In the Blink of an Eye (4 page)

CHAPTER 11
0-FER

F
or a guy who wasn’t winning races, I sure had a lot to smile about. If you graphed the first eleven years of my Cup driving career, from 1985, when I made my first start, to 1996, the line actually sloped up.

That’s kind of strange to say for someone who’d lost as many races as I had. But when I started off on Dick Bahre’s team, neither one of us had much experience in the NASCAR world. We had even less money. And I’d been driving those stupid little four-cylinder cars. In no way were they anything like Cup cars. Less power, less weight, shorter wheel base—everything was different. I’m sure glad I wound up on Richard Petty’s couch when I did, or no telling how many years I’d have wasted.

But with Dick in 1985 and ’86, I was gaining experience in the right kind of cars. In ’87, I had some competitive runs. I started making progress. In ’88, a little more progress. We still didn’t have the funds to build the fastest cars in the garage. But I was patiently learning my craft. With my head down, I kept on making progress.

In 1991, I won two poles in Cup, my first two. Then I earned a spot in the All-Star event by winning the qualifying race for nonwinners. I was definitely the best of them by then. I’m sure I had at least progressed from beginner to mediocre—maybe even better than that.

By then, I was getting so close, I could almost taste my first Cup victory. So close . . . Twice, early in ’91, I had the best car on the track, once in Atlanta, then again a couple of weeks later in Darlington. We led both events. At Darlington, we led the most laps. Late in the race, it looked like I had a sure victory at the track Too Tough to Tame. Well, I had it tamed that day. Unfortunately, my pit crew didn’t. The last stop of the day, the one I needed, was a disaster. What should have taken about fifteen seconds ended up taking forty or so. I sat there helplessly as my team struggled and the win slipped away. I ended up finishing third.

All the way through ’91, we were contending and competing and doing well. I felt like it would just be a matter of time till I would be pulling into Victory Lane as a Cup winner, just like I had done in every other form of racing. But it never happened.

Nineteen ninety-two started off
strong, too. I was running second in the Daytona 500 with just five laps to go when a blown engine took away my chance of winning. I had a couple of engine failures early in that season and our performance trailed off from there.

In ’93, ’94, and ’95, we did well, finishing twelfth in the points two out of three of those seasons. Very competitive? Sure. Also for sure: no wins.

People definitely noticed. “No wins . . . no wins”—that’s all the media wanted to talk about.

“Ten years . . . three hundred races . . . no wins.”

It was something I couldn’t hide from. All you had to do was look at the record. It was right there in black and white. That stupid zero kept getting bigger and bigger. I was doing something right, I suppose. The fans still seemed to like me okay. My sponsors hung around. And I always had owners wanting me to drive their cars. I’d seen drivers come into Cup all hyped up to be the next Richard Petty only to be out of NASCAR and back to their local tracks a year or two later.

If nothing else, I hung in there.

There were a few new drivers who did really well—Jeff Gordon and Bobby Labonte specifically. They started in Cup well after me. Both of them won the championship before I could win a race. This 0-fer-whatever-it-was was becoming quite a burden for me.

I’d never gone 0–3 at anything in my life, let alone 0–300. Go-karts, 1–0. Stock cars, 1–0. Busch Series? I won in my third start. This stupid losing streak was getting ridiculous.

Let me try to break it down for you.

For me the tough phase began in the upper 200s, somewhere around 0–275. I was progressing in my driving, I felt. I had other signs of encouragement. My team, my sponsors—they were all solidly behind me. I was loving what I was doing. But still, 275, 280, 285, 290—that’s a lot of races to start without a victory, even if I did have all those reasons for hope.

I’d slip in an occasional Busch Series win here and there. Still, I’d hear all the talk.

“You think he’ll ever win one?” someone would wonder.

“That’s an awful long losing streak.”

“Has anyone ever lost that many?”

If I were a boxer, I’d have definitely been given the standing-eight count. But I was determined not to let my record get me down. Another driver might have given up. Not me. Despite the 0-fer record, I believed it was just a matter of time. I’d get a win one day.

I’d amassed this long record of futility while driving for the same team, though the name had changed. Dick Bahre Racing was now BAHARI Racing. Two businessmen, Lowrance Harry and Chuck Rider, had bought the majority of Dick Bahre’s team, and they were now calling the shots. BAHARI was a combination of the first two letters of each man’s last name.

