Tommy Palmer calls his book “The Daisy Boys Club” and that isn't just some figurative reference to a close circle of boys growing up in Daisy, Ga.
    An actual club of that name existed when Palmer was coming along in the 1950s.
    He will unveil the book, read a few passages and sign copies on Saturday at 7 p.m. inside the Emma Kelly Theater at the Averitt Center for the Arts in downtown Statesboro. A lot of old friends from Daisy and people he went to high school with in Claxton have told him they’ll be there.
    “It’s going to be like a reunion,” he said.
    Local folks who can't make that evening can catch him the next day in the community room of the Evans County Public Library in Claxton, where he will hold a book signing between 2 and 5 p.m.
     “It’s humorous. It’s nostalgic," Palmer said. "It deals with all the issues of life, you know: baseball, church, death, the whole thing.”
    While the chapters together form a chronological narrative, Palmer said each tells its own little story. One chapter is called “Nobody Told Us He was a Yankee.”
    “It’s about a Yankee from Boston, Massachusetts who married a girl from Daisy and they came back to Daisy. He needed something to do and started a boy’s club," Palmer explained, referring as much to the whole book as to Chapter 19.
    A few other chapter titles include "He Would Have Been President," "Just Like Frank and Jesse James," "The Best Shortstop that Ever Lived," "Red Rover, Red Rover, Send David Right Over," "The Community Fish Fry," and "The Funeral."
    The "Shortstop" chapter heading suggests, and the author promises, that there's a lot about baseball in the book.
    “That’s what we took a lot of pride in  Daisy, and in the Daisy Boys Club one thing Mr. Fitz did was he taught us all to play baseball, and Claxton’s best teams came after the Daisy boys grew up," Palmer said.
    He played football and baseball and ran track while at Claxton High School and graduated in 1962.
    Now a Statesboro resident, Palmer made his career in broadcasting as a sports journalist, advertising representative and producer, all the while doing freelance writing for print media. Most of his broadcasting work has been in radio, but he also produces TV commercials and even on-hold messages for telephone systems.
    Since January 2005 he has operated his own company, PalmerMedia Consulting Inc., and through it Palmer SportsMedia, producing and hosting “The Georgia High School Football Scoreboard,” a live two-hour program each Friday night beginning at 10 p.m. The program airs on more than 60 radio stations across the state and via the Internet, during football season.
    He also produces The Wednesday Night Huddle, and then, again on Fridays, Countdown to Kickoff, live one-hour programs airing at 6 p.m. on more than 25 stations.
    This book, Palmer's first, has been about 20 years in the making, but he hopes to complete several others in the next four or five years.
    The cover was designed by PlantationMedia, which is also creating a web page. The self-published book is being printed by Lewis Printing, also based in Statesboro.