Hall of Fame Games

By Kevin Eckert

October 14, 2009 Speedway, Indiana: Home of the Speedway Spark Plugs. What else would American alliteration tag such a team? October is deep into the season of football, still America’s strongest religion. Even speedways as fiercely supported as Williams Grove know better than to continue to compete against the Friday Night Lights cast on Cumberland Valley Eagles, state high school champs in 1992 when they were led by that poster child for bloody fullbacks, Jon David Ritchie.

Skill behind the wheel of a raging race car always inspired me more than anything with a ball or stick. That being said, football has forever been my favorite of the four major U.S games. Baseball, basketball and hockey have never reduced me to a raving lunatic like pro football. I am, after all, from Pennsylvania - first place to ever pay a man to play the game.

On most weekends in the winter my corner of Allentown asphalt, young turks would select a patch of frozen turf on which to wage the game. We’d layer on the thermal, sweaters and jerseys of our favorites (I was Fred Biletnikoff: 25), comb the field for rocks or dog droppings, choose sides and knock the snot out of each other all afternoon. We hoped for snow to cushion the blow. The injured were shamed back into play and those who begged out were roundly ridiculed. It remains a rite of passage in Pennsylvania. I later recognized this same “never too cold to have fun” attitude at those early eastern openers at Reading, Bridgeport and Hagerstown. Some of the same people who brave frozen football stadiums in Penn State and Philadelphia stand also on Beer Hill at The Grove.

The reasons about why football appeals to auto racers and their brethren are vast. First off, eighteen weeks of professional games fall perfectly between what is traditionally the off-season of U.S racing. In some years, the Super Bowl (NFL finale) has gone off mere days and miles from the year’s first Florida sprint car race. Secondly, football is a violent collision sport like auto racing; far less deadly yet far more destructive to body and mind.

That last point was pounded home by a recent profile of John Mackey, drafted out of Syracuse University to revolutionize the “tight end” position as a Baltimore Colt. A decade of meeting linebackers now finds Mackey suffering dementia like Mike Webster, the great Pittsburgh Steeler center who, according to autopsy, accumulated the equivalent of “25,000 car crashes.”

Auto racing has no cautionary tale like Webster or Mackey; no one on a slow degenerative path to mental illness such as a prize fighter. In racing, head injuries are swift and severe. The incomparable Jan Opperman took two blows to the brain (Hoosier Hundred ’76 and Jennerstown ‘81) and remained incoherent for most of his remaining days. Travis Rutz is right now in the same Methodist Hospital as Opperman was 33 years ago. Rutz regains movement a little each day.

The affects of comparatively minor concussions is a study that football was forced to make. Webster’s family was awarded 1.18 million dollars. Most of us can name a racer knocked unconscious who climbed back in just as soon as the car (rather than the brain) was fixed. John Heydenreich and Dennis Moore spring to mind. Even a junior high quarterback has to bluff a team doctor before he gets to put the helmet back on. By contrast, has a car ever been parked simply because its driver has amnesia? I only saw it once in 1996 near the litigation capital of Los Angeles when a mysterious man in a trench coat stepped between Richard Griffin and his third ride of the night, looked deep in his eyes and waved his hands in the air the way a boxing referee stops a fight.

The fast kid from Silver City, New Mexico who grew to be The Gas Man, Griffin has been five years out of the saddle, which qualifies him as candidate for the hall of fame. Another parallel between sprint racing and football is that such selections come at the close of the calendar year. Does The Gas Man get in? I believe that he will, though maybe not immediately. In racing and football, that immediacy is important to people who view anything longer than a First Ballot slam dunk as some backhanded compliment.

I am not one of those people. When a person’s plaque hits the hall, there is no distinction that it came by first, second or third ballot. It simply does not matter. What should matter is that for every knee jerk reaction to someone’s 50th birthday (the other criteria with death), another old guy gets forgotten. I do not feel as strongly for Richard Griffin as I do about Bobbie Adamson, Johnny Anderson, Jimmy Boyd, Gene Brown, Bobby Davis, Frankie Kerr, Charlie Lloyd, Jon Singer and Gary Wright.

From the Pittsburgh suburb of Corapolis, Bobbie Adamson came east to drag central Pennsylvania kicking and screaming into the sprint car era. He and Wilbur Hawthorne won 23 times during that pivotal 1967 campaign capped at Ascot Park when they showed what a wing could do. Just as good without a cage over his head, Bob beat IMCA on the Tampa sand and Allentown cinders. Adamson won the Williams Grove National Open in 1968, and teamed with Al Hamilton to be the biggest winners on the very first All Star circuit of 1970.

