In Our Never-Ending Effort to Save NASCAR, We Present:
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PLAN B – (or maybe C or D or even G) – Since nobody seems
interested in doing anything the real experts – Us – have suggested to
save NASCAR, let’s look at some “baby steps” that might help; steps that don’t
require the blessing of the powers-that-be.
Things
like:
We need
more drivers with nicknames. I know
that Fireball Roberts got his nickname (substitute for Glen) while playing
baseball as a youth, but it still was a great name for a race driver. He wasn’t
alone, either. In the first Southern 500, Fireball was joined by Red Byron,
Cotton Owens, Shorty York, Pee Wee Martin, Slick Smith, Bub King and Buck
Baker. Pap White failed to qualify, and I’m not sure whether Tex Keene or Hub
McBride used a nickname or the real thing, but I know it was great to have a
driver whose real name was Jesse James Taylor, too.
This is a great photo. That’s Fireball Roberts
(22) on the outside pole (beside Marvin Panch) and eventual winner Buck Baker
starting third in 1957 at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway. Great racing, great
cars, great nicknames.
Let’s
face it, how many Coles, Austins and Ryans do we need? (I have nothing against any of them, but I kind of wish one would start going by “Ace.”)
Nicknames
make everything more colorful, and they might even keep the conversation going
during a boring race… not that we ever have any of those.
We need
drivers who race under assumed names.
I’m not quite old enough that I know of former Confederate officers
racing under fake names, but I know that, back in the day, we had Perk Brown, a
high quality modified driver, who ran 28 Grand National/Cup races over the
years and whose real name was Jack Thomasson.
Here’s a day when Perk Brown probably wished he
had a completely fake identity, not just an assumed name.
Brown
used to show up at Southside Speedway on occasion with his modified. Across the
pits would be the late model of Joe Buck, who should have picked an assumed
name that didn’t sound so obviously fake.
In
the mid-1960s, NASCAR also had “Johnny Wynn from Detroit,” whose real name was
Jack Lawrence. He popped up from time to time after his sporadic racing career
as a critic of NASCAR’s lack of a pension plan for drivers. See
an article with more about him here.
I
also recall singer Marty Robbins occasionally competing as Martin Robinson, but
I think that was more of a joke than an effort to hide his racing from Mom or his
Better Half.
I
could be wrong, but I think the last Cup driver to race under an assumed name
was Joe Fields, whose real name was Joe Lisfeld (and
he WAS trying to keep Mom from
finding out), who made his last big-time start in 1986, wrecking on the first
lap at Dover. A couple of years earlier, he’d had his career-best finish on the
Monster Mile, finishing 14th (a ton of laps back of the winner).
Joe Fields at speed (from the FieldsRacing.com
website – take a look)
Fields
had earlier been a regular late model racer at Southside Speedway in Richmond,
where he was modestly successful, especially for somebody who had absolutely no
racing experience before stepping into a late model stock car and who probably
was one of the lowest-buck teams on the circuit when he made his handful of Cup
starts. (Rob Kauffman no doubt would have disapproved.)
In
2007, the Richmond Times-Dispatch did a “catching up with” story on Fields, which
I was able to access here.
Eleven
years later, I hope he’s still doing well, because we’re the same age.
We need
the tracks to lighten up and take part.
Going back to Humpy’s school-bus jumps wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I’m
thinking more of Nutsy Fagan.
Unless
you’re old and from New England, this one requires a little explanation. First,
“nutsy fagan” is a slang term that loosely translates
to “crazy,” like: “That weekend in college when we drove up to The City on a
Tuesday night and made it back for class the next day was nutsy fagan.”
Where
that seems to lead is to Rene Charland, the immortal modified
driver from Agawam, Mass., who was NASCAR’s National Sportsman Champion
(more-or-less the ancestor of the Xfinity Series but an entirely different type
of racing then) but who chafed at NASCAR’s policy of penalizing drivers for
racing at non-NASCAR tracks. As a result, when Charland
raced outside the NASCAR world, he did so as Nutsy Fagan.
Rene Charland was
known as “The Champ” in NASCAR modified and sportsman racing and occasionally
as Nutsy Fagan on non-NASCAR tracks.
Years
later, when Martinsville was running its great Dogwood 500 and Cardinal 500
late model and modified doubleheaders, it would run tiny photos of the expected
entrant drivers in the program, and one was always a guy with a bandana
covering his face. His name was Nutsy Fagan. It was a cool “in” joke and – if
you think about it – a little dig at NASCAR.
If
only we could be a little irreverent like that today.
We need
bounties. Yeah, I know, even Kevin Harvick isn’t
dominating Cup racing enough to put a bounty on his head, but wouldn’t it be
cool if somebody did?
Hey, back
in those days, $100 was real money.
This
is another one of those “anything to be different” ideas, which might succeed
in fighting the “same old, same old” feeling about Monster/Cup racing today,
with the same drivers every week. If we can’t have Curtis Turner’s speed bump
on the backstretch, then let’s see if we can make things more exciting this
way.
One
caveat: There are plenty of “old days” stories of drivers plotting with rivals
to allow someone to win a bounty and then split the booty. With sports betting
heading toward us so fast that Art Arfons and Craig
Breedlove are running a distant second and third, we might want to be careful
about such arrangements.
I
went to a short track a couple of years ago where the announcer had come up
with nicknames for every driver. That was overkill, but just a little of each
of these ideas in the competition/entertainment mix, and maybe we could sell an
extra seat or two. Maybe?
Frank’s
Loose Lug Nuts
In
the “misery-loves-company” department, we note the recent announcement that the
Washington Redskins no longer have a waiting list for season tickets and in
fact have come up with some incentives to bring new ticket buyers into the
fold.
It
wasn’t that long ago that a Washington Post sportswriter, who had signed up for
the waiting list in college and forgotten about it in the decade or so that
followed, received a letter informing her that her name had come up, and she
had three weeks to act. If she didn’t, her name would go to the end of the list
and “would not come up again in your lifetime.” The ‘Skins bragged of a list of
anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000 desperately waiting. No more.
Like NASCAR tracks, FedEx Field has had some
seats removed, but either a lot of people went to the bathroom at the same
time, or this Redskins game was a little short of a full house.
It’s
a good thing NASCAR got a former ‘Skins coach as a car owner and not the
current team owner. Talk about a reverse Midas touch! If you ever see NASCAR
and Daniel Snyder mentioned again in the same sentence, find another favorite
sport. Quickly.
One last
note: The rains held up in South Central
Pennsylvania last weekend, and I finally made it out to Lincoln Speedway. Saw
some good sprint car racing but more flips than I can remember in a single
night. I’m thinking I remember seven or eight cars going over in at least four
or five incidents, including this
one in the first 358/360 sprint heat race. It kind of gave us fair warning
of what kind of night it was going to be. Everybody walked away.