Aye, Jimmy, we hardly knew ye - Now, meet David Green

Folks familiar with the blogosphere here at ThatsRacin.com already are aware that Jimmy Ballard, a.k.a. the mayor of Rantville, has abandoned his post. And many of us will miss him.

Judging by the comments on Jimmy's blog, those applauding his departure are in the minority. You can count me among the undecided if you're polling. I like Jimmy a lot, for several reasons.

First of all, he lives in Texas. San Antonio, in fact. That's my hometown and I remember the Alamo every day. The former mayor speaks his mind, another quality my people have always appreciated. He sometimes reminded me of guys on the college newspaper, trying to slip foul language past the student editor and the faculty adviser, meanwhile forgetting what the story was supposed to be about. But that didn't bother me all that much. In fact, I never - ever - urged Jimmy to tone it down, figuring that was his butt he was showing, not mine, in his blog.

Honestly, I cringed more often at blogs about "Star Wars" sequels and "Family Guy" than I did his word choices. This is a racing site, after all. But I never complained to him. Remember, I'm the guy who wrote a blog early on about my daughter's cat getting run over one morning.

The decision to split was Jimmy's and, while I tried to dissuade him, his mind was made up when we spoke on Wednesday. His stated reasons appeared in his farewell blog. But we'd already taken a green flag on altering and expanding our blog lineup, which he was, until Wednesday, welcome to remain a part of.

In a blog the other day I touted the anticipated arrival of Tom Higgins, a NASCAR historian and former dean of the motorports press corps. He and I haven't gotten together yet on what he wants to call his blog, but "Damned Good" already comes to my mind. I firmly believe Tom will help add to ThatsRacin.com's relevance to many of the people NASCAR seems so intent on leaving behind. Those of us beyond our 20s who really don't care all that much for rap music and who do care - passionately -about the sport's roots and future.

Those of us who might prefer a TV program that deals realistically with the sport's real issues, without the celebrities, sprarklers and spokes-strippers that we're being force-fed.

So we wish Jimmy Ballard the best in his studies and his future and hope we'll see him at the races sometime. Now, let me introduce you to another of the folks we're talking with about contributing to ThatsRacin.com's Inside Line blogs.

He's David Green.

Yeah, that's a name you're familiar with, one he shares with a former NASCAR Busch Grand National champion and the winner of last weekend's Busch race at Pikes Peak International Raceway. While he's not the same one, this David is also a racer, which I think is one of the nicest things you can say about a person. He's also, like the other David Green, from Kentucky and they're both tremendously nice guys.

David has raced Late Models, on dirt and asphalt, and has run a few ARCA events. He's also covered nearly all forms of racing for newspapers, other print publications and web sites and is now making an honest living, as a teacher.

He and I aren't yet sure precisely what role he'll play here, but I like what David has to say and believe you will, too. So check it out.

Now and then, more than just a regional sport

By  David Green

A story posted on ThatsRacin.com today cites Rusty Wallace as a driver who helped fight the stereotype that NASCAR was a regional sport - a Southeastern U.S. regional sport - that was "populated by country boys with thick Southern accents who had names like Cale and Coo Coo."

The truth is that ever since Big Bill France formed this mechanized circus, it has had much greater geographical diversity and widespread popularity than the national media have recognized.

Consider:

- The first race in what is now the Cup Series was won by a guy from Kansas.

- The second champion was from upstate New York.

- The winner of the first Southern 500 was an Indy-car driver (they called them Championship Cars or "Big Cars" back then) from California.

- One of the first big-time team owners was a fellow named Kiekhaefer from Wisconsin.

- NASCAR's first really big-name superstar, arguably, was a guy from the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Ill., named Lorenzen, who had neither a Southern accent nor a distaste for conversations with reporters.

- Of the first 15 winners of the Daytona 500, there was nobody from the Carolinas not named Petty or Yarborough. There were representatives of California, Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania (technically Italy, but he was a naturalized American citizen) and Massachusetts.

All this, before Rusty Wallace was old enough to have a driver's license.

No question, Rusty deserves all the credit in the world for helping grow NASCAR racing to its present stature. But when he broke into NASCAR in 1980, he had much more than hillbillies to contend with. And that would have been the case pretty much at any time through the sport's more than half-century of existence.

In the '50s, there would have been the likes of Hershel McGriff (Oregon), Marvin Panch (California), Ralph Moody (Massachusetts), Paul Goldsmith (Indiana) and others, in addition to the Southern contingent. In the '60s, it would have been Fred Lorenzen, plus Dick Hutcherson and Tiny Lund (Iowa) and Darel Dieringer, who hailed from the home of The Greatest Spectacle in
Racing (Indianapolis). In the '70s, there were Pete Hamilton (Massachusetts), Dick Brooks (California) and Dave Marcis (Wisconsin) -- as well as Canadian Earl Ross, eh? Over the years, there were infrequent appearances by guys named Foyt, Gurney and Andretti.

When Wallace first got to NASCAR in 1980 -- in a car owned by Pennsylvania native Roger Penske, by the way -- "Coo Coo" (Clifton Marlin, Sterling's dad) was all but gone from the scene, but "Cale" (Yarborough) was going strong, as were Southerners Petty and Earnhardt. So, too, were Marcis; Darrell Waltrip, from the border state of Kentucky; and Bobby Allison, a native of Miami (more accurately described as a sixth borough of New York or the northernmost city in Latin America than a part of the Deep South). And there was a cat named Tim Richmond, who won top rookie honors in the Indy 500 the same year Rusty made his Cup debut, from Ohio.

It's true that France, a native of Washington, D.C., formed his organization in a Southeastern U.S. location. It's true that there was considerable influence on the sport's origins from moonshine-hauling drivers, the souped-up cars they drove and the talented mechanics who built them -- and
that just about all those folks were from Georgia, the Carolinas or Virginia.

It's true that NASCAR's first landmark venues -- Daytona, first with its beach-road course and later with the international speedway, and Darlington -- are deep in the heart of Dixie.

It's true that there was a long period in recent history during which most of the Cup Series races were in the Southeastern U.S., with a handful of visits to places like California, Michigan, Delaware and Pennsylvania. However, in the early years races were held all over the country. NASCAR's
push to add new markets nowadays is, historically, a return to some of them rather than a first overture.

It's obvious, when you scan a list of the winners of races through NASCAR's history, that drivers from Southern states have won more than their fair share. A trio of Carolina boys named Petty, Pearson and Yarborough pretty much made that a certainty all by themselves. It's also true that for every Jim Roper, Bill Rexford and Johnny Mantz, there are a dozen or more Lee Pettys, Curtis Turners, Junior Johnsons and Tim Flocks.

So, just as is the case with most every stereotype or cliche, there's more than a grain of truth to the notion that NASCAR was identified with the Southeastern U.S., and is just now shedding that identity. But perpetuating the stereotype is not only historically dishonest (or at least factually
flawed); it also does a great disservice to the Southern drivers who fit the stereotype only in terms of the place of their birth and the manner in which they pronounced their words.

Drivers who "would rather face the consequences of a flat tire in Turn 4 at Darlington than a reporter with a notebook or a camera"? David Pearson and Dale Earnhardt, maybe. But Tim Flock? Richard Petty? Darrell Waltrip? No way.

The South can take great pride in the part it has played in the development of NASCAR racing into the wildly popular form of sport that it is today. Competitors with "thick accents" and "names like Cale and Coo Coo" are most certainly an important part of the mosaic, and Southern race fans deserve great credit for the way they supported it over the years.

They should also know that the great Southern stereotype is more a creation
of the media than it is a complete and accurate truth. And so should everybody else.