NEW BOOK OUT ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA SPORTS INCLUDES HIGH SCHOOL INFO
A new book is out relating to North Carolina sports, including several episodes from the high school ranks.
North Carolina journalist Jimmy Tomlin has written Instant Replay— 365 Days of North Carolina Sports Trivia. A native of Statesville, Tomlin has been on the staff of the Statesville Record and Landmark and now works for the High Point Enterprise.
For generations, North Carolina has been synonymous with college basketball supremacy. And everyone knows of NASCAR’s deep roots in the Old North State. But North Carolina’s rich sports legacy encompasses so much more than rebounds and restrictor plates. In Instant Replay, Jimmy Tomlin covers the state’s entire sports landscape—from tennis and track to football and fighting to hockey and horse racing—with anecdotes for every day of the year that transcend mere box scores.
While Instant Replay documents the unforgettable exploits of some of the state’s best-known athletes—Michael Jordan, Richard Petty, Catfish Hunter, and Choo-Choo Justice, just to name a few—it also tells the stories of less well-known athletes, such as the high school baseball player who homered five times in a single game and the slow-pitch softball stud who slugged more than 6,000 homers in his career.
Tomlin revisits many of the state’s famous sports moments, like the year the Rose Bowl was played in Durham, but he also includes lesser-known moments, like the time a professional basketball player’s monstrous dunks shattered two backboards in the same game and the day a fisherman caught a record catfish with a Barbie fishing pole. Interspersed throughout the book are interesting sidebars detailing the state’s links to the careers of sports legends like Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Rocky Marciano.
After reading Instant Replay, even the most diehard North Carolina sports fan will come away with a deeper appreciation for the state’s athletic heritage—and likely learn something new in the process. The book will be available at Barnes and Noble and other book stores.
