 He
raced more than Stockers and gassers, too. Bill
Mullins, of Birmingham (Yep, he's still around,
too) once had a Prefect four-door with a blown
Olds engine in it. He also raced a gas dragster
and a fuel dragster, and since it was hard to
race three cars at once, he let Ball race the
Prefect, which was classed in the A/Gas Supercharged
class. "So he said to me, 'We'll build a Chrysler
engine to go in the Prefect, you race it, and
we'll split the money,'" Ball said.
"So one time, we went to Bristol for the (NHRA)
Springnationals, and I got to the semis in A/Gas
Supercharged. The rule at that time was, if
you lost anything off your car goin' down track,
you were disqualified. Bill had already lost
in the dragster, and someone who was helpin'
us didn't pin the hood down. When I ran down
the track, the hood blowed up on one side, so
I had to backpedal it just a bit because I thought
the hood was comin' off. I couldn't see where
I was going. Bill will tell this later that
I got down through there by lookin' at the telephone
poles above the track. Well, that ain't so.
When I caught a glimpse that I was catching
this car, I drove by lookin' at the centerline
of the track, 'cause I couldn't see where I
was goin'. Fuzz Parker was at the far end of
the
track,
and he said that I just barely lost that race.
I told him I had to backpedal it 'cause I thought
the hood was comin' off. If I'd never done that,
I would have won that race and been in the finals."
Until that race, Ball said, that was the only
time that car ever got outrun in a year of racing.
He and Mullins had several more adventures.
When they got home, Mullins told Ball that he
was going to retire the Prefect and put the
Chrysler wedge engine in his gas dragster. They
went to a track in Deland, Florida, an abandoned
airport, for a match race, and Bill lost due
to some broken push rods. So he told Speedy,
"You've come such a long piece, I'm going to
let you race the fuel car. I told him, 'I've
never even been in a dragster before,' and Bill
said, 'There's nothing to it, just get in and
steer it straight.'" Ball blasted through the
quarter-mile, then couldn't get the engine to
shut off, so he pulled the parachute and grabbed
the brake handle and got the dragster stopped
just 10 feet before he ran out of concrete ---
and this was at an abandoned airport.
One time he and Mullins were coming back from
a match race at Courtland, Ala., and he told
Speedy, "I've got a match race here next week
with (the late) Clayton Harris in the fuel car.
I'll fix the gas car and you can race it against
Clayton. That car will outrun him on the other
end. Clayton will leave on you, but all you
have to do is hold it to the floor and it'll
pass him before you get to the top end."
"Well," continued Ball, "that car was so tight
in there that you had to race barefooted. You
had to take off your shoes to race it. So I'm
in the car barefooted, and I stab it to leave
and I feel this horrible pain in my right foot.
I put a hole shot on Clayton, and I couldn't
let off 'cause he would catch me. We got to
the other end and I beat him, and I get out
of the car and I'm bleeding out of my foot.
He saw all the blood comin' out and he comes
over and says, 'Ball, did that thing blow up
on you on that round?' and I said, 'No, I stuck
something in my foot. I ain't got no idea, but
it sure does hurt.'"
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