BOB GLIDDEN RETURNS

By Susan Wade. Photos by Zak Hawthorne

He was doing it . . . well . . . because he could. But then he couldn't.

Bob Glidden, at least for the short-term, has joined Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Mario Lemieux and Don Garlits in coming out of retirement. However, he wound up the slowest of the 36 Pro Stock entrants at Pomona Raceway, denied a return to the quarter-mile where he has won six NHRA Winternationals and 11 Finals.

Odds were overwhelmingly slim that he would win this season-opening event for the first time since 1989. He was driving close friend Larry Morgan's extra Dodge after wrecking Steve Schmidt's Pontiac Grand Prix at the class' pre-season Super Bowl at Houston Raceway Park.

Glidden, NHRA's winningest driver until John Force and former rival Warren Johnson surpassed his 85 victories, was named No. 4 on the list of top-50 drivers in 2001. But he didn't make the cut of 16 at Pomona.

"I am what I am, and my fans love me," Glidden said. "And I love them, plain and simple. I'm not some poor, beat-up, old, lonely man who has to be here doing this. I'm here because I want to do it."

Three years ago, the Whiteland, Ind., resident hopped back into the mix at the U.S. Nationals, although Morgan jabbed, "He was just playing one weekend." Recalled Glidden, "It was just kind of a thought that Steven and I had, just to see how it turned out. He wasn't really competitive. It's kind of like me here (at the 2002 Winternationals).If I went out the next run and made a really nice run, that car would qualify. Anything short of that and it won't. And I didn't qualify there. The time just wasn't right."

It wasn't right last week, either. After the crash that Glidden figured cost about $20,000 in repairs, he said he told Schmidt "not to go head over heels and spend an ungodly amount of money to try to be here. And at the same time, Larry Morgan called and said, 'I've got my second car. We'll send back to Ohio and get it.' "

Considering that Schmidt is, in Glidden's words, "kind of a druggie on drag racing" and the reality that golf is not Glidden's game ("I suck -- I'm horrible, but I'm fast," he confessed), the two said yes to Morgan's offer. "That's just Larry. He's a peach," Glidden said.

And no one could be more excited than Morgan, despite the dubious favor of a fellow racer in this testostero-nitro subculture calling him a peach.