Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, March 2, 2015, 9:58 a.m.
People don’t pay attention. Sometimes I think about how they’ve changed since I was a kid. No, I think about it all the time. To borrow outrageously from the late John Hartford, I keep it “on the back roads, by the rivers of my memory … gentle on my mind.”
Most of the time, when a writer is accused of taking someone’s comments out of context, the accuser wouldn’t know context from constipation. The above was a genuine example of taking something out of context.
What brought this stream to consciousness was reading social-media calls for shortening Atlanta Motor Speedway’s Sprint Cup race to 400 miles.
From my youth: “Mama’s little baby loves shortening, shortening, Mama’s little baby loves shortening bread.”
Also wildly out of context.
My first thought upon hearing this: Land o’ Goshen, NASCAR already took away one race from Atlanta. Now they want to shorten the one they got?
Maybe I just came from a bargain-conscious generation. When I was kid, my father often took me and my brother to Atlanta to see the Braves on Sundays because, quite often, on Sundays, there were doubleheaders. It was sweltering. The Braves were lousy. We drove down early so we could eat at The Varsity, and then we went to Atlanta Stadium early so that we could watch batting practice. Then we sat through two big-league ballgames, and it didn’t matter if the Braves lost one game, 7-1, and the other, 6-3, we were grateful that the “the potential tying run” reached the on-deck circle in the ninth inning of the nightcap.
Ah, yes, I succumb to a “back in my day” rant. Sorry. I’m old. It wasn’t always so. Live with it. And get off my lawn.
Darlington races weren’t exactly compact, either. We sat on the back straight. If the tickets cost fifteen bucks, which is my memory, my dad cussed about it. The top racers were, according to what we heard, well off. A few of them earned $150,000 in a single year. Now the champion might earn $15 million.
In a year, Kevin Harvick earns a hundred times what Richard Petty earned in a year a little more than forty years ago. That’s a long time, but, surely, inflation hasn’t been 10,000 percent.
Back in 1970, 367 laps around Darlington Raceway comprised one long day’s journey into night. The winner of the race, Buddy Baker, looked like he’d been picking cotton in a field of axle grease. Today all the drivers have fitness coaches, dietitians, and strength conditioners, and they get out of their cars looking as if they might squeeze in nine holes before dark, so, Freddie, have the Gulfstream ready. By the time scribes get their copy shipped, the race winner is out on the lake.
Later, when my career intersected with the Age of Affluent Athletes, I remember Jeff Gordon pausing during a media conference, and saying, “I keep hearing you guys saying you hate night races. Don’t you enjoy having a Sunday off?”
The thoughts being hurled at Gordon’s direction caused a visible ruffle in the time-space continuum, brain waves screaming, We don’t have a private jet! We gotta file stories! We’ll be driving all day