Category Archives: Sports

Indy Racing Arrives

April 01, 2010

In the South, any automobile-related competitive sports other than stock car racing are foreign concepts. Alabama is home to Talladega Superspeedway, the largest, fastest oval racetrack in the world. Open-cockpit, open-wheel Indianapolis 500-style “Indy” racing is a sport usually associated with the upper crust, wine-and-cheese crowd that worships drivers with names most Alabamians can’t pronounce.




(click for larger version)

Thanks to local tycoon George Barber, however, racing sophistication is finally coming to the state. Stock car fans can get a view of the faster, technologically superior Indy cars in action at the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park the weekend of April 9 through 11. The Barber track has been praised as one of the most challenging—and aesthetically appealing—racetracks in the world. Manicured shrubbery and surreal metal sculptures of giant insects are scattered throughout the pristine acreage that Barber has boasted is “the Augusta of racetracks.” During pre-season test sessions preparing for the Barber race, however, Indy car drivers complained that there are few areas on the track for passing slower cars, which can make for a dull afternoon. The drivers all agree, though, that the park is one gorgeous place.

Indycar star and pin-up girl Danica Patrick will be in the lineup, and Taylor Hicks will sing the national anthem the day of the race. Single-day tickets range from $15 to $50. Basic weekend passes are $70. Visit www.barbermotorsports.com for more information. &

Dribbling Around the World

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Dribbling Around the World

The Harlem Globetrotters bring their basketball showmanship to Samford University.

By Ed Reynolds

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March 04, 2010

After almost nine decades, the Harlem Globetrotters continue to mesmerize audiences with their fancy dribbling, surreal shooting skills, and rodeo clown antics—all performed to the melodic strains of a whistled “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Their win/loss record is untouchable. Victorious in 98.4% of their games, the Globetrotters have more than 22,000 wins against 345 losses, the most recent defeat coming in March of 2006, when they lost 87–83 to a team of college all-stars. Their most important victory, however, changed the face of basketball.




	“Flight Time” Lang soars for a dunk.

In 1948, the Globetrotters defeated the world champion Minneapolis Lakers in the Globetrotters’ hometown of Chicago. That’s where the all-black Harlem Globetrotters were organized and coached by a white, London-born Polish Jew named Abe Saperstein, a brilliant promoter who took over the team in 1928, eventually establishing them as the most famous athletes in the world. It was 1968 before the team finally played a game in Harlem. While Saperstein was viewed by some as breaking down racial barriers, others saw him as a P.T. Barnum type staging a minstrel show to entertain white audiences.

Originally “Saperstein’s New York Globetrotters,” the name was changed to “Harlem” because the Manhatttan neighborhood was the mecca of black culture during the first half of the 20th century. Initially, there were only five Globetrotters, forcing Saperstein to wear a uniform under his overcoat when coaching in case the team needed a substitute player. In 1934, most of his players quit after the owner stopped splitting game receipts among the team (often as much as $40 a player) and instead paid salaries that amounted to $7.50 a game. Originally a serious basketball team that performed their entertainment routine only when leading by large margins, the Globetrotters’ style evolved into their now-legendary showboating after Saperstein formed a new team.

The victory over the Minneapolis Lakers proved that a black team could compete with a white team at the highest level of professional basketball. The landmark win, however, ended the Globetrotters’ monopoly on signing the top black athletes available, as black players began to flock to the higher paying NBA. Nate “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first Globetrotter lured to the big leagues when he signed with the New York Knicks in 1950.

An international tour in 1952 captivated the world, transforming players such as Goose Tatum and Marques Haynes into superstars. (A favorite trick had Tatum hiking the ball through his legs, football-style, to Haynes, who then kicked it into the goal from half court.) The world tour featured every venue imaginable. A game in Italy was played in an empty swimming pool where basketball goals were set up in the pool’s deep end. Concrete tennis courts were the norm in Thailand. In Argentina, Eva Perón tossed the ball up for the opening tip-off, and the team sold out eight consecutive games at Wembley Stadium, a huge soccer venue in London. Rain was never a deterrent, as the Globetrotters donned rainhats and carried umbrellas during a thunderstorm in France. Though admired around the world, on their return to the United States the team was banned from the campus of Louisiana State University in 1953 when the school’s president said their presence would threaten “our way of life.”

