It has been 36 years since Eddie Sachs last turned a wheel on a racetrack. Those who saw his last race, the tragic 1964 Indianapolis 500, saw Eddie die the way he raced-in spectacular fashion.
But that's not the way the die-hard race fan of the '50s and '60s remembers Edward Julius Sachs.
That he was called racing's "Clown Prince" was not without merit. His antics are the stuff of legends, and today's sport is sorely in need of some genuine colorful characters.
Sachs kept everyone and everything in perspective, kept all involved from taking things too seriously. In nearly every personal appearance he made, time permitting, he declared himself, "beyond a shadow of a doubt, the greatest failure in the history of Indianapolis Motor Speedway."
In one such appearance in Lafayette, Indiana, in 1963, he set out to document his claim.
"In 1953, I failed my driver's test," he told a gathering of Kiwanians. "In 1954, I returned to the track and failed my driver's test; I became the first man in the history of the Indianapolis Speedway to fail his driver's test twice.
"In 1955, I failed my driver's test again. I made sure that nobody would ever break my records. In 1956, I passed my test and became the first man in the history of the track to run a 40-lap test. I ran 10 consecutive 106s, 10 consecutive 110s, 10 consecutive 115s and 10 consecutive 120s."
With no speedometer, no tachometer, not even an oil pressure gauge, according to Sachs, it was "just me and the seat of my pants, and we ran the most perfect driver's test that has ever been run at the Indianapolis Speedway."
Sachs had a habit of being a little more realistic about the dangers of the sport than most drivers. Someone asked him what his all-time favorite racetrack was. "That's easy," he said. "Salem Speedway. Of all the tracks we race at, it's the closest to a hospital."
Sachs spoke with experience on that subject, having been an ambulance passenger at least 13 times. "In the long run, death is the odds-on favorite," he was quoted in a national magazine in 1962.
The late sports columnist Jim Murray was another man who spoke his mind, and the words he directed at motorsports were seldom kind. But Murray recognized Sachs for what he was.
"Eddie Sachs is a race driver. One of the best," Murray wrote in a column the day before the 1963 Indianapolis 500. "He goes through life with a smile on his lips, his foot on the throttle and the faintly enchanted air of a little child who believes in fairies. Eddie is a pixie in a crash helmet."
Sachs probably wouldn't have fit in with today's politically correct corporate image, but there would have been no better ambassador for motorsports. Sachs could mesmerize a gathering, hold them in the palm of his hand, regale them with funny, outrageous stories of happenings on-track and off, then beat the best drivers in the sport on the weekend.
He wasn't just a guy with a sense of humor in a driver's uniform. Eddie Sachs could drive a race car. In his career, he won eight USAC championship races and 10 features in USAC's sprint car division.
But the races that brought Sachs the most notice were ones he didn't win.
It was 1961 at the Indianapolis 500. A.J. Foyt appeared headed for his first Indy victory after his final pit stop. His Bowes Seal Fast roadster was lightning fast after the stop-because a faulty fuel nozzle had given him almost no fuel-and Sachs literally ran the rubber off the right rear tire of his Dean Van Lines roadster trying to catch Foyt.
Foyt was forced to pit 16 laps from the finish, surrendering the lead to Sachs.
On lap 197, three laps from the end, Sachs was forced to pit to replace a right rear tire worn down to the cord from his pursuit of Foyt. The late stop cost Sachs $65,000 in prize money, but was the right choice. Tests performed after the race determined that the tire wouldn't have lasted another lap.
Two years later, in another Indy 500 he didn't win, Sachs was the subject of one of the most memorable pictures at the speedway.