I’ve been
around (“round,
round, get around,
I get around”).
Officially.
On a recent
Saturday night,
the National
Motorsports
Press Association
inducted four into
its Hall of Fame, and I know every one of
them.
In the past, there were always the homages to antiquity, the long-overdue elections of heretofore overlooked icons. Now that Roger Penske, Jack Roush, Rusty Wallace and Robert Yates have joined the NMPA Hall, I guess it gives me some standing in the antiquity category, too. I don’t have much in the way of outlandish anecdotes to pass along in regard to Penske. Alone of the four, my interaction with Roger has always been somewhat formal. I like him. I admire him. But that’s no fun. Roush? When his name comes up, I often think of the Busch brothers, both of whom began racing within his vast domain and both of whom were “vocabularically affected” by the verbose Roush, who has seldom seen a word of more than three syllables that he didn’t adopt.
The Busch brothers, particularly when they were younger, were so impressed by Roush’s “big words” that they tried to emulate him, or that’s always been my theory. The difference, of course, is that Jack tends to know what those words mean, and neither Kurt nor Kyle generally does. Kurt’s linguistic offenses would rank him somewhere close to Norm Crosby or Bo Dietl, as he has been known to “circumference the track” and be proud of “how we’ve been able to solidify the solidity of our team.” Kyle? Less so, but he has also contributed to mild unrest in the tomb of Noah Webster. Rusty Wallace?
The Emperor of Exaggeration. He’s always been a walking, talking racing story in need of fact checking. Rusty doesn’t intentionally stretch the truth; he just thinks optimistically. The press conference had barely started when Rusty matter-of-factly said he had been in Canada four hours earlier. Pretty fast plane. Possible — but when one factors in all the time needed before and after one actually climbs into the plane, even a private plane — unlikely. By the way, I’m fairly sure someone could’ve made a killing in Vegas betting on Rusty giving the evening’s shortest speech. That was a bigger upset than Appalachian State over Michigan. The longest speech was Jeff Hammond’s name-dropping introduction of Roush, for whom he once worked for, oh, 10 minutes or so. I have no idea how that idea transpired. Penske was all grace and humility.
Roush and Yates rambled. Rusty was probably the MVP of the evening. Yates requires special attention. Through 2007, when he turned over his race team to son Doug, Yates always seemed to be in sync with signals from outer space. Robert is obviously immensely intelligent, so much so that oft times guys like me just have no idea what he is talking about. Below are a couple “Yatesisms” from 2005. “So we’ve really, through the years, have cowboyed our teams with that, and certainly it’s turned into an engineering model anymore.”
He also said of rival car owner Roush’s teams that they “try to get the beach down every street available, and whoever gets there quickest, they can all jump on that.” Yates has never been as uproariously nutty as Kurt Busch (“We have heavy hearts in the backs of our minds.”). He specializes in sentences that are, to the non-brilliant-mad-scientist set, indecipherable.
Which, of course, is why I always enjoyed listening to him over the years. I’m in it for the humor most of the time.
Monte Dutton has covered motorsports for The Gaston (NC) Gazette since 1993. He was named writer of the year by the National Motorsports Press Association in 2008. His blog NASCAR This Week (nascar.rbma.com) features all of his reporting on racing, roots music and life on the road. E-mail Monte at nascar_thisweek@yahoo.com. (c) 2010 King Features Syndicate
In the past, there were always the homages to antiquity, the long-overdue elections of heretofore overlooked icons. Now that Roger Penske, Jack Roush, Rusty Wallace and Robert Yates have joined the NMPA Hall, I guess it gives me some standing in the antiquity category, too. I don’t have much in the way of outlandish anecdotes to pass along in regard to Penske. Alone of the four, my interaction with Roger has always been somewhat formal. I like him. I admire him. But that’s no fun. Roush? When his name comes up, I often think of the Busch brothers, both of whom began racing within his vast domain and both of whom were “vocabularically affected” by the verbose Roush, who has seldom seen a word of more than three syllables that he didn’t adopt.
The Busch brothers, particularly when they were younger, were so impressed by Roush’s “big words” that they tried to emulate him, or that’s always been my theory. The difference, of course, is that Jack tends to know what those words mean, and neither Kurt nor Kyle generally does. Kurt’s linguistic offenses would rank him somewhere close to Norm Crosby or Bo Dietl, as he