But by the middle of 1995, for the first time ever, I began hearing rumors that I was about to get canned. My performance in ’95 was solid, but it looked like the Curse of the 0-fer was about to take me down.

My losing streak was approaching 300 by then. There were some other factors too. The owners of BAHARI Racing supposedly had their eye on a young hotshot driver named Johnny Benson Jr. How young? Not quite two months younger than me. That must have been a hell of a couple of months!

JB was on his way to winning the NASCAR Busch Series championship in 1995. He appeared to be the real deal. Pennzoil was our sponsor, and the man who was running Pennzoil when the company started sponsoring me, Jim Pate, had retired. Jim had become a good friend of mine. But now there was a new management team in charge, and none of them were my friends. They were putting pressure on BAHARI Racing to produce some wins.

Chuck Rider told them: “Johnny Benson Jr. will be a star in NASCAR. Johnny will take BAHARI Racing and Pennzoil to the championship table in New York City.” And Pennzoil bought it.

History shows this wasn’t exactly correct, but I’m sure it sounded good at the time.

Dale and I were talking one day, and I told him what I was hearing. “What do you think I should do?” I asked him.

He didn’t seem too worried for me. “Somebody will want you to drive their car,” he said. “I got an idea. Let me get back with you.”

Which he did after a couple of days.

“Yeah,” he told me, “you’re getting fired. They’re kicking you out at the end of the year. They’re putting Benson in your car.”

Well, I’ll be darned! He knew way more than me about what was going on. “Do you have any idea when they’ll actually tell
me
this?” I did have a contract for the ’96 season, which I planned on honoring.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dale said. “I got you a better ride anyway. Go up there and talk to Eddie and Len.”

The Wood brothers. One of the most famous teams in NASCAR, and Dale’s endorsement got me the ride.

Sound familiar? His endorsement also got me my first date with my wife. And he got me a new Cup opportunity with a legendary winning team.

Before I went to
speak with them, I made a point of brushing up on my Wood Brothers history. Wood Brothers Racing went all the way back to 1950. Glen and Leonard Wood came from Stuart, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. They worked full-time preparing the cars, while three other Wood brothers pitched in on nights and weekends.

In addition to being famous for winning races, Wood Brothers are given credit for inventing the modern pit stop. In the early days of racing, it wasn’t uncommon for a driver to pull into the pit, turn off his engine, get out, and smoke a cigarette while the crew serviced the car. Wood Brothers recognized there were races to be won by reducing the off-track time.

Sounds kind of obvious now, right? That’s how Ricky Bobby got his chance.

Wood Brothers Racing’s Ford carried the #21, and that number became as notorious in NASCAR as Richard Petty’s #43 and Dale’s #3. Some of the greats drove for Wood Brothers—Dan Gurney, Donnie Allison, A.J. Foyt, David Pearson, Neil Bonnett, my buddy Kyle Petty—but the team’s real NASCAR dominance came in the 1970s.

David Pearson signed on to drive the #21 Ford. It was one of the most successful strings of victories in motorsports history. In only seven years, from 1972 to 1979, Wood Brothers entered 143 races, winning a staggering 46 victories and 51 pole positions.

Also in the ’70s, Glen Wood’s sons, Eddie and Len Wood, began to take a more active role on the team. By the time I met with them, Len and Eddie were making all the calls. They were the ones who’d talked with Dale about hiring me.

I first met with Eddie and Len in mid-September. Eddie did all the talking. We agreed to the contractual terms of the deal in about two minutes. It was, “This is what it pays, this is how long we want you to do it, and you pretty much have to do what Citgo, our sponsor, wants you to.”

About all I said was: “Check. Check. Check. Gotcha!”

A couple of weeks later, when it came time to sign my contract we were at the track in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. I found Dale in the garage and asked him if he could come down to the Wood Brothers trailer and witness us signing the contract.

That seemed only right. Dale was the guy who put me and the Wood brothers together. He belonged at the signing party. This signing party was held in the back of a tractor-trailer used to haul cars around. That’s how we used to do it in NASCAR.

Just like that, it was official. In 1996, I would be driving the famous #21 Wood Brothers Ford in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.

Mikey just got another upgrade.

CHAPTER 13
HELPING DAD

W
hen I won the All-Star race in 1996, I said in Victory Lane that I was going to build my parents a house with all the money I’d won.

