Photo by Jeff Burk

ONE UP, ONE DOWN

5/7/03

"I did have a lump in my throat when I heard about it this morning." The speaker was recent NASCAR Auto Club 500 winner Kurt Busch, and the "it" was the bizarrely coincidental deaths of Paul and Helen Bagley. In case you haven't heard, the Bagleys were devout sprint car enthusiasts (Paul, in fact, served on the board of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum Foundation in Knoxville, Tenn.) and were killed at Perris Motor Speedway in Southern California when an errant sprint car overturned onto the infield. What makes the thing "bizarrely coincidental" was the fact that the Bagleys were at the track getting ready for the third annual Jeff Bagley Classic to be held at Ventura Speedway. And, as you may have guessed, the one queer card in the deck was that Jeff Bagley was their late 29-year-old son, who was killed in a sprint car wreck at that track in May of 1989.

The L.A. Times scribe reporting this greatly understated the case when he wrote, "the deaths sent a chill through the racing world." I guess.

For me, the impact of their losses was compounded somewhat by Larry Dixon's spectacular misadventure at the NHRA Mac Tools Nationals in Bristol, Tennessee the same weekend and the comparatively speaking, "joyful" results. "Joyful" when compared to the Bagleys. As most know, Dixon's Miller Lite Top Fueler exploded a motor in a ball of fire with the consequences being a spectacular top-end crash.

How many times have we seen a Top Fuel crash where the poor driver goes with the roll of the dice as his car resembles a July 4th fountain tumbling down a flight of stairs, spewing metal parts and sparks. These violent pigs go 270-plus mph at half-track, so normal walking-around odds, at least with non-drag racers, kinda dictated that Dixon was going to be poured like Malt-O-Meal out of his firesuit. Fortunately, oh so fortunately, wrong. The race gods, those merry pranksters of mayhem, let one slip away, but still managed to run down a slower member of the herd. Larry Dixon, The Bagleys; One Up, One Down.

It was my experience to have seen that crash in a social setting -- the "Eight Count" bar at 39th and Normandie -- and it was these two incidents that once again caused me to scratch an ever-enlarging divot in my head. What is with this crash and burn, and in some cases, die attraction with auto racing?

For me, I thought I had rinsed all of that "oh geez-then-the-next-thing-you-know-the-car-is-in-the-stands-chain-sawing-the-fans-and frappe-ing-the-driver" bilge out of my life. When I saw a friend of mine, Blaine Johnson, get killed in Top Fuel qualifying at the 1996 U.S. Nationals, I remember mentally making a Ralph Kramden-sort of edict, "That does it! I don't ever want to see something like that in this house again."

And for a number of years, I stuck by my guns. I remember some friends had on-the-spot coverage of Keith Stark's Alcohol Dragster crash at the Gatornationals a few years after the Johnson tragedy, and said that they were going to watch it in some guy's trailer and that I oughta come along. I didn't. I did a "Pasadena" -- none for me, thanks.

At first, I thought that my unwillingness to acknowledge this pimple on the face of a sport I really dug, heralded a coming divorce. You know. "My wife and I just don't talk about a lot things these days," and as far as drag racing went I felt I was taking that particular stance. I sure felt that way when I remembered how I blabbered and skittered about like a meth lab rat at school when I was a kid after having seen a crash and burn at Lions or some famous track of yore.