Veteran New York-based sports writer/public relations pro Charles Cuttone has seen just about everything in his nearly 50 years of promoting professional sports across the Gotham sports scene - dating all the way back to 1974 as a fresh-faced elementary school intern with the World Football League's ill-fated New York Stars.

While the WFL gig (and team, for that matter) didn't last long, it was his next experience that following spring - with a rag-tag but ambitious pro soccer outfit called the New York Cosmos - that both solidified a budding career interest in sports PR, and yielded a ring-side seat to one of the most indelible stories in 1970s sports history.

In his new book "Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute" - visually co-created with the exquisite imagery of legendary sports photographer George Tiedemann - Cuttone recounts the three-season, two-and-a-half-year phenomenon known as Pelé - and how the world's then-greatest player (and arguably, most famous athlete) transformed not only a earnest club and its backwater league, but also a "foreign" game into the mainstream consciousness of American sports.

+ + +

SPONSOR THANKS:

• Old School Shirts (promo code: GOODSEATS): oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats
• DraftKings Sportsbook (promo code: GOODSEATS): https://myaccount.draftkings.com/login

BUY/READ EARLY & OFTEN:

• Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute (2023): https://amzn.to/3tLxmKD

FIND & FOLLOW:

• Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill
• Instagram (+ Threads): https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable