About 40 football fans came to Snell Library decked out in jerseys Wednesday to listen to former New York Giant tightend Mark Bavaro and author Aaron Schatz discuss their newly released books as part of the library’s “Meet the Author” program.

Bavaro wrote “Rough and Tumble,” a fictional story told through the character Dominic Fucillo, who is playing the season knowing it will be his last due to a knee injury.

However Schatz’s “Pro Football Prospectus 2008,” takes a look at statistical trends in the National Football League (NFL), using them to help project how players and teams will do.

Bavaro said he has a number of local ties to the City of Boston. He was born in East Boston and played football for Danvers High School. After attending Notre Dame, he said he was drafted by the Giants in the fourth round in 1985. In 1986, they won the Super Bowl under coach Bill Parcells and then-defensive coordinator Bill Belichick.

Bavaro was a two-time Pro Bowler with the Giants and finished his career with 351 catches in nine seasons with the Giants, Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles. He said he is also friends with former New England Patriot and current Denver Bronco tightend Daniel Graham.

Bavaro said “Rough and Tumble” has ties to some of his real teammates including notorious linebacker Lawrence Taylor, or “LT.” Bavaro said in the novel, the team’s star linebacker enjoys a carefree nightlife which threatens team chemistry.

“The characters are composites of guys I played with, even down to high school,” he said. “Football breeds a lot of interesting people … I’m not that good of a writer, so I stuck to what I know.”

Bavaro said he didn’t get a lot of responses sending out his early manuscripts. It wasn’t until his wife sent out a copy without his knowledge that he said he finally found someone willing to publish his work. It was published earlier this month by St. Martin’s Press.

“The scenes from my book come from inside the helmet. It’s an inside look at what life in the National Football League is really like.”

Despite being a former member of the Giants, who defeated the Patriots this past Super Bowl, Bavaro was well received by the audience.

Alec Tolivaisa, a recent graduate from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said he is a Patriots fan, but was excited to meet Bavaro.

“Getting the chance to meet the toughest tight end in NFL history, that’s just too good of an opportunity to pass up,” Tolivaisa said. “Even though I never saw him play, I saw his old highlight films and I saw a segment on him and he was just so tough.”

While Bavaro’s book deals with the inner workings of the NFL, Aaron Schatz’s “Pro Football Prospectus 2008,” published in July by Plume, takes a different look at the game.

Schatz didn’t mince words when it came to his football-playing experience.

“I played touch football in sixth grade, and I may have scored a touchdown,” said Schatz, who graduated from Brown in 1996 with a degree in economics.

Schatz said he first got the idea for his book in 2002.

He was reading a piece by then-Boston Globe sportswriter Ron Borges that said the Patriots would not win the Super Bowl, because they didn’t run the football enough. Borges had picked the Oakland Raiders to win, which Schatz said perplexed him, because they ran the ball even less than the Patriots.

Schatz started keep track of plays in the NFL, determining, among other things, how successful teams were in different formations and how well teams executed play action.

His work is also published on ESPN.com and his website, Football Outsiders, which is available at www.footballoutsiders.com.

Both Bavaro and Schatz took time to discuss the current status of the New England Patriots, and both said they felt the Patriots would still be OK and win the division, despite the loss of Tom Brady to a season-ending knee injury. But they also said they aren’t ready to pencil them in as Super Bowl Champions.

Despite playing for the Giants during most of his career, Bavaro won over the crowd by announcing that his two sons are big Patriots fans. Bavaro said he didn’t root for either the Giants or the Patriots during the past Super Bowl.

“I was rooting for a good game. I friends with both [Giants’ coach] Tom Coughlin and [Patriots’ coach] Bill Belichick,” said Bavaro, who added with a smile, “I was happy to see my old team win though.”