In 1948, the Globetrotters signed their only one-armed player, Boid Buie, who averaged 18 points a game. Wilt Chamberlain joined the team in 1958 for one year because the NBA refused to sign players who left college early. Among the seven-foot-tall Chamberlain’s biggest fans was Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was in the audience when the Globetrotters played in Moscow at Lenin Central Stadium. The team signed its first female player in 1985. The first Asian player joined in 2002 and without a doubt must be the oddest named Globetrotter ever: Sharavjamts “Shark” Tserenjanhor, from Mongolia.

“We have all ethnic backgrounds playing for us,” says current Globetrotter Herb “Moo Moo” Evans during a recent phone call. “We currently have two Puerto Rican guys playing for us, we’ve had eight ladies play for us, we’ve had Caucasians, we’ve had Chinese. Predominantly, we’ve had African American guys but we don’t discriminate against anybody . . . as long as you can make the fans happy, and can go out there and play basketball.” &

The Harlem Globetrotters will play the Washington Generals on Thursday, March 11 at the Pete Hanna Center at Samford University. Ticket prices range from $23 to $65. For more information visit www.tinyurl.com/ylbeh67 or call 726-4343.

Hell On Wheels

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Hell On Wheels

A few words with racing legend Donnie Allison.

By Ed Reynolds

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April 16, 2009

In the early 1960s, three race car drivers relocated from Miami to Hueytown, Alabama, where they established themselves as the famous Alabama Gang. Red Farmer, Bobby Allison, and brother Donnie Allison routinely dominated the small racetracks across the Southeast. The trio eventually started winning on larger superspeedways and soon became bona fide racing stars. Despite not winning nearly as many races as his more famous older brother, Donnie Allison remains one of the greatest drivers ever, due to his versatility driving both Indy 500 open-wheel cars (no fenders, no roll cage, and no roof) and stock cars for NASCAR. Allison still brags that out of all the one-two finishes he and Bobby collected in the same race during their careers, he beat his older brother 80 percent of the time.

Behind the wheel, Donnie Allison was a force to be reckoned with. His friendship with driving legend A.J. Foyt led to Foyt providing him with a car for the 1970 Indianapolis 500, where Allison beat his boss to pick up a fourth-place finish his rookie year. The previous week, he had won the 600-mile NASCAR race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the closest any driver has coming to winning both races. However, he’s probably best remembered for an end-of-race fight on the track with driver Cale Yarborough after the two wrecked on the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500. It was the first NASCAR race to be televised nationally from start to finish. For many viewers across the country, fistfights and stock car racing were forever linked after that telecast.

Black & White: Do you still believe A.J. Foyt is the best race car driver ever?




Donnie Allison his blue and gold Chevrolet sedan in the early 60′s. (click for larger version)

Donnie Allison: Yep. Everything he’s ever got in, he’s won in. He’s mechanically inclined enough, he knows what to do when he needs something done. There’s a lot of good race car drivers: Bobby [Allison], Richard [Petty], Dale Earnhardt, Mario Andretti. But if you take everything that A.J.’s run and put all those drivers in those cars, the [pecking order] would probably be A.J., then Bobby, then Mario.

Do you agree that bringing the Indy cars down South to race on smaller tracks in the late 1990s was a boost that open-wheel racing had been needing for a while?

Well, to an extent. The problem with the Indy cars down South is that all the racetracks are banked [in the turns]. The banked racetracks are not suited for Indy cars, because those things are rocketships. So for them to run how they need to run, they need to be run with a stiff suspension. And if you don’t run that stiff suspension like that, it bottoms out and it grinds the bottom [of the car] off. I feel like we have good racing when a driver has to back off the throttle. When a driver can run wide-open, the racing is not as good. Look at Daytona and Talladega.

Some of the older drivers say that racing is not what it was in the old days. Do you agree?

Well, to a certain extent. Racing is still just like it always was. It’s a group of drivers out there doing their best to win. The difference is the technology now is so much greater. They have so much more to their advantage to getting their cars better tuned in. I feel like in the old days, more of the drivers were in tune to their cars than they are today. I think the ego part of driving in 1978 and ’80 was not nearly what it is in 2009. We had some that were ego driven. But if we didn’t run good, we wanted to find out what was wrong with our car, or what was wrong with us, why we couldn’t do it.

