DIAMOND STILL SPARKLES
Since the wife and I couldn't find anything decent on TV last night, I started rummaging through my collection of national event videotapes from the 1980's and 1990's. At random, I pulled out a tape of the '92 Slick 50 Nationals at Baytown. We both got a few laughs out of seeing some of the current "stars" looking 14 years younger. But, here was the amazing thing: The Top Fuel and Funny Car elimination rounds were actually good side-by-side races! Yeah, there were no 300-mph runs or 4.40 e.t.'s...but it didn't matter, because it was real two-car racing! And, there wasn't even one case of a car immediately going up in tire smoke!
No multi-car empires, either; a single-car John Force...and not a Schumacher car in sight. Seeing the competent announcing jobs of Dave McClelland and the late Steve Evans was also refreshing. Not one comment about "going from A to B" or "cylinders out" or "engines eating themselves up," either. Those ol' "Diamond P" folks did a pretty good job "back in the day." I can't help but wonder if there aren't some major lessons to be learned here.
Ralph Reber
Spring, TX
IT MAY CACKLE, BUT IT’S NO FEST
I recently visited with a couple of old West Coast codgers who were pretty excited about the spectacle of being involved in the firing-up of old time fuel dragsters. How quick did the cars go? What MPH? Well, fact is that these cars did not move an inch, let alone the blazing quarter mile. The owners just lit 'em off and the crowd went wild. Pretty cheap
thrills, I guess. After the fuel was gone and the cars loaded back on their trailers the "event" was over.
Well, this got me thinking about other forms of sports and I now suggest the following: Horse racing codgers, for instance, can buy full-sized fiberglass horses, like the ones you might see on a "Dairy-Mart" roof, paint these equines up to replicate the colors and patterns of Whirl-a-way, Seabiscuit and Affirmed among others, load them up in horse trailers and drag the lot out to a field somewhere. A trickster might even sneak in Mr. Ed (not of trailer fame but Wilbur instead). They then unload the horses and pretend it is the good days all over again! Someone could even bring some horse poop and scatter it around for realistic odoriferous effect!
Next I could see baseball fans who long for the "olden times" preparing life sized photo cutouts of Ty Cobb, Ruth, Mays and Sutton perhaps. After setting them up in their respective baseball field positions the codgers could sit back in their lawn chairs and pretend it was "way back then." They might throw a few peanuts, roar for the imagined long ball and maybe even get in a scuffle with the fan next to them.
Pick your sport and it is easy to imagine what happens to participants and fans when the days are short and the end is near. No disrespect intended. I admire the extensive effort to re-create the cars from long ago but think it is pretty silly stuff all-in-all.
Eldon P. Slick
Indianapolis
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