Mom and Dad still lived back in Owensboro, Kentucky. I wanted them to move to Sherrills Ford, North Carolina, and be neighbors to Buffy and me. We lived out in the country and had plenty of room to build them a place they’d be proud of. Mom and Dad were into it. They wanted to move. We were excited and began working right away on their house.

Before the house was finished and Mom and Dad could move down, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. We were sad, but Dad was ready to fight. He began his treatment in Owensboro and told us to keep building their house in North Carolina. I loved my dad’s attitude. “We’re going to beat this cancer, Pop,” I told him. Buffy and I were researching where we could get the best care for him.

We talked to Rick Hendrick, a NASCAR team owner and a friend of the family who was fighting cancer himself. I asked Rick about the doctors who were treating him. He put me in touch with them, and they suggested we take Dad to the University of Kentucky. The team at UK could make a plan for treating Dad and hopefully cure his lung cancer. Not only were Dad’s doctors some of the best in their field, UK was a short drive from Owensboro. And all the Waltrips were big University of Kentucky Wildcats fans. So in addition to the care Dad would receive, he thought it was cool he was being treated at the university.

We had it all set up. When Mom and Dad moved to North Carolina in late 1996, the team at UK handed Dad off to the same doctors who were successfully treating Rick. They then began treating Dad. Dad’s spirit was strong. His attitude was amazing. And man, was he ever proud of me.

“You got me the best doctors in the world, son,” he would say. “These are the doctors who cured Rick. I know they’re gonna cure me too.”

And it was a good thing Dad had such a positive attitude. The chemo and radiation were hard on him. Dad was in his seventies, and he’d had a rough year. Before the treatment for cancer could begin, Dad had to have heart surgery. He had a leaky aortic valve that needed to be replaced. They’d performed the operation in Owensboro, and it was a success. The replacement valve came from a pig. Dad liked the fact that he had a piece of a pig in his heart. He would always say, “That ol’ pig is pumping away in there. She’s doing her job.”

Once Dad recovered from the heart surgery, we started our trips to the University of Kentucky for his cancer treatments. Every time I showed up to take him for treatment, he would always be standing there waiting for me with a positive attitude, all dressed up and ready to go. He loved me being there for him. He was confident we were going to beat this thing together. We were a team. We were going to win.

After Mom and Dad moved to North Carolina, we wanted Dad to maintain his zest for life. Despite the fight against cancer, this was a special time for me and my dad. A typical day for us would begin with Dad’s treatment. Then we’d have lunch and maybe even play golf if he felt like it. Sometimes, Dad would go to the races with us. I always wanted him to be looking forward to something.

One day at lunch I asked Dad if he wanted to go on vacation. “Tell me where you want to go, and we’ll plan it,” I said.

Dad said he’d always wanted to take Mom to Hawaii. “Can we go there?” he asked.

“Hawaii it is,” I announced.

That was November 1998. If you had a picture of our group in Hawaii, you would definitely have laughed. We brought Macy, our baby girl, who had just celebrated her first birthday. So we had her stroller. Mom was there. She couldn’t get along very well at all because of her stroke. So we had her crutches. Dad was battling cancer. He needed a lot of help. There we were, all of us, laid up on the beach in Hawaii, coconut drinks in our hands, complete with frilly umbrellas. I really appreciated Buffy signing up for that trip with the in-laws. It was a challenge, but oh, so worth it.

Dad loved being able to show Mom Hawaii, and Mom loved being there. I just loved that everybody was feeling so much love.

Who doesn’t love love?

It was so special for me to see those two enjoying life. After Hawaii, we stopped in San Francisco for a couple of days. Dad had been stationed there in World War II, and he wanted to visit the base where he’d lived.

The next summer,
I was always doing something with Dad. One of the things we enjoyed the most was going to the Bristol races in August. The North Carolina mountains sit between Sherrills Ford and Bristol, Tennessee. Dad loved going to the mountains to golf. This was a guys’ trip for us. It is always as hot as Hades in Sherrills Ford in August. But about seventy miles away and a mile up, the mountain air is cool and fresh. Our last trip there was in 1999.

We arrived late on a Tuesday evening. We always stayed with our friend, Knox Hillman, God rest his soul.

Knox had a condo overlooking the golf course where we played. Early Wednesday morning, just as the sun began peeking through my bedroom window, I could already hear Dad in the kitchen making coffee.

It got quiet after a few minutes, so I got up to check on him. What I saw made me really happy. There was Dad, standing on the balcony of the condo with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was already dressed; my dad always liked to look good.