Was there more camaraderie among the drivers in the old days?

Oh, yes. There were groups. There were certain drivers that were friends and certain drivers that weren’t. I guess that’s probably still maintained. I don’t know, I don’t go into the driver compounds anymore. We didn’t have those. We didn’t have the big buses and the areas roped off. We went out in the parking lots and a few racetracks had designated places for us to park our cars. When we would get together, it might be that night for dinner or for a drink afterward. We didn’t do like they do now. They might have a cordial conversation with one another right after the race. And we didn’t have that.

Did you know Janet Guthrie [the first woman to earn a spot in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, both in 1977]?

I knew her very well. I helped her. [Car owner] Ralph Moody asked me if I’d mind helping her. Guthrie never used the excuse of being a female. She never said, “They’re doing that to me because I’m a female.” But her car owner did, and it caused a little bit of rift, I think. It takes a gene [to compete successfully in racing] that I don’t think the women got. And I’m not a macho [type]. You watch [current Indy car sensation] Danica Patrick. She does an extremely good job until it gets to a lot of pressure there. And what I’ve watched and noticed about her is, when the pressure really gets there, for some reason or another, it appears that she gets out of there [abandons the confrontation]. Where, with men, they have a tendency to say, “Well, to hell with you, buddy. We’re gonna hang around here and see what happens.” That’s just my own personal thing. You take care of your equipment and you do the best you can to finish. When you need to be somewhere, you’re supposed to be there. It’s like that thing I’ve always said all my life, way back in the modified car days in Birmingham at the fairgrounds and at Dixie [Speedway] and all them places. I paid the same amount for my pit pass that [other drivers] did. So I own just as much of that place as they do.

I read a recent interview with Red Farmer where he said that he had an advantage because he was accustomed to running on flat tracks.

Well, I definitely believe that. That’s what I was saying about the cars handling better, about the chassis being better. If you could’ve watched Red Farmer run in south Florida where we were, it was amazing to watch him. He could run a car sideways faster than most people could straight.

Who had the worse temper in the old days, you or Bobby?

Bobby had the worse temper but I feel like he could control his more than I would mine. Me, when I lost my temper, they knew I lost it.

Do you miss driving?

Oh, yeah. Especially when I watch some of the things that go on now. I just don’t believe the guys get after it as hard as we used to. Look at the ball players. The football players don’t play as hard as they used to play, because they’re gonna get paid, regardless. The old guys used to get in there with broken fingers and broken noses, teeth knocked out, and what have you. Just look at the pictures of the old guys. It’s just like with us, it was a different era. I get a little bit aggravated sometimes when I hear some of the excuses the drivers today make. Because, to me, I’ve been there. I know. My motto is: “Don’t give me an excuse, give me a reason.” I can’t fix an excuse, but I can fix a reason. &

Donnie Allison will be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talladega Superspeedway on April 23.

A Day at the Races

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A Day at the Races

The Birmingham International Raceway resumes its racing schedule on April 5.

By Ed Reynolds

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March 20, 2008

For a racetrack that launched several of the greatest names in stock car racing history, the Birmingham International Raceway (BIR) is sadly neglected by locals, many of whom don’t know the history behind the half-mile racing facility that surrounds a high school football field in Five Points West. Only the fabled Milwaukee Mile has been in existence longer on active U.S. racing circuits. BIR is older than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.Originally constructed as a one-mile dirt horsetrack, the Fairgrounds racing oval was hosting motorcycle races by 1906. The 10,000-seat grandstand was built in 1925, the same year that legendary automobile pioneers the Chevrolet brothers unveiled a prototype dirt-track car at BIR to 30,000 patrons. The track was reduced to half a mile in 1932. In those days, most races were held in conjunction with the state fair. It wasn’t until the 1940s, when J.P. Rotton began promoting featured races, that weekly racing became popular. A.J. Foyt brought Indianapolis 500-style open-wheel cars to BIR when they toured short tracks across the country in the 1950s. Stars Fireball Roberts and Richard Petty raced there when it was a regular stop on NASCAR’s former 60-race schedule. (NASCAR now runs 36 races a year.)