Johnny Anderson of Sacramento, California is another pioneer of the late-60s shift from square supermodifieds to round-tail sprint cars. That same sprint car set off a second revolution in Australia, which should merit some extra U.S credit. John won at Calistoga with and without a roll cage, and won on the Phoenix mile asphalt. Summoned to the fledgling World of Outlaws in 1979 by Sacramento neighbor Ken Woodruff, he won at East Bay, Tulsa and Champaign on his first trips. He won the Gold Cup in ‘74 and again in 1980 just five weeks before a massive head injury rendered John half the racer he used to be.

Jimmy Boyd from Hayward, California was Woodruff’s driver before Anderson. They are most famous for winning the first World of Outlaws final in 1978, but Boyd had long been a star. Eleven years earlier, Jim became a Calistoga NARC winner without a roll cage, later conquering San Jose pavement as well. Drifting east in the early-70s, Boyd came home with a Charlie Lloyd-built dagger that was a full second faster than any of supers that trailed him at the Gold Cup of 1973. Moving to Pennsylvania for two seasons, Boyd won on both Groves, New York and New Jersey. Home again, Boyd and Woodruff helped develop sprint racing in Washington, where Jim won three Dirt Cups. They dropped south to Ascot Park and beat CRA. They won in Knoxville and Nebraska. Upon parting with Woodruff, Boyd continued to win for six years, embracing wings at the new Baylands Raceway Park. For extra credit, Jim married Jay Opperman’s widow.

Gene Brown from Phoenix, Arizona won anything Manzanita Speedway had to offer: sprint cars without roll cages, midgets with roll cages, supermodifieds with wings, quarter-mile, half-mile or the dirt mile at the state fairgrounds. “Tiger” won at least one sprint race at Manzanita for eleven solid seasons. For the first Pacific Coast Open at Ascot in 1972, Brown defeated six Hall of Fame names in Gurney, Hogle, Oskie, Thompson, Weld and Wilkerson. Sprint car numbers for Anderson and Brown would loom larger had they not divided time as some of their region’s finest midget racers. The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame now contains Davey Brown, Don Brown and Allan Brown. The time has come to add Gene “Tiger” Brown.

Memphis, Tennessee’s Bobby Davis Jr. was the complete package who “could take a pile of tubing to victory lane” as Bob Weikert once said. When he was 15, little Bobby was garage rat to his dad’s Davis Electric sprint car built by Tommy Sanders and driven by Sammy Swindell, jumping in the rig whenever school allowed. By the time he began, Bob was wise beyond his years. It took less than two full seasons to become the first 18-year old winner of a World of Outlaws race. Before he won another, Davis was off to central Pennsylvania to pound out 25 wins in 75 Weikert Livestock starts in 1983. After one season, Bob began pursuing an outlaw championship that took six years largely because Bob’s career labored under the shadow of Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell and Doug Wolfgang. That three-headed hydra even haunted Bob’s biggest accomplishments like his ’86 Western World (Wolfgang was disqualified), 1989 Kings Royal (Doug and Sammy got wrecked) and only outlaw, which came during something of a strike season. Davis did not dominate but became a Top Five fixture with numbing efficiency, especially satisfying to someone who often served as his own crew chief. Also recognize how Ford dealer Casey Luna required Davis to drag an extra 60 pounds for three years. During an earlier three-year stretch, everyone at the East Bay Winter Nationals left Florida with less money than Bobby Davis Jr.

Frankie Kerr from the Philadelphia suburb of Bensalem, Pennsylvania was another complete package. When he was a kid in quarter midgets, Frank was already building and selling engines to the competition. To the end of his driving career, Kerr remained a rare bird by rebuilding his team’s engines. Frankie won more races with brains than balls by learning to grip some the slickest dirt. Before twice breaking his back, when he was a 22-year old with 454 cubic inches of modified motor, Frankie Kerr let it rip around the rim. Few adapted as quickly from a 2600-pound Gremlin to 1400-pound Buckley. In his tenth time in a sprint car, Kerr became a Selinsgrove winner. It took him a dozen races at Williams Grove to win, closing that rookie 1983 season with a $10,000 win on the Nazareth mile. Upon boarding the Bob Fetter Ford, he moved to Selinsgrove and seemed content to knock off his URC once in a while. Teaming with Stan Shoff changed Kerr’s life. He relocated to Fremont, Ohio to better chase the All Star Circuit of Champions. Acting as crew chief to a car that never fell out, Kerr’s consistency was epic: 501 of 591 All Star races ended with him in the Top Five. To try to match his points seemed pointless as four years ended with Frank as champ. His wingless record was remarkable: 13 wins in 37 A-mains. During the great pavement scare of ’91-92, Kerr took his common sense to asphalt and became the fastest man at Flemington or Kansas City. Can you name another sprint racer who won with the World of Outlaws, All Stars, USAC, CRA, SCRA, NCRA, IRA, URC and AWOL?

