By Matt Crossman
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(June 13, 2011)
The best thing about Tuesday’s NASCAR Hall of Fame announcement is how joyful so many people are going to be. For someone, for five someones, the beauty of that joy is that a lifetime of accomplishment will be validated, exalted, celebrated. Those five someones will, collectively if not individually, have millions of fans, and those fans will feel joy, too.
Close on that joy’s heels will be anger. There will be angry fans, angry former drivers, maybe an angry former crew chief or owner. But the beauty of that anger is that it will fade into hope. For those left on the outside, when the anger washes away, there will be the hope of next year, always the hope of next year. It’s like real life, only announced in downtown Charlotte, carried live on TV and infused heavily with the word “deal.”
I don’t envy the voters. The first class was controversial, the second class more so, and now they have to be sure not to make the same mistakes as they did last time while at the same time not compounding those mistakes with another. Of course, one man’s mistakes are another man’s sound judgments. In other words, they’ll screw it up, it’s only a matter of how badly. What makes all of this fun (said the guy with no accountability in the matter) is each fan gets to decide just how badly that is.
If I had five votes, here are the choices I would make:
Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough. If either one of these guys misses it, the Hall of Fame should simply cease to exist because it will not be a valid institution. One or the other missing last year would have been lame but at least within sight of defensible. The fact they both missed would be funny if it weren’t also sad. Or maybe I’m getting carried away. Both had three championships. Waltrip had 84 wins (tied for third all time with Bobby Allison and Jeff Gordon), Yarborough 83 (sixth all time).
Rick Hendrick. Of the remaining 23 candidates after Waltrip and Yarborough, not one can touch Hendrick’s accomplishments. The teams he owns have won 10 Cup championships. He fielded the dominant team of the 1990s with Jeff Gordon and the dominant team of the 2000s with Jimmie Johnson. With Gordon’s win at Pocono on Sunday, Hendrick Motorsports has 197 wins at the Cup level.
Hendrick teams also have changed the sport. Gordon proved a driver need not come up through the fendered ranks to become a global superstar. He also helped pull NASCAR from the Southeast to Madison Avenue. The Wood Brothers started the pit-stop revolution, and Hendrick teams completed it, bringing in high-caliber athletes from other sports to fill out the over-the-wall teams.
I hear you, people who say, “But he’s still active. Put in the old-timers who built the sport first.” And I suppose that’s a valid point of view … except it’s not. If the NASCAR Hall of Fame doesn’t want to induct active participants, active participants should not be put on the nomination list.
I should also say that defining “active” can be as slick as Darlington Raceway in the summer. Richard Petty is still in some ways active in the team that bears his name, but it’s not like he’s running the joint like Hendrick runs his. And leaving Petty out of the first class would have been preposterous, even if he said founders should have gotten in before he did. (See what I mean about mistakes versus sound judgment? Even the guy who got in wasn’t pleased!)
Dale Inman. Richard Petty became the King because Inman, his crew chief, built fast cars. Inman won eight championships, the most ever, and 193 races, also the most ever. At some point a crew chief has to make the Hall of Fame, and Inman has to be the first one.
Richard Childress. Teams he owns have won 11 NASCAR championships. He won six Cup titles with Dale Earnhardt as his driver. Just like Hendrick, he’s still active. And just like Hendrick, that shouldn’t matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment