Knuckle Bear is both enlivened and burdened by a fractured language, inherited from the settlers who first came to the North Carolina mountains from the hills and valleys of Scotland and Ulster to claim this wild land. It is a language that is broken and crippled, violent and near violent, innocent and depraved, and loving and brutal as these characters. As author of The Iguana Tree, Michel Stone notes, “If Tim Peeler were a novelist he’d have written Deliverance, only even somehow more Deliverance than the Deliverance Dickey wrote. I couldn't stop reading. Like when you pass a horrific train wreck and instead of turning away you hit the brakes, got to keep looking to see how bad this all ends up for those unfortunate people. There is no way it is going to be remotely okay. And yet, farther in, I am feeling sympathy and EMPATHY for the whole lot of them, and then the ending after all this hard, dark, strange stuff was so sweet and good I could almost cry.”

Knuckle Bear

Literature & Fiction

Peeler, Tim

Poetry

Red Dirt Press

Baseball first became popular in Catawba County as a means of entertainment and competition between mills and small towns. The county’s longest standing baseball program started at Lenoir College in 1903. By the mid-1920s, a mill-supported semi-pro league had been firmly established. In the 30 years that followed, three different periods of professional minor league play were anchored by legendary players like Norman “Pinkie” James, Eddie Yount, Don Stafford, Dick Stoll, and Pud Miller. Even before the successful return of Minor League baseball in 1993, Catawba County had already had its share of brushes with famous players like Hoyt Wilhelm, Carl Hubbell, and Bob Feller and infamous ones like Edwin “Alabama” Pitts and “Struttin” Bud Shaney.

Baseball in Catawba County (NC) (Images of Baseball)

Arts & Photography

McLawhorn, Brian

Photography & Video

Arcadia Publishing

The catcher cradles a quick leather signal  squatting on new spikes waiting for the curve  to drop like a head into his basket.  From odes to Josh Gibson and Curt Flood to poems about Denny McLain and the anonymous dancing usher at a minor league game, poet Tim Peeler celebrates the overlooked and the standout as he merges the topics of personal and baseball-related rediscovery. A bat is a lost artifact in "Adirondack," while "Writing Baseball Poems in Winter" and "Baseball Archaeologists" deal explicitly with recovery. Several other poems underscore the continued significance of baseball memories, as the poet reconsiders events and people from his adolescence, offering the reader a candid look at his family, coaches and friends, as well as the players he watched, read about or merely imagined.

Touching All the Bases: Poems from Baseball

McFarland Publishing

In baseball, as in much poetry, beauty comes from tension. Groundrules and boundaries confine those who would play, but the best find ways to exploit their strictures, and just as the daring base runner takes second on a fly to right, the practiced poet trips the sleepy reader with a surprise rhyme, bold line break, or a jarring reversal of foot. It's no surprise, then, that hardball has a larger body of literature than other sports, or that aficionados are more likely than others to quote lines of verse in support of the game they love. This is Tim Peeler's second book of poems from baseball. It contains some of his most moving and best-crafted poetry. Starting with time-honored themes--fathers and sons, baseball and time, memory and the nation, team and player and loyalty--the poet adapts the universal to the local and personal, proving that baseball, with its easy accommodation of reflection, remains a powerful tool for mining our individual and collective history.

Waiting for Godot's First Pitch: More Poems from Baseball

History & Criticism

McFarland

The fifty-eight year Easter Monday baseball rivalry between North Carolina State University and Wake Forest University had a traditional fraternity celebration known as the PIKA Ball, held on the N.C. State campus, that followed it on Monday evening. Told from the viewpoint of sports journalists, players, fans, and PIKA members, the narrative reveals the excitement and developing strategies as the contest traverses several baseball eras. At the height of its popularity, the game drew astonishingly large crowds of spectators, many of whom were absentee government workers, providing the impetus for the North Carolina State Legislature to declare Easter Monday to be a state holiday.