(click for larger version)

In the early 1960s, BIR underwent a facelift. The speedway was paved, proper lighting was installed, and Sunday afternoon races were moved to Friday night. Red Farmer, Bobby Allison, and Donnie Allison were winning at BIR in those days, establishing the “Alabama Gang” legend after the trio relocated to Hueytown from Miami. (Track promoters reportedly made Farmer start races from the last position because he had become so dominant at the track.) Hueytown was considered the Mecca of stock car racing through the early 1990s until the deaths of late-addition Alabama Gang members Neil Bonnett and Davey Allison.

The most often repeated BIR legend concerns the night that Nero Steptoe, losing a wheel just laps before the end of a race that he was leading, won on three wheels. Trackside fights, some involving wrenches, were common until the mid-1980s. One crew chief summed up the prevailing attitude of the time when he said “we can swap paint on the track or swap skin in the pits.” Birmingham bar owner T.C. Cannon, who raced at BIR in the 1960s and 1970s said, “We’d race a while, then we’d fight a while.”

If you have a taste for loud, colorful fun, BIR is still a great place to take a date on a Friday night. Weekend racing resumes April 5 with the Steel City 100. Call 781-2471 or go to www.bir-raceway.com. &

Spinning My Wheels

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Spinning My Wheels

Ford’s public-relations department reduces a Mustang test drive to a pony ride.

By Ed Reynolds

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September 21, 2006

The invitation arrived the week before September 1: The Shelby GT500 will be in Birmingham next week . . . as part of a 16-city tour. We’d love to get you behind the wheel of the vehicle while we’re in town. Right now, we’re in the process of securing some track time for members of the media to drive the vehicle at Barber Motorsports Park. If you can’t make it out there, we’d be happy to bring the car to you.

I couldn’t wait. The chance to drive a 2007 GT500, promoted as “the boldest, most powerful factory-built Ford Mustang ever,” was a dream come true. As I would soon learn, my first mistake was trusting Ford’s public relations spiel.

Arriving 20 minutes before my scheduled 10 a.m. drive, my Ford contact called to say that his crew would be late returning to the track from an appearance at a local television station. It would be 10:45 before I would get to hop in the car. To kill time, I wandered among some 1,000 vintage and modern Mustangs that were on hand for the 30th Anniversary Mustang Stampede, an event sponsored by a Mustang enthusiast club. Proud owners wiped fingerprint smudges off their cars while boasting of the engines under their respective hoods. Some spoke of automotive design legend Carroll Shelby, who began designing cars for Ford with the Cobra in 1962 and Mustangs in 1965. Shelby, a Texas chicken farmer who won the 1959 Le Mans (in overalls and cowboy boots, no less), recently reunited with Ford to update the GT500 and other Shelby Mustangs of the 1960s.




Auto designer Carroll Shelby in 1963. (click for larger version)

As my time neared, my Ford contact approached me apologetically with bad news: my drive in the GT500 would now be delayed until 11:40. Apparently the track time Ford had promised was being shared with Mustang club members taking their cars out for a spin. Skepticism prompted me to ask, “I will get to drive, right?” My contact muttered back, “I think so.” So at 11:35, when a Ford test driver handed me a helmet as he directed me to the passenger seat, I knew I’d been had. My test drive was now a test ride. But since I would be in a GT500 on an honest-to-God racetrack, at race speeds (the Shelby GT500 has a top speed of 150 mph), I anticipated a thrill.

I was wrong. The “test driver” was actually a Ford spokesman who had been feverishly promoting the Mustang GT all morning as though he were a sweaty, desperate car salesman. He continued the sales pitch as we buckled up. After being forced to return to the driver-certification tent twice because the now-irritated Ford rep had not secured the proper wristbands (color-coded for driver or rider), we finally zoomed onto the track. The rep apologized profusely through his helmet for the endless delays, though I could barely hear him. Telling me I would feel the G-force pushing on my sternum, he whipped us through a couple of turns before spotting a caution flag for a spunout 1966 Mustang. Slowing down, the test driver apologized for not being able to get up to speed as I wondered where the G-forces were hiding. We ran one more lap, but the track remained under caution; I felt silly wearing a racing helmet while traveling 60 mph, and was so bored I had my arm resting outside the car window. The Ford rep reached over and angrily snatched it back inside.

“Roaring” back into the pit area, the GT500 came to an abrupt halt and the Ford rep revved the engine as if to prove a point. He apologized again for the lame ride. I said that was OK and walked toward the parking lot, feeling like a sucker. My grandfather would have laughed. He always hated Fords. He used to laugh that children getting pony rides at the state fair got a bigger thrill than those poor souls who drove Fords. My family has owned nothing but GM and Chrysler vehicles for as long as I can remember. I never would have guessed that my biggest thrill that morning would be hitting 110 mph in my seven-year-old Dodge Stratus while driving back to Birmingham—without wearing a helmet. &

The King to Hold Court at the Alabama Theatre

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The King to Hold Court at the Alabama Theatre

By Ed Reynolds

September 22, 2005

Richard Petty, the King of stock-car racing, will be at the Alabama Theatre Thursday night, September 29, to reflect upon his amazing racing career. Petty is NASCAR’s winningest driver, with 200 wins, almost twice as many as second-highest winner David Pearson. His trademark sunglasses, cowboy hat, and baby-blue number 43 race car with the STP logo were the essence of NASCAR racing throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.




Richard Petty. (click for larger version)

Petty was an anachronism. He continued to wear cowboy boots when racing while other drivers wore fireproof racing shoes. He led a driver boycott at the inaugural race at Talladega in 1969 amid complaints that tires would not hold together at the track’s high speeds. The race instead was run with a field of no-names. After retirement, Petty continued to display his rebel streak. In 1996, after leaving Charlotte Motor Speedway, the King became frustrated with a slow driver on Interstate 85 and bumped the offending vehicle from behind to get the driver out of his way. Petty, at the time a candidate for secretary of state in North Carolina, was charged with reckless driving and hit and run.

The Fine Art of Maneuvering

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The-Fine-Art-of-Maneuvering

July 14, 2005

he Porsche 250, the mid-season stop in the Grand American Road Racing series, returns to the Barber Motorsports Park July 29 through 31. The race features different classifications of sports cars—futuristic Daytona Prototypes and GT sports cars such as Porsches and Corvettes—competing at the same time over the Barber road course’s 2.3 miles of 16 twisting turns. This year’s race takes place during an off weekend for NASCAR, and rumor has it that a few NASCAR stars may join some of the multi-driver teams for a few laps.




Daytona Prototypes battle for position at the Barber track.

The Barber Motorsports Park boasts one of the most challenging (and lushly gorgeous) road circuits in America. Landing an event as prestigious as a Grand American series race has put Birmingham on the map as a destination point for sports-car enthusiasts—a culture that appreciates the fine art of maneuvering an automobile at breathtaking speeds through a maze of turns, alternately braking before flooring the accelerator. Fans brag that it’s much more of a sweet science than NASCAR’s flat-out but often-boring round–and round predictability. It’s kind of like comparing boxing to wrestling.

The Daytona Prototypes are quite a sight. Resembling a variation on Hollywood’s designs of the Batmobile, the sleek cars are like nothing the average stock car fan has seen. Despite their high-tech appearance, the Prototypes are not above banging fenders as they spin one another off the track, which ought to give local NASCAR fans a thrill. For more information, visit www.barbermotorsports.com or call 1-800-240-2300.

Cheap Thrills, and not a Mint Julep in Sight

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2005-05-19 Features

Cheap Thrills, and not a Mint Julep in Sight

While it’s not Churchill Downs (and it’s more PBR than mint juleps) on Derby Day the ponies still run at the Birmingham Race Course.

By Ed Reynolds

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May 19, 2005

“Churchill Downs,” I replied to the shabbily dressed gentleman at the automated betting machine next to mine at the Birmingham Race Course when he asked at which track the Kentucky Derby was being run. Attendance was up at the dog track May 7 for the simulcast of the 131st Kentucky Derby. Nevertheless, the greyhound aficionados are easy to spot; they look as though they divide their time between hanging out at the dog track and the Greyhound Bus Station.

When the track was built two decades ago, the targeted demographic for the $80 million racing venue, originally dubbed The Birmingham Turf Club, was not the lower class. White tablecloth dining, valet parking, and luxury suites were designed to lure the country club set to the Turf Club. There was a genuine sense of excitement, tinged with a touch of snobbery, that Birmingham finally had something Atlanta didn’t. There were bold predictions that Georgians would flock weekly to Birmingham for the golden opportunity to bet on horses. Instead, the rich quickly grew bored, smaller betting pools diminished the quality of the horses, and eventually the dogs moved in. Weeds now thrive where the horses once ran at the Birmingham Race Course. A four-tier grandstand remains largely abandoned. Atlanta residents find few reasons, if any, to visit Birmingham. Instead, Alabamians frequently trek to Georgia for the thrill of purchasing lottery tickets—when they’re not heading to Mississippi casinos.

I’m not much of a gambler. I’ve never had a bookie. (I have had friends place bets with their bookies on the few football games I’ve made wagers.) I’ve played poker maybe a dozen times in my 50 years. And I’ve only been to one cockfight (it was an investigative reporting assignment), where the rooster I bet on blinded his opponent before breaking his wing, only to have the dying bird get a second wind and kill my bird after a 45-minute struggle. I lost $100.




Although the action on the field is the same (above), the view of the track from a vantage point at Churchill Downs on Derby Day (below) is vastly different from the view at the Birmingham Race Course. (click for larger version)

For the past five years, a friend and I have upheld the tradition of driving to the Birmingham Race Course to bet on the Kentucky Derby. We have to wait until he takes his girlfriend to work at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoons, so it’s often close to 4:30 by the time we are on our way to the track. Kentucky Derby post-time is 5:04, which means that betting closes at 5:03. So, from the moment we climb into my automobile, the whole enterprise of getting to the track in time to bet becomes a thrilling gamble: the disturbingly low gas tank has to wait until after the race to be filled, my car darts in and out of traffic at perilous speeds, and the long lines at wagering windows move slower as the start of the Derby approaches, prompting cursing from those forced to wait on the slow betters. My buddy and I formulate our betting strategies on the drive to the track as he reads the picks from that morning’s New York Times to me. Two years ago, he bet $5 on a number 18 longshot. The betting teller inadvertently inverted the numbers, giving my buddy a ticket with $18 on the number 5 horse, which won. My pal picked up a cool $350.

It’s often said that the Kentucky Derby is the greatest two minutes in sports. Even the greyhound aficionados go nuts, their mouths agape as they cheer their chosen horses to the front of the 20-horse pack. Two-thirds of the patrons chain smoke. Budweiser replaces Mint Juleps as the cocktail of choice. Through the haze of smoke, I glance from the television screen to the four betting receipts I clutch in my hand. My picks included an exacta pairing of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s Bellamy Road (the race favorite) and a 50 to 1 longshot named Going Wild. (I liked the name, he was a longshot, and he was trained by renowned Derby legend D. Wayne Lukas.)

My other exacta bet was also a five dollar wager, this time on a horse named Greater Good and another called Greeley’s Galaxy. I chose them because I liked the alliteration of the exacta combination. [An exacta bet means that the horses must finish first and second in the order that you picked them.] Another $10 was placed on Going Wild to win, because at 50 to 1, I’d grab $500. Finally, I bet my last two dollars on Giacomo, simply because he was the horse picked by the New York Times as the least likely to win. Another $5 was stashed in the car for the gasoline to get back home. (I refuse to go to an ATM at a dog track.) At 50 to 1 odds, Giacomo’s victory was the second greatest upset in the Derby’s 131-year history. As I cashed in my winning $102 ticket, the teller asked what made me pick a longshot like Giacomo. I smiled and said, “God bless the New York Times. They were wrong again.” &

All-American Cheating Game

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All-American Cheating Game

By Ed Reynolds

“It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught” has been the unofficial motto of drivers and mechanics on the NASCAR circuit for more than 50 years. A related phrase, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t racing,” hearkens to the origin of a sport sired by drivers who developed their skills hauling moonshine (and eluding law enforcement) through the backroads of the Appalachian Mountains at 100-plus miles per hour. Cheating in a race car is as All-American as major leaguers hitting home runs with corked bats. Year after year fines are imposed, but cheaters simply say that others are infinitely more guilty of flaunting the rules. After paying slap-on-the-wrist fines, drivers whine all the way to the bank while plotting their next devious move.

