Checkered Past

Thoughts racing about things to be thankful for ... or not

By Bob Henry

ThatsRacin.com Editor

It’s a formula as old as newspapers, maybe older: On or around Thanksgiving, sports columnists the print world over file their “what I’m thankful for” yarns. “I’m thankful for offensive lines that give the Brett Favres our of lives time to work the magic they do.”

Or “ ... for the Brian Frances who have the vision to ...” and so on.

The same guys are probably already working on their “all I want for Christmas” columns, which will wish in vain “for offensive lines that will allow a Panthers quarterback to survive long enough to actually play eight quarters in a row” or something like that.

We’ve got one of those guys here at The Charlotte Observer, which, of course, is part of the vast ThatsRacin.com complex in downtown Charlotte. We’ve also got a guy who takes the opposite tack and has written a column this week outlining what he’s least thankful for. Same deal, just with the negative spin. (You know how journalists are.)

Another time-honored newspaper tradition is to steal the ideas of others. And it’s a way of doing business that’s reaching new heights in this, the Internet age. Indeed, some sites would likely fold if they couldn’t go that route. Even if their owners like to claim they “broke” the pilfered piece that was originally reported elsewhere weeks or months before.

So I’m going to steal from both of those columnists’ approach and mix ‘em up in this post-Thanksgiving blog. I’d welcome hearing about the things in racing for which you’re the most or least thankful as well.

Beyond family, friends, doctors and nurses, and a great bunch of co-workers and co-bloggers, along with the occasional birdies and putts that actually fall ...

I’m most thankful for getting to occasionally stand in a speedway’s infield during qualifying and hearing the racket that a single car makes echoing off the walls, stands and all the rest. A close second is the sound – complete with its slammin’ Doppler effect at a big track like Talladega – as the full field comes around to take the green, then runs the first lap, the throttles all nailed to the firewalls.

And I’m a little less thankful for the way restrictor plates have muted that great sound.

I’m most thankful – even if restrictor plates are part of the picture – for how much safer racing has become since the 2001 season.

I’m least thankful it took that season’s losses to get to where we are today and that we’re still losing racers and fans at a shameful rate.

I’m most thankful for Andy Hillenburg, who has purchased the track at Rockingham and promised to bring it as far back as any human can in today’s overly corporate racing world.

I’m least thankful for an overly corporate racing world that’s produced mega-owners whose teams have cornered the best sponsors, talent and equipment and made a decent finish the only realistic hope for those whose pockets aren’t as scarily and sometimes even immorally deep.

I’m most thankful for the fact that it’s not worse than it is. Yet. NASCAR racing is still a far cry from CART or Champ Car or whatever they’re going to call it next. Those owners overran anyone and everyone who tried to level that playing field and now have a nice exclusive little club racing thing going for themselves. Even if they’ve got talented drivers and teams, the crowds in the paddock almost outnumber the fans in the stands and watching at home.

I’m least thankful that Formula One racing – whose owners and operators often make the NASCAR crowd look like saints – is pretty much the same mess as Champ Car, only much bigger.

I’m most thankful that the Indianapolis 500 is kind of rebounding from the dark years immediately after the IRL-CART split. Go just about anywhere on the planet and strike up a conversation about racing. Even if they don’t know from Daytona and Darlington – and they probably do – they know what the word Indianapolis means.

I’m least thankful that the IRL-CART split ever happened. (Please see above, “overly corporate” and add a healthy portion of that ingredient commonly called greed.)

I’m most thankful for the latest resurgence in drag racing. If ever there truly was a grassroots way to race, this is it. Always was and still is. Even with the megabuck owners and teams putting on the big show, there’s still plenty of room for Jack, Jackie and Mike and Michelle to climb into their cars and race.

One of the best things, too, about drag racing? If the one you’re watching is kind of boring, don’t worry. It’s probably over by now and there will be another one in just a minute.

I’m least thankful for that loud and costly debate and all the hand-wringing over Bruton Smith’s plans for a drag strip at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and public officials’ costly and embarrassing capitulation.

I’m most thankful that the and costly and embarrassing capitulation is only beginning and that the media feeding frenzy over it is also just getting under way. And not just because ThatsRacin.com will get lots of traffic as the drama plays out. Before this is over, there are going to be many, many ugly revelations about how big business and our governments interact. And I firmly believe that will be enlightening for the taxpayer/citizens who take the time to learn more about it.

I’m least thankful that the aforementioned media frenzy will likely detract a little from Bruton Smith’s plans for the track formerly known as Charlotte Motor Speedway. I agree with friend David Green that the Charlotte track has always been among the brightest stars in the American racing firmament. And I believe Smith will remake and relaunch the venerable speedway in a way that few of us can even imagine at this point.

Some of his plans will be revealed early next week, but I’m betting those plans will evolve right up until the grand reopening and that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, no matter many how many tracks we think we’ve been to and how much we think we know about it.

I’m most thankful for all that Fox, ESPN, ABC, Speed, Motor Racing Network, Performance Racing Network, Sirius, XM and the rest of  'em do to make racing coverage available to so many of us. Just stop and think for a minute sometime, all the way back to when that three-paragraph brief in Monday’s newspaper or that month-old three-minute clip on “Wide World of Sports” was about all you ever to help you keep up with auto racing.

I’m least thankful for fans who breathlessly long for “the good ol’ days,” when they imagine the racing was always better, the men always bigger, braver and more innovative and so on.

I’ll grant them this: The belt buckles were bigger, as was a lot of women’s hair. But sometimes the races – just like today’s – could be super or stink. It just kind of depended. Yeah, there were some great ones and we all cherish those memories, even if they grew out of those three-paragraph briefs mentioned above.

Artist Sam Bass, for one, recalls early visits to Bristol “with 3,500 of my closest friends” and watching the eventual winner cruising around with a several-lap lead for the final 100 circuits.

And just admit it" Today, every now and again - and despite the numerous obstacles - we’re still seeing some pretty darned good racing out there.

I’m most thankful for the charities that are part of what we generally refer to as "the racing family." I sincerely hope that doesn’t require any further explanation.

I’m least thankful that I didn’t contribute more than I did in 2007 to some of them.

But I might have just stumbled onto the start of a New Year’s resolution blog for about a month from now.

Put the remote down and walk away slowly and no one will get hurt

By Bob Henry
ThatsRacin.com Editor

When I landed one of my first real jobs after throwing in the towel on the bands I’d played with way back when, the cheap motels, roadhouses and two-lane highways in Econoline vans, I thought it was going to help me get closer to one of my other loves. And it worked, to a point.

I became a warehouse and delivery guy in my very early 20s for the biggest auto parts company in town. In addition to the steady paychecks, I got to meet and eventually work with a lot of guys who ran at our area’s dirt tracks and drag strips. I’d always been a car guy and while it also meant I was the designated wheelman in the band days, that didn’t really satisfy the car Jones for me.

But I took the job in the late fall, so my getting to know more of the racers got off to kind of a rocky start.

In my first or second week, when I found the invoice for some brake shoes and cylinders that were bound for Buddy Odom’s shop just off Eighth Street, I couldn’t wait. Odom was one of the top guns at the three-eighths-mile clay track out on Highway 19. His modified was pretty innovative for the time and place and, even if he was horribly nearsighted – or maybe because - he never saw any reason to back off before the next guy as they approached a turn at full tilt.

I didn’t run, but walked pretty briskly back to the warehouse, pulled the goods and headed for the half-ton GMC truck I’d been assigned. And I drove – at the legal and posted speed limit, of course – out to Buddy Odom’s Garage.

As soon as Buddy signed for the parts, I introduced myself and started yammering about racing, telling him, among other things, that he was the man. Never mind the expression wouldn’t even be uttered in a golf tournament gallery or anywhere else for another 30 years.

As nearsighted as he was, Buddy Odom was also a helluva deer hunter. He looked at me as squarely as he was capable over the top of his thick old glasses, put a hand on my shoulder and told me this: “There’ll be plenty of time for that next spring. Right now, we’ve gotta go get some deer.”

And it occurs to me that if Brian France and his lieutenants ever met Buddy Odom, the straight-shooting dirt tracker must’ve had far less impact on them than he did on me. Because here it is, less than a week before Thanksgiving and the NASCAR season is only now approaching its end.

Why, I never ...

It would be easy to jump on the bandwagon and say something cute and even semi-nasty about the longest season in pro sports. You know, like the NASCAR season isn’t finally ending, it’s being put out of its misery.

That’s the popular route for a lot of weary NASCAR fans this late season. If you believe some of the posts on ThatsRacin.com’s forums and other boards, along with the rants of many callers on popular racing radio programs, NASCAR is S-O-O-O-O over. Or those folks are S-O-O-O-O over NASCAR.

Funny though, isn’t it, how the same people are back the next week, commenting on the most recent NASCAR race they’ve vowed never – ever - to watch?

I know, too, how fine a line I’m walking here. I regularly read the forum posts vilifying anyone who writes anything that even remotely sounds like any kind of defense of NASCAR, the Chase, the car of tomorrow, TV ratings, race attendance or any related topic.

And that’s fine. Opinions, noses and many other anatomical features are things we all have. And we appreciate the debate and sharing of opinions on our boards.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Yes, NASCAR has changed. A ton.

So, too, have the most other professional sports I follow, the place I work, my wife and daughter, the two best dogs on the planet and a lot of other people, pets and things that matter to me. And I haven’t touched a bass guitar in - literally – years, even if I do still occasionally grab the six-string acoustic from its resting place next to the windowsill in the living room. Which is to say that, yeah, I’ve changed, too. A lot.

Racing wasn’t my first love, but I figured out early on that my heart picked up a beat or two when I heard revving motors and spinning wheels. I found that I got a little more interested when the conversation turned to cars in general and racing in particular. Didn’t matter all that much what kind of racing, either.

I suspect if you’re still reading (thanks again, Mom), you’re that way a little, too.

Has NASCAR disappointed us? From time to time, yes. Do we agree with every decision the company’s leaders have made? That would be a firm no.

Let’s think about that parallel with work again for a minute, or holy matrimony, parenting and/or any of those other things that come under that heading of what we generally call life.

Has NASCAR provided us with some of our favorite, even most cherished memories? Yep. (I still get a huge kick out of hearing some poor guy who’s just won a race proclaim in Victory Lane how that checkered flag was the biggest and best darned thing that ever happened to him. And I hafta be a tad envious of that fly on the wall when he and his wife get back to their half-million-dollar motorhome to work out their understanding and definition of “best ever.”)

Does NASCAR currently put on the best racing show in these United States, maybe even the world? That’s debatable, but the NASCAR show is routinely very close to the top.

And might this NASCAR Nextel Cup season be followed next year by a better one from our varied points of view? I don’t know, but it might be worth watching to see.

So is it time to back away from the edge a little and maybe even start looking forward to January? Preseason testing will start at Daytona very early in that month and the shortest offseason in professional sports will just about be over.

We never know. It might not be perfect, but it might not be all that bad. And it could even range from decent to pretty darned good or all the way to great.

You know, the stuff of memories.