Baking Up Another Honor

   During Buddy Baker's prime in the NASCAR big-time, the "Gentle Giant" of stock car racing drove like the wind and cracked one-liners like a vaudeville comic.
  After 36 years at the wheel in a career that started in 1959, Buddy retired in 1994.
  "There come's a point when you've simply got to say, 'Hey, it's been fun,'" Baker, then 52, said at the time.  "You don't make comebacks in racing at my age.  So I'm retiring as a driver.
  "I don't want to be like a major league pitcher who once hurled no-hitters, but now just pitches."
  In joining longtime friends and rivals Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Bobby Allison on the sideline, Buddy finished with impressive statistics.  NASCAR lists him with 699 starts, 19 victories, 43 runnerup finishes, 58 thirds, 52 fourths and 40 fifth place showings.  He finished sixth through 10th 109 times and posted $3,635,022 in winnings when purses were only a fraction of what they are nowadays on the Sprint Cup Series.
   Buddy fretted that his record might not be impressive enough to gain him election to motorsports halls of fame.
   Not to worry.
  Baker made it a sweep into all those major halls for which he is eligible when the prestigious Motorsports Hall Of Fame Of America inducted him Wednesday night in Detroit.

   Inducted along with Baker were Michael Andretti, John Force, Richie Ginther, Paul Goldsmith, Wayne Rainey and Betty Skelton.
   "I'm thankful and flattered and humble, of course," said Buddy, who grew up in Charlotte, now lives at Lake Norman in the N.C. Piedmont and serves as an advisor/consultant at Penske/South Racing.
   "I know that 19 victories might not seem like a whole lot, but I'm proud of them because of where most of them came, and I think that hall of fame voters took this into consideration."
   Buddy won four times each at Charlotte (Lowe's Motor Speedway) and Talladega.  Two each at Daytona, Darlington and Atlanta.  One each at Michigan, Texas World Speedway and Ontario, the big California track that no longer exists.
   "Not many drivers can say they've won at NASCAR's Big Four tracks during my era--Charlotte, Darlington, Daytona and Talladega," continued Baker.  "I feel proud being among those who can."
   Baker, looking back fondly, conceded that he wondered for years if he'd ever succeed in stock car racing.  The son of the late two-time NASCAR champion and hall-of-famer Buck Baker, he didn't win until his ninth season.  After more than 200 starts, he finally scored at Charlotte in the fall 500-miler of 1967 in a Ray Fox-fielded Dodge.
   "I was patient because I knew how much I had to learn," said Baker.
   "The first race I ever drove was at Columbia Speedway in South Carolina in one of my Daddy's cars.  As the race went on I was fuming.  I said to myself, 'This thing won't run.  I need more horsepower.'
   "Well, the car my father was driving broke and he came and got in mine.  Danged if he didn't almost win the race.  That showed me that just wanting to win wasn't enough.  You had to acquire knowledge.  I learned that night that once races began, you might say it's no longer the arrow that's the main thing, it's the Indian."
   Buddy rates his most memorable season as that of 1980, when he won the Daytona 500 in an Oldsmobile engineered by Waddell Wilson for a team owned by the late Harry Ranier.  The black and gray car was so fast it blended in with the asphalt and was nicknamed "The Gray Ghost."  Baker averaged 177.602 mph in taking the 500, still a record for the great race after all these years.
   "I'm thankful to all my old crew guys and team owners," said Baker.  "But especially to Waddell and Harry for that 1980 season.  "We had 10 top 10s in just 19 races.  Why, we even won at Martinsville, the tough little flat track in Virginia.  Me winning at Martinsville was about as unlikely as Barry Sanders playing Arena Football.
   "My most memorable race?  The first victory at Charlotte, ranks high.  And the Daytona 500!  I'd tried to win there for 19 years before it happened.  I also especially like to remember the Winston 500 of 1980 at Talladega.  After the last pit stops I was 19 seconds behind Dale Earnhardt.  But I ran him down and passed him with two laps to go to win.
   "That was only Dale's second full season, so I'm lucky to have caught him when he was relatively a Cub Scout who didn't know much about aerodynamics and drafting."
   Baker's great charge to overtake Earnhardt prompted fellow driver Ron Bouchard to say in praise of Buddy's drafting prowess, "Baker could get air off a paper bag."
   He rode that air right into Detroit on Wednesday night, joining the likes of Bobby Allison, Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Benny Parsons in the hall that's located at Novi, Mich.