What Did He Say?
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I bid you welcome gentle readers, and a cordial “Hey
there” to our assigned reader of all things NASCAR on this rather soggy day.
Your scribe is going to be very honest with you today and admit this column
isn’t exactly new. I can remember offering the quotes within for a second time
when still at Insider Racing News. Ron Felix didn’t much care for reruns, but
the piece was wearing a new dress and shoes. He asked me if we’d run it before.
My answer was, “The preface is new and the closing is new. The quotes, by their
very nature, remain the same.” It ran again.
The following passages are some truly quotable quotes
from throughout the years. Some are funny; some are serious; some border on the
ridiculous and a couple have been appropriately edited in order that your
children might read them. I hope y’all have as good a time reading these as I
did unearthing them. Please excuse the insertion of my comments in parenthses, but some are hard to resist.
The first two are from a long-ago meeting of “Winged
Warriors”:
"I
don't think bigger spoilers are the answer...what we need is a rear wing like
you saw on the Dodges in the late 60's."
Ricky Rudd, commenting on the
early '80s NASCAR cars' handling problems
"Forget
that, we're not going back to the Batmobiles!"
NASCAR Top Cop Bill Gazaway, answering Ricky Rudd's
comment
(Um…didn't we go through the wing thing once again on
the “Car of Tomorrow?” Those that choose not to learn
from history are doomed to repeat it.
Batmobiles? When I hear the term I get an instant visual
of a 1959 Chevy.)
Here we have a couple from gentlemen who were lucky to
be able to say anything, let alone something witty:
"When
I saw the wall coming through the car, I knew I was in trouble."
Mike Harmon, after walking away from a gruesome crash
during a Busch Grand National practice session at Bristol
"When
I started out on asphalt and wound up on dirt, I knew I was in trouble."
Jimmy Horton, after exiting Talladega the hard way
(over the wall and onto a dirt lane outside and well below the track) in 1993
(Well…at least they both
recognize trouble when they see it!)
The boys in the booth all claim to be “Trained
Broadcast Professionals,” but they have their moments, just like the rest of
us:
"Richard
Childress recently went polar-bear hunting up in the Northwest Territory near
FOX commentator Larry McReynolds
(Larry, please consult your
compass)
"I’ve
always said your legacy is what you leave behind you."
Darrell Waltrip, enlightening Fox TV viewers
(Then what would define what you
leave in front of you?)
"Lowe’s
Motor Speedway is one of those tracks where the sun usually sets in the
west."
MRN radio commentator Barney Hall
(I wonder what the exception
would be. When there’s a full moon?)
Drivers of course, are always articulate, sometimes to
a fault. Here’s a few from the men behind the wheels:
"The
track is so fast, it’s not made for racing. It’s made for speed."
Ryan Newman, on Texas Motor Speedway
(The scary part is, I almost
understand that one.)
"At
this point, I think if I saw someone on the side of the road selling
horseshoes, I would stop and buy one."
Bobby Labonte, in the midst of a tough season
(Been there, felt that way)
"We’ve
got heavy hearts in the backs of our minds."
Kurt Busch, expressing his feelings on then owner Jack
Roush in the aftermath of Roush’s injuries in a plane crash
(Well, I think we know what he
meant to say… I think.)
"I
thought maybe he needed a psychologist, first off for owning a race team and
secondly for hiring me."
Bill Elliott on Ray Evernham
(Now THAT is a lesson in
humility!)
"They’re
going to have to come in here and bulldoze the place."
Rusty Wallace, complaining about New Hampshire Motor
Speedway
(Yet after all these years, it’s
still the same! (Your writer dislikes that track on several levels)
"Don't
come here and grumble about going too fast. Get out of the racecar if you've
got feathers on your legs or butt. Put a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles
so the ants won't climb up there and eat your candy a**."
Dale Earnhardt on slowing down races (Comment made
regarding New Hampshire Motor Speedway ~ popular place it seems… Most folks
will swear he said that about Talladega. If he did, he repeated himself. NHMS,
fall race of 2000… the one where they ran the one-mile track with restrictor
plates following the deaths of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin.
(He always had a way with words.
Lord I still miss him!)
“God
created bumpers and… Bumpers were made for bumping!”
Dale Earnhardt
"I
taught you everything you know but I didn't teach you everything I know"
(I've seen this one credited to
Dale Earnhardt, but I remember Bobby Allison saying it years before that and it
probably wasn’t new then.)
"I
keep trying to get Junior to come back to the track and help me. I asked him at
Bristol, 'Junior, just come over and stand in the pits with a headset on the
wall like you used to.' And he said, 'Boy, you ain't running good enough for me
to help you.'"
Darrell Waltrip, when he was an owner/driver…referring
to Junior Johnson
(Junior always knew how to get
the most meaning from the fewest words!)
“Money
buys speed. How fast do you want to go?”
(I’ve seen this attributed to
Smokey Yunick, but it originated with Banjo Matthews and was the slogan for
“Banjo’s Performancenter,” the name of his garage.)
This next bunch is all from the same man; someone I
could have listened to for days without ever getting tired of listening. Here
are just a few from the “Gentle Giant,” Buddy Baker:
"Ernie
Irvan could go bear hunting with a switch. He ain't never afraid."
Discussing Rick Hendrick and Felix Sabates - "Well I don't know which one has more
money but I'll tell you what. Either one could burn a wet mule with hundred
dollar bills."
(Recent divorce proceedings prove he was right about
Felix, I'd guess)
On a newly re-paved
(No big deal today. Repaves seem to be the order of
the day, and I haven't seen a rattlesnake anywhere but Phoenix… and it was
real)
On being asked to do a TV piece on conserving fuel - "I told them they better get somebody
else; that I didn't know anything about saving gas."
"Man,
I've hit everything but the lottery."
On the Gibson Guitar Buddy himself won at Nashville - "I was like a pig with a
wristwatch"
From Hickory Speedway "Short track racing is by all means a contact sport"
(If he were here, I’d just hug
him!)
Then, of course, there are always the words of wisdom
that emanate from the hierarchy of NASCAR itself:
"Certainly
it's not a playoff. No matter what we do, it will not be a playoff format. A
playoff implies a lot of things, notably best 2-out-of-3, single elimination.
We're not talking about something like that. We're talking about something that
still has a big element of consistency."
Brian France, when we moved from “Tweaking the point
system” to the “Chase.”
(Uh-huh)
And finally:
"It
is what it is."
Mike Helton
(But… doesn’t it all depend upon
what the meaning of “is” is?)
Finally, I'm going to add one of my very own, which at
the time had little to do with racing. Is anyone reading this that was ever
into CB or Amateur Band (HAM) radio? "Back in the day"… the day in
this case being the 1960s and 70s, everyone was into radio of some sort. It was
perhaps the forerunner of the cell phone… and it was fun. There was a form of
greeting and becoming acquainted with other operators known as a QSL card. It
started with the Amateur Band, but was borrowed by the CB Band. I was both. KPQ7664 (CB) and WN2ISL (Amateur)
(73's and 88's were numerical greetings in radio
lingo, loosely denoting "greetings" and "salutations.")
I had some beautiful glossy black QSLs made up with
gold embossed lettering, which simply said, "73's From the Lilley
Pad." I do recall passing out a lot of them at race tracks a bit later in
time. Anyone ever see one?
Time
now for our Classic Country Closeout and today we’re going Blue Grass to the
max, with Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain boys! Please enjoy…
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling.
It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay 