Keith O’Brien and J.A. Adande

The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is excited to host bestselling author Keith O’Brien for an in-store discussion on Wednesday, April 10 at 6:30 pm featuring his new book, Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball. A captivating chronicle of baseball’s immortal Pete Rose, one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures, this title is an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century. What O’Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn’t change, America and baseball did. Mr. O’Brien will be in conversation with renowned sports journalist J.A. Adande.

This event is free with registration, to register, please visit our website or CLICK HERE. 

More About the Book: Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t. In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game.

Charlie Hustle tells the full story of the rise and fall of Pete Rose. Drawing on firsthand interviews with Rose and his associates, as well as investigators’ reports, FBI and court records, archives, and a mountain of press coverage, Keith O’Brien chronicles how Rose fell so far. It is Pete Rose as we’ve never seen him before.

Ken Burns says, “As much as many fans of the game want to forget this sordid tale, Keith O’Brien reminds us of its centrality to the story of our National Pastime. It’s a dazzling, soaring accomplishment, a counterpoint to the tragic fall of one of the game’s greatest, brought on entirely by his own hubris, arrogance, and insolent disregard for baseball’s stern code.”

More About the Author: Keith O’Brien is the New York Times bestselling author of Paradise Falls, Fly Girls, and Outside Shot, a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports writing, and an award-winning journalist. O’Brien has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico, and his stories have also appeared on NPR and This American Life. He lives in New Hampshire.

More About our Conversation Partner: J.A. Adande is the director of sports journalism at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. He is also the graduate journalism Sports Media Specialization leader. Mr. Adande has worked in sports media for over two and a half decades, including multiple roles at ESPN and 10 years as a sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times, in addition to jobs at The Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times. He has covered a broad array of sports and events, including 20 NBA Finals, Super Bowls, the World Series, the Stanley Cup finals, the Olympics, the World Cup, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Masters. He continues to appear on ESPN’s Around The Horn, where he has been a panelist since the show’s beginning in 2002.