The Easter Monday Baseball Game: North Carolina State and Wake Forest on the Diamond, 1899-1956

History

Americas

McFarland Company

Baseball first became popular in Catawba County as a means of entertainment and competition between mills and small towns. The county's longest standing baseball program started at Lenoir College in 1903. By the mid-1920s, a mill-supported semi-pro league had been firmly established. In the 30 years that followed, three different periods of professional minor league play were anchored by legendary players like Norman "Pinkie" James, Eddie Yount, Don Stafford, Dick Stoll, and Pud Miller. Even before the successful return of Minor League baseball in 1993, Catawba County had already had its share of brushes with famous players like Hoyt Wilhelm, Carl Hubbell, and Bob Feller and infamous ones like Edwin "Alabama" Pitts and "Struttin" Bud Shaney.

Baseball in Catawba County

Arcadia Publishing Library Editions

The fever that is college basketball on Tobacco Road started from a small outbreak in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Indiana basketball legend Everett Case became the coach at N.C. State University. He restarted the dormant construction of Reynolds Coliseum, and for 50 years, it was one of the most important basketball arenas in the country. Through the years, the Wolfpack has own two NCAA championships and 10 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, while giving the sport of college basketball some of its brightest color, from the plaid jackets worn by Norm Sloan to the unbelievable athletic ability of David Thompson to the mouth of Jim Valvano, who spewed one-liners at the speed of hummingbird wings. There have also been dark days during State's 50-year history as a member of the ACC. Now emerging from a decade of neardormancy, N.C. State basketball has a long history of producing stars, comebacks, and even a few villains, all of which of are detailed by Tim Peeler in Legends of N.C. State Basketball.

Legends Of N.C. State Basketball

Sports Pub

North Carolina State's 1983 NCAA championship still ranks as one of the true Cinderella stories in the history of college basketball. Coached by legendary Jim Valvano, the Wolfpack had been a long shot to even make the tournament. As a low seed, they went on a wild six-game win streak that culminated with a last second upset over Houston's team in the national championship game. At the time, Valvano's team was the lowest-seeded team to ever win a national title. This book, told through the eyes and memories of several players and coaches from that team, takes readers back through the magical month of March 1983.

When March Went Mad: A Celebration of NC State's 1982-83 National Championship

Sports Publishing, LLC

The fever that is college basketball on Tobacco Road started from a small outbreak in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Indiana basketball legend Everett Case became the coach at N.C. State University. He restarted the dormant construction of Reynolds Coliseum, and for fifty years, it was one of the most important basketball arenas in the country. Through the years, the Wolfpack has won two NCAA championships and ten Atlantic Coast Conference championships while giving the sport of college basketball some of its brightest color, from the plaid jackets worn by Norm Sloan to the unbelievable athletic ability of David Thompson to the mouth of Jim Valvano, who spewed one-liners at the speed of hummingbird wings. There have also been dark days during State’s sixty-year history as a member of the ACC. N.C. State basketball has a long history of producing stars, comebacks, and even a few villains, all of which of are detailed by Tim Peeler in this reissue of Legends of N.C. State Basketball. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sportsbooks about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Legends of N.C. State Basketball: Dick Dickey, Tommy Burleson, David Thompson, Jim Valvano, and Other Wolfpack Stars

Sports Publishing

Set in a small Southern town during the Reagan presidency, the poems in Tim Peeler's Checking Out form a narrative arc that follows the fortunes of a young motel desk clerk and his fellow employees. The motor lodge, once the eastern boundary of the town, now exists in a swirl of economic development. As a result, much of the action occurs in the ambiguous area where unstated traditions and social change collide. Idealistic and less than a year out of college, the young clerk encounters the best and worst of humanity. Peeler establishes the psychological and physical setting of the story, then introduces the procession of colorful eccentrics who populate these pages. He lays out in detail the quirky nocturnal episodes, often violent and absurd, that eventually cause the clerk to "silently search for an escape." Finally, Peeler describes the haunted nature of the narrator's motel memories as he considers their place in his life 25 years later.

Checking Out

Hub City Pr

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Books by Peeler, Tim