There were times when he wouldn’t exactly match right. I’d even seen him accidentally wear one black shoe and one brown shoe. Not this time. He was looking sharp. If you’d seen him, you’d have thought he just stepped out of a Sears catalogue. He was wearing a pair of light-brown cotton pants and a burgundy plaid polo shirt. He was looking fine and ready to golf.

Knox’s condo had a great view of the course. Looking down from the balcony, you could see the well-manicured fairways and the picturesque mountains that surrounded the area and helped to frame the course.

It was a fabulous morning that Wednesday. The dew was still shimmering on the grass as the sun began shining over the mountaintops. As Dad stood there, leaning slightly over the railing with his coffee, I just watched. I tried to imagine what my daddy was thinking. I wondered if he was saying to himself: “This is why I’m going to beat cancer.” Or maybe it was just, “Thank you, Lord. Every day’s a gift.”

After a few minutes of observing Dad, I walked up from behind, put my arm around his shoulder, and said: “It’s something, isn’t it, Pops? What do you think?”

His response was 100-percent Leroy. “I will bet you, son,” he said, “I will bet you they make us stay on them damn cart paths.”

If you ever wanted to know what Dad was thinking, all you had to do was ask.

I was thinking the reply I would get would be, “It’s beautiful.” Or perhaps, “I just saw a deer walk by.” I certainly didn’t see the cart path comment coming. Because the place was so beautiful, Dad was afraid we’d have to stay on the cart path instead of driving up to wherever he hit his ball. He wasn’t up to walking all over the place.

I quickly reassured him. “We don’t have to stay on those paths, Dad,” I told him. “I’ll get us one of those orange flags.”

Sometimes golf courses give orange flags to golfers who are older or physically challenged. And with an orange flag, you can drive anywhere on the course.

Dad smiled.

“You can get me one of those flags that old people have on their carts?” he asked. “You can do that, son?”

“Yes, Dad,” I told him. “For you, I can. I will get us a flag.”

Dad shook his head in amazement. “You’re the best.”

After a couple of days of golfing it was time to go to Bristol. We had really enjoyed the mountains, but it was time to get back to business, the business of racing. The Bristol Motor Speedway is one of the most challenging tracks in all of NASCAR. It’s a high-banked speed bowl, a half-mile track that we cover in just over fifteen seconds a lap. They call it the “Concrete Cage.” Racing there is like flying jet fighters in a gymnasium.

My point is things happen in a hurry in Bristol. Quite a transition from the tranquil setting of a golf course in the mountains to what amounts to 130-mile-per-hour car wrestling. And I loved them both.

The first race in
Bristol
that weekend was the Friday night Busch Series match, a 250-lapper. I was racing hard that night, and as the laps wound down, I was closing on the leader and thought I was going to win. What a great way to finish up my special trip with Dad! I wanted to win so bad. But I didn’t. And it pissed me off.

When the checkered flag fell with Dad watching from the suites, I ended up second. Oh, so close! Why? Why, God? Why couldn’t you let me win this one for Dad?

For a racer, there is no bigger gap than the one from first to second. The difference between third, fourth, seventh, or eleventh is not nearly as big a deal. But second place is the first loser, and it always will be.

I wanted to win for him so badly. Why couldn’t God see that my dad needed to celebrate that night? I couldn’t imagine he’d have many more chances to do so. In fact, I didn’t even know if he would ever get to see another race in person. My last win was in the All-Star Race back in 1996, more than three years earlier. And on that night in Bristol, I was right there. I could taste it.

When the race was over, I wondered what my dad was thinking. I got beat. Sure, I finished second. My team and my sponsors were proud. But I bet Dad would be disappointed I couldn’t grab that checkered flag for him.

To win would have been the icing on the cake after our special week.

But blaming God for me not winning—that was an emotional reaction. Dumb, too. And selfish.

Heck, it was a car race. And a great car race. Matt Kenseth beat me. He was just faster. It wasn’t like a cruel twist of fate took the win from me. I just got outrun.

Grow up, you butt!

When I saw Dad after the race, I felt even dumber about questioning God. Dad was all smiles. “You almost won, son,” he said excitedly. “That was a great race, and you did an amazing job. You about beat that dude.”

Dad was really happy and that made me feel better—and worse. Happy over Dad’s joy. Guilty over my “Why, God?” attitude.

I hate when I question God’s grace and mercy. I don’t have any answers. Who do I think I am?