To condense history a bit, let’s get down to basics.

First, there was Neanderthal man, then there were stick-n-ball sports, then there was drag racing. Now maybe some will argue that I’ve left out some important ‘tweeners — such as religion, wars, and hula hoops — but I think critics will agree at least that I’ve got the chronology pretty close, if you’ll allow that cavemen cart races don’t count because the wheels were square and their axles weren’t properly lubricated.

Anyway, before during and after I became a drag racer, I was — and am, though not as enthusiastically involved as I once was — a stick-n-ball fan. There were times in the past when I’d watch reruns of (fill in the name of your favorite sport) reruns if it was on a sports channel. And I grew up with the Washington Senators baseball team (RIP) and the Washington Redskins, so I know all about the thrill-and-agony thing. And I still watch a lot of non-nitro-involved contests, but I’m having an increasingly hard time not comparing them to drag racing.

What focused my train of thought on the subject happened about a week ago, as I was watching a college hoops contest, for which Nancy Lieberman-Cline, the former Old Dominion All-American and U. S. Olympic star, was the color commentator. After a few minutes, I closed my eyes and asked myself, "Where have I heard a voice like that before? …" It dawned on me a minute or so later: Shelly Anderson! It was striking, hearing the similarities in tone and style while knowing that Lieberman honed her trademark quick pass skills on the hardwood courts of Long Island, New York, while Anderson, as much a California girl as you could ask for, learned her quick pass skills on concrete garage floors and asphalt drag strips at her brother’s and father’s side in Southern California. But give a listen sometime; maybe it’s just me, but I was fascinated by the apparent similarity.

And both women are extremely knowledgeable of the areas they report on and are still active in their respective sports: Leiberman-Cline is the current coach of the Detroit Shock of the WNBA, while Anderson is actively seeking a full-time sponsor for the coming drag season so she can return to the cockpit. Thus, in this instance I was struck by both the similarities of and differences between the two announcers from entirely different disciplines and how well each handles her own area, regardless of whether her field of expertise is a "major" or "minor" sport. Personally, I enjoy them both.

In fact, I see media people in general doing a pretty good job of reporting and commmenting on what is presented to them, but when we move to the field of play itself, there are some areas in which stick-n-ballers don’t fare so well.

One of the things I really agonize about while watching sports such as baseball and football is the inconsistency between what we are shown on screen (sometimes to the point of nauseating repetition) and what the ‘ball officials rule.

Catch any of the late season doings in baseball this year? Like the World Series, with cameras everywhere you could possibly imagine — and then some — the most telling of which was the overhead unit at homeplate. How many times did I hear an umpire invoke in deepest stentorian egocentricity, "Stee-rike!"" then was shown through the eyes of the down-looking lens a ball that missed the strike zone by a good six inches? That hurts, no matter who you’re backing; the results of such pontifical rulings in effect change reality! And cheat guys who are trying to do the hardest thing in all sports: hit that damn hardball with a stick while the ball approaches at 100 mph! Batters — and pitchers, when it’s the other way around — deserve better.

How? Hey, all I know about electricity and electronics is that if I stick my finger in a live socket, I get a really nasty jolt (and a wife who laughs hysterically), but it certainly seems that someone in the electronic realm could come up with beam setup that could at least rule on inside and outside pitches. Kneecap-and-armpit calls might be a little harder, but, hey! it’s very late in 1999 and we’re dropping stuff on Mars in a target area little bigger than a pitcher’s mound. C’mon baseball, get with the program!

Thanksgiving weekend I was catching up on some football doings on ESPN, when they showed a recap of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game. This game is traditionally just a little less fierce than the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, so when you saw Georgia cheated out of a last minute touchdown by officials who had no recourse but to go with their first impression of the play, hearts were broken, and even Techies had to know the perception of a minority had changed reality. The saddest part is knowing that it could have been different — and right — had even the rudimentary replay ruling procedures currently extant in pro football been in effect here.

By comparison, drag racing, though not as old as the major stick-n-ball games, has perhaps as good a judging and umpiring system as exists in all sports. And it’s that way because, from the flutter of the last starter’s flag — waved sometime in the ‘60s — to today’s most sophisticated Bob Brockmeyer-engineered infra-red controlled Compulink ‘Tree, drag racing timing officials at IHRA and NHRA have been amenable to change as timing and win/loss systems developed.

Sure, there are racers who still play games at the starting line — and trying to psyche the guy or girl in the other lane will always be part of dragging. But at least the guys in control of the starting line in the major drag associations are wise to most of the games played and deal with them accordingly if they detect someone taking an unfair advantage.

And when it comes to judging winners at the digs, it’s been a long time since I went home from a race wondering if ol’ So-n-So really won Top Fuel. Thanks to Ollie Riley in the beginning and Brockmeyer currently, and all the guys and companies who developed systems in between — like Lou Bond and Fosdick and Chrondek — combined with the look-see we get from well-placed TV cameras, we can be confident who won a race — even at 330 mph, which is considerably quicker than even Walter Johnson or Nolan Ryan threw on his very best day!

Okay, stick-n-ballers, the ball, so to speak, is in your court!

Thanks for hangin’!

John Raffa is currently freelancing in Huron, Ohio,
and invites comments at: DCDragons@aol.com

 

photo by Jeff Burk

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