A sixth-grade writing assignment changed Mark Allen Baker's life. Now 69, the Country Club East resident has published 30 books, and in June he was inducted into the Florida Boxing Hall of Fame.

A letter to a general started it all

Baker's path started in the Susquehanna Valley Central School District in upstate New York, where his teacher, Evans, required students to write to someone connected to their chosen topic. Baker picked World War II and wrote to Gen. Omar Bradley, asking about Gen. George Patton. Bradley wrote back.

"It was wonderful," Baker told Your Observer's Jay Heater in an Aug. 5 profile. "I learned to go directly to the sources to compile information. This is the power of teachers."

From corporate career to sports bar owner

That lesson stuck. But writing took a backseat to earning a living. Baker worked as a computer graphics artist for General Electric, then spent a decade at Genigraphics, a GE spinoff, rising to executive assistant to the president.

In 1990, he built an 8,000-square-foot sports bar in Liverpool, New York, filling it with memorabilia: a wall of Major League Baseball player bats, a Wade Boggs uniform, a Babe Ruth bat. He bought closed-circuit rights to Mike Tyson fights to draw crowds. Ed Brophy, founder of what became the International Boxing Hall of Fame in nearby Canastota, visited the bar and recruited Baker as a volunteer after seeing the collection.

A full-time writer with 30 books to his name

Baker sold the sports bar in 1993 to write full-time. His first published book, "The Baseball Autograph Handbook" (1990), authenticated signatures of every player in the National Baseball Hall of Fame during the memorabilia boom. Fourteen of his 30 books involve boxing. His bestseller is "Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut: From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale."

Florida Boxing Hall of Fame induction

The Florida Boxing Hall of Fame induction took place June 5-7 at the Hilton Lake Carillon in St. Petersburg. Baker entered in the Media category alongside promoters Bob Arum and Lou DiBella and fellow media inductees Randy Gordon and Bernard Fernandez Jr. He was already a member of the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame, inducted in 2023.

Baker is the only person to serve the International Boxing Hall of Fame as an author, biographer, historian, chair, sponsor and volunteer.

A new book pairs boxing with Broadway

His newest book, "William A. Brady — The Life of a Boxing and Broadway Impresario," also released in June, tells the story of a figure who managed two undisputed heavyweight champions, James J. Jeffries and James J. Corbett, and produced more than 260 Broadway plays while managing Helen Hayes, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Tallulah Bankhead. The book is available at major bookstores and online retailers.

Family ties and advice for young writers

Baker's father, Ford Baker, was a Triple-A baseball player. Sports run in the family. With Manatee County schools opening Aug. 10, Baker's advice to young writers is characteristically direct: read everything about your subject, go to primary sources and skip the shortcuts.