At one time stock car racing may have been the sport of rednecks, but it was a bunch of innovative, scientific rednecks who skillfully souped up automobile engines allowing them to achieve the break-neck speeds for which NASCAR is revered. “Being creative is my job. If I’m going to get fined and penalized for being creative, then that’s just part of it,” said driver Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus, just after his first major penalty three years ago. The following year, Knaus was busted for rigging a refrigerant near the fuel line (cooled fuel provides greater combustion— and therefore more speed—than heated fuel). In 1986, NASCAR inspectors found a metal box containing copper coils and dry ice in Sterling Marlin’s car; the device was chilling and shaking the car’s gasoline to create a high-octane martini.

This year, NASCAR suspended Knaus for two races when it was discovered after the March 13 race in Las Vegas that the winning car Jimmie Johnson drove was lower than NASCAR’s minimum height requirement. The suspension was later lifted after the car’s owner, Rick Hendrick, complained that the increased height was a result of mechanical issues during the race, yet not an intentional effort to break the law. However, Hendrick’s questionable tactics may extend beyond the racetrack. In 1997, he was found guilty of mail fraud, after which he was pardoned by Bill Clinton during the president’s forgiveness spree in 2000. This after Hendrick’s pal Hugh McColl, CEO of Bank America, donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation before writing a letter to the president on Hendrick’s behalf. Though the two-race suspension of crew chief Knaus was dropped, the $35,000 fine and loss of points for driver Johnson remain.




Fabled for his years running moonshine, Junior Johnson spent a year in prison in 1956 after he was caught hauling wood to his father’s corn liquor still. President Reagan pardoned him in 1985. (click for larger version)

In 1975, when Richard Petty was in desperate need of a caution flag (in order to lure the other drivers into a pit stop, thus allowing Petty to catch back up to the field), racer Buddy Arrington suddenly stopped his car on the high side of the track. The car was out of the way, so NASCAR kept the green flag out. Arrington then drove his car to a busier section of the racetrack and stopped. The caution flag promptly came out. Petty got his lap back and eventually won the race. Earlier that week, Petty had sold a car transporter (a complete portable mechanic shop that hauls the car from race to race) to Arrington, who was an independent driver operating on a shoestring budget. Speculation was that it was one heck of a sweetheart deal, and somebody still owed someone something.

Petty is reported to have once said that teams must learn to “cheat neat,” although there was nothing neat about Petty’s brother Maurice installing an oversized engine in the blue number 43 at Charlotte in 1983. At the time, the $35,000 fine was the highest ever levied. Petty, NASCAR’s poster boy, was embarrassed and fumed that he was only the driver; his brother Maurice was responsible for the engines.

Though some car owners say that taking away wins following rules violations is necessary to end cheating, NASCAR reportedly feels that this would only confuse and infuriate fans to learn that the winner on Sunday is not the declared victor on Monday. According to Vice President Jim Hunter, NASCAR remains committed to “the integrity of the sport.” The last time NASCAR took a victory away for rules violations was when it stripped Fireball Roberts of his Daytona win in 1955. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spun out deliberately at a 2004 NASCAR race in Bristol to put the race under caution because he was about to lose a lap. He got busted when he bragged over the two-way radio to his crew that he did it on purpose. NASCAR was eavesdropping and fined him $10,000. Earnhardt later admitted that boasting on the radio was rather stupid. “What I did wasn’t necessarily the best plan. My mom even admitted that,” he said after the race.

During practice for the 1982 Daytona 500, the rear bumper on Bobby Allison’s Buick Regal had been inadvertently functioning as a parachute that trapped air, slowing the Buick considerably. Nothing could be done about the bumper because it was a “stock” piece of equipment, just like those on Regals purchased from showroom floors. Early in the race, Allison got tapped from behind and the rear bumper came off cleanly. Allison was then able to increase his speed and won the race. Afterwards, as rivals cried foul, he admitted that the bumper had been attached with a flimsy wire welder rather than with the usual heavy-duty welding machine.

