Last fall we got into what baseball calls "beanball season." But rather than throwing fastballs at one another, occasionally drivers were throwing their cars at opponents-sometimes their fists, sometimes a helmet.
NASCAR doesn't stamp this with approval, but such action lingers with fans like a bad headache on race morning. Avid fans can recite every act of aggression, like a history teacher recalling the Hindenburg, the Titanic or the Maine.
How a driver reacts when his time comes to take a lick in traffic or a deliberate whack on the quarter-panel is his appendectomy scar. It stays with him, a part of what makes a legend and perhaps a myth.
Everybody handles it differently, but the story in the end is usually the same. "I didn't do anything, Mr. Helton. Honest. I was just cruisin', you know, and then all of a sudden he came down the banking in front of me and I ran out of racetrack. I had to hit him."
For sure, you cannot walk away and be a respected race driver.
When Ricky Rudd and Rusty Wallace exchanged pleasantries on the track a while back, I put both hands over my face and hummed a verse of "Bad, bad, Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town."
"Rusty," I wanted to say, "you are a super guy, a great race driver, so please do not mess around with Ricky Rudd."
Rudd does not bother anyone. But don't push your luck with him. He doesn't push. Fact is, he may hide in the bushes and wait on you. A more pleasant person you will not find in the garage area, but he didn't come into the sport apologizing for things he didn't do.
It was the fall of '88, and a pleasant day at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Rudd and Dale Earnhardt tangled with 40 laps to go and Rudd spun.
The following March, the circuit moved to Rockingham. Rudd led for 103 laps. He was leading the field and came up to pass Earnhardt, which would have put Earnhardt a lap behind. Rudd drove to the inside of Earnhardt on lap 371 going into Turn 2. Coming off the turn, the cars bumped with the rear of Rudd's Buick against the front of Earnhardt's Chevrolet. Rudd spun and Harry Gant crashed into the rear of Rudd's car.
"Earnhardt kept trying to crash Rudd so he could stay in the lead lap, and he finally wrecked him," Gant said. "That's all there was to it. Earnhardt just wrecked him, just flat wrecked him."
Two months later at Talladega, my assignment was to do a cover story for Stock Car Racing magazine on Rudd. The wrecks had nothing to do with the story, but after the interview I casually asked Ricky if he felt he was getting pushed around a bit.
"Yes I do, and I'm tired of it," he replied. "I don't start things on the track. I never have, but I don't take a lot of guff, either. If and when there is a payback, it will be at a most costly time."
October rolled around and it was North Wilkesboro all over again. This time it was two weeks later than usual because of rain. Earnhardt, Wallace and Mark Martin battled for the point championship.
Earnhardt dominated the race, leading 342 of the 400 laps. A caution flag with five laps remaining set up a final shootout for the race victory between Earnhardt and Rudd.
On the final lap, Rudd ran the inside lane as the two drove under the white flag side-by-side. When they got to Turn 1, some say Rudd never cut left. Both spun wildly up the banking and into the retaining wall. Geoff Bodine, who had not led a lap all day, became the beneficiary of Victory Circle.
Earnhardt finished 10th and Wallace seventh. Earnhardt lost two points to Wallace. Wallace eventually won the 1989 championship by 12 points over Earnhardt.
Earnhardt was furious after the race that day. "I gave him the whole (expletive) bottom lane, and the (expletive) knocked the (expletive) out of me," he said. "I knew the (expletive) was under me. He just flat took us both out. I think they ought to fine the (expletive) and suspend him for the rest of the season."