Did you know that all 1979-1980 World of Outlaw wins by Lynn Paxton, Smokey Snellbaker, Kramer Williamson, Allen Klinger and Bill Stief occurred in cars from Lloyd Enterprises in Highspire, Pennsylvania? Charlie Lloyd and his son Mike came ashore from hydroplane boat racing to revolutionize The Grove. As a driver, Mike won four of five Selinsgrove shows to end 1973 but after two years, he surrendered the seat. California’s Jim Edwards won six times in three years (worse than Mike) and in the summer of ’77, the Lloyds began a legendary six-year run with Larry Snellbaker that netted 62 checkereds highlighted by the National Open, Tuscarora 50 and Syracuse Super Nationals. Lloyd thrived beneath skinny 4x4 wings, lowering the right sideboard to increase air flow, and shifting it to the left to better drive that corner with the 312 inches of the KARS era. In this department, Charlie went to such extremes that Smokey began carrying the right front wheel down The Grove’s pipeline chutes; a tactic still in vogue.

Such mechanical innovations or contributions to winning automobiles are difficult to quantify. In that respect, sprint car crewmen are like offensive linemen in football because there are few statistics to measure them. Only the winning team can know who steers the ship and who is along for the ride. A good crew chief is a good coach. And like a coach, sometimes their best work happens with the least talent. When a winning driver chooses a chief mechanic and continues to win, the mechanic will compile impressive numbers but less respect than if they had won less with someone of lesser ability. Adding to this fog of dispensing accolades is the uncertainty of exactly when a certain mechanic played on a particular team.

All of that aside, Jon Singer of Tipton, Missouri belongs in the hall. During my Davis research, I realized how a persuasive case can be made for Tom Sanders but for now, Singer is the subject. The man walked with Jesus for Christ’s sake and absolutely helped Jan Opperman become a mythic figure. Most agree that the 1976 Tony Hulman Classic victory over USAC by the outlaw Opperman was a watershed moment. Well, without Singer staying up all night to make chicken salad from a chicken shit 302, Jan would have been wiping oil off his moccasins. Jan and Jon first joined forces for a successful summer of ’71 in central Pennsylvania that culminated at the Knoxville Nationals. Singer won Nationals again in 1976 with Eddie Leavitt and Fred Aden. He helped Roger Rager into the 1980 Indianapolis 500, Shane Carson into the Knoxville Nationals, and Ron Shuman’s orange Ofixco cars at times. When Wolfgang assembled his dream team in 1989, Doug enlisted Singer to build engines that won 43 of 80 including another Knoxville Nationals. In recent local business, Jon Singer assembled the 360 that propelled Josh Fisher to the Winged Outlaw Warrior championship of 2009.

The stigma of 360 racing in an era when 410s still rule the turnstiles will prove interesting as that climate continues to change. Despite considerable 410 accomplishments early in his career, Gary Wright of Hooks, Texas was expected to be a 360 test balloon. Racing the Masters Classic this year signifies Gary as a 50-year old candidate for 2010 induction. He should be as automatic as anyone with 318 wins in a division that was not even Gary’s first choice. In 1993, he took a seat on the NCRA 410 throne and stayed for seven years. After switching to 360s like any good businessman along the Texas/Arkansas line, Wright added four consecutive crowns against ASCS. Also in ’93, he defeated the World of Outlaws, All Star Circuit of Champions and Interstate Racing Association. Told that the recent induction of URC 360 king Glenn Fitzcharles might help his case, Wright said, “Who?”

Just for kicks, I pieced together my own football dream team from those not yet in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. On offense, my guards are Russ Grimm and Steve Wisniewski, tackles are Tony Boselli and Jimbo Covert, and Jay Hilgenberg centers the ball to Ken Stabler, who hands to Roger Craig or Herschel Walker, fires deep to Cliff Branch or short to Allentown’s Andre Reed or tight end Russ Francis. To stop such a juggernaut, I’d send Charles Haley and Ed "Too Tall" Jones around the edges while Joe Klecko plugged the run. In my 3-4, Pat Swilling, Cornelius Bennett, Karl Mecklenburg and Sam Mills would play linebacker, safeties are Steve Atwater and Nolan Cromwell, and Albert Lewis and Lester Hayes act as shutdown corners. If I ever need a punter, Ray Guy’s the guy.

The punter has proven to be the best player on the last seven versions of the Oakland Raiders. And when Shane Lechler hits the mammoth video screen of the new Cowboy Stadium, it might be the highlight of the Raider season.

On my typically atypical path through 100-person towns that require three houses of worship, I was struck by a way to lessen America’s money trouble. California’s pending legalization and taxation of marijuana is of course, an idea too good to suppress any longer. But what if we were to tax churches? Half would go out of the business of selling salvation, and then those nice abandoned buildings could become affordable housing.

Radical ideas always percolate at 4979 West 13th Street, Speedway, IN, 46224 or (317) 607.7841.

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