Gary Nelson, currently the chief cop for NASCAR’s policing of cheating, was often praised for his skillful skirting of the rules when he served as Darrell Waltrip’s crew chief. Nelson used to flaunt the minimum weight requirement by rigging Waltrip’s car to unload 80 pounds of shotgun pellets onto the track as the pace laps were being run before the race. “If you don’t cheat, you look like an idiot. If you do it and you don’t get caught, you look like a hero. If you do it and get caught, you look like a dope,” was Waltrip’s philosophy.

The legendary Junior Johnson (immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s 1960s Esquire piece “The Last American Hero”) attached 100-pound bands of lead inside each wheel. On the first pit stop, he’d replace the wheels with conventional ones and suddenly be 400 pounds lighter. NASCAR soon learned to weigh cars after the race as well as before.

The reason NASCAR has such a thick rulebook is due primarily to the greatest racing mechanic ever, the late Smokey Yunick. Yunick, in turn, gave stock car racing a lot of rules to write. The mechanic claimed that he never really cheated, because anything not specifically in the rulebook was legitimate in his eyes. NASCAR rules stipulated that a gas tank hold no more than 22 gallons, but said nothing about the size of the fuel line. So Yunick installed a gas line that was two inches in diameter (everyone else ran a half-inch diameter line) and was also much longer than those of competitors. The line held an extra five gallons of gas. NASCAR limited the size of fuel lines the next year and began watching Yunick like a hawk.




Richard Petty called his 200th (and final) win on July 4, 1984, at Daytona Speedway his most memorable because President Ronald Reagan was in attendance. In 1996, when Petty was running for North Carolina secretary of state, he was charged with off-track shenanigans in a hit-and-run incident after he bumped another driver (whom Petty decided was driving too slow) from behind several times before passing him on a Carolina two-lane highway. All charges were dropped. (click for larger version)

At the 1967 Daytona 500, Yunick’s Chevy was actually a slightly smaller version of opposing Chevelles, making the car narrower and lower to the ground so it could slice through the air faster. The next year NASCAR mandated body templates so that stock cars remained identical in size to the production models. “As far as cheating goes, they’ll never stop it,” said Yunick. “There will always be some guy that’ll think of something that’s a little smarter than the average cat, but the reason there ain’t any more of it on a big scale is that the only way it can be done successfully is if only one person knows about it.”

In the greatest cheating story ever told (which Yunick always denied), NASCAR confiscated the fuel tank from Yunick’s black and gold number 13 Chevelle one year at Daytona. As he sat in the inspection area, inspectors chided him for nine rules violations. With supposedly no gas in the car, Yunick suddenly cranked it up and drove off, hollering over his shoulder, “Make that ten!” &

Aaron’s Dream weekend will be held at Talladega Superspeedway April 30 through May 1, featuring the Aaron’s 499 Nextel Cup Series race on Sunday. For more information, call 877-462-3342 or visit www.talladegasuperspeedway.com.

Get Your Kicks — World Cup soccer at Legion Field

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2005-03-24 Diversions

Get Your Kicks

World Cup soccer at Legion Field.

By Ed Reynolds

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March 24, 2005On Wednesday, March 30 the most popular sports tournament in the world will make Birmingham’s Legion Field the “Soccer Capitol of the South” for one evening. The United States Men’s National soccer team will host Guatemala in a second round 2006 World Cup qualifying match that promises to pack thousands into the stands. Once revered as “The Football Capitol of the South,” Legion Field’s success at hosting past soccer matches hasn’t been too shabby either; the U.S. Olympic men’s team played two games there in 1996, drawing a crowd of 46,000 for the second match. The Men’s National team attracted 22,000 in 2000 and 24,000 in 2002 for non-World Cup events.




	Landon Donovan, a midfielder on the U.S. Men’s soccer team, will show off his deft footwork at the World Cup Qualifying game against Guatemala on March 30.

The upcoming bout with Guatemala will be tough and not simply because of the opponent; two days earlier the U.S. will be in Mexico to face the Mexican National team. Both the Mexico and Guatemala matches will be telecast live on ESPN2, with noon and 7 p.m. starting times, respectively. Sentimental fans of the stadium should note that this will likely be the final event held at Legion Field before the condemned upper deck comes tumbling down (by design). City officials have reassured all concerned that the upper deck is safe as long as it remains unoccupied. But then again, Legion Field has never been invaded by a bunch of rowdy World Cup soccer hooligans.