Normally I enjoy sharing articles BY Tom Higgins. But here is a good 'un ABOUT him from the Citizen-Times of Asheville
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/sports/2014/08/24/catching-nascar-journalist-tom-higgins/14545207/
Catching up with ... NASCAR journalist Tom Higgins
Keith Jarrett
August 24, 2014
ASHEVILLE He came out of Burnsville a teenage baseball and basketball player, competing in both sports at Brevard College, a proud member of the 1955 Toe River Conference champion basketball team at Burnsville High.
Two years later he first got ink on his hands Tom Higgins initial sportswriting gig came at the Canton Enterprise in 1957, his second at the Asheville Times.
While employed in Asheville, he covered his first auto race at Asheville Weaverville Speedway, an assignment he didn't want.
But then the intoxicating mixture of oil, gas and Kentucky bourbon got into his blood, and into his brain, and the result is a hall of fame career in racing journalism.
When the NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony is held Jan. 30, 2015, in Charlotte, Higgins will receive the Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence and be featured in the hall.
His 33-year career at the Charlotte Observer included 18 years as the NASCAR beat writer, the first journalist to cover every race on the schedule, until his retirement in 1997.
Higgins dream of being a big league baseball player ended at Brevard College, when he couldn't solve the aerodynamics of the curve ball.
BC basketball coach and mentor Chick Martin encouraged Higgins to become a sportswriter, as did legendary Citizen-Times writer and author Bob Terrell.
After covering fast-pitch softball in Canton, Higgins joined the staff in Asheville.
Once I got to Asheville and heard the clacking of those teletype machines and was part of the excitement of putting out a daily newspaper, I was hooked, he said.
In fall 1957, Higgins got his first taste of racing at Asheville Weaverville Speedway and his introduction to NASCARs King. (TMC: My RacersReunion post)
I thought it was the wildest thing I had ever seen, he recalled with a laugh. Those people were crazy.
I really didn't want to cover a race, and I was lost. I ended up on a rickety, three-story, wood-framed tower on the infield side of the start-finish line.
I went to the top and there were two guys up there in slacks and sport shirts, which is what drivers wore back then. They were drivers, and they were passing a bottle of Jim Beam back and forth, drinking right out of the bottle.
They didn't have rides that day, but if somebody had offered them one, they would have gotten into a car.
I thought to myself, Damn! This is a hairy-chested sport. I believe I'm going to like this.
Wandering around the pits, Higgins talked to pole sitter, Lee Petty and his son, Richard.
That's where I met Richard, and turns out he and I are the same age, he's five weeks older. I hit it off with them after I told them I was just getting started in this racing thing, Higgins said.
I asked a lot of dumb questions, and they graciously answered them, and that was my first race.
Quickly the questions got better and more informed, and Higgins career and NASCAR grew together.
He was a good ol' country boy sportswriter covering a good ol country boy sport, and he and the drivers bonded.
They ate and drank together and learned to trust each other, a rare marriage in sports journalism.
When I started, the drivers and I were the same age, and they had the same background as me. Small towns, just regular fellas, and we hit it off, he said.
Tom Higgins helped establish what it means to be a NASCAR beat reporter, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France said.
For more than five decades, his words have told the story of NASCAR. ... He has been much more than a reporter to those in the NASCAR industry, serving as a friend and confidant to competitors, administrators and his fellow journalists.
Charlotte Observer columnist Tom Sorensen covered his first NASCAR race with Higgins and learned the sport from him.
To thousands of readers, Tom was NASCAR, Sorensen wrote. They'd watch the race from the grandstands, or from their living room. But the results weren't official until they read Tom.
At age 77, Higgins memory remains fresh and his stories deep in details. There was the time at Asheville's McCormick Field when Banjo Matthews was almost unbeatable and Ralph Earnhardt (father of Dale, grandfather of .Dale Jr.) punched out a Matthews crew member while still in his car. And the time a riot broke out at Asheville Weaverville Speedway when a race was cut short and a deputy sheriff was thrown into a pond. (TMC: My RacersReunion post)
He still watches the races every week, still writes a weekly fishing report for the Observer and until budget cuts earlier this year continued to write a NASCAR nostalgia column from his home in Mooresville.
But he hasn't attended a race since his retirement, not wanting to deal with the traffic and crowds. And the sadness of losing close friend Neil Bonnett in a wreck at Daytona still weighs heavy.
But the love of racing and the memories remain of a sport that captured his heart in Weaverville more than 50 years ago.
I really, really enjoyed the people, he said. I'm tickled to say I got invited to a lot of (drivers) parties and poker games, and not many people in the press were afforded that opportunity.
They trusted me, and they did throughout my career, and I'm proud of that.
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Schaefer: It's not just for racing anymore.
updated by @tmc-chase: 08/20/18 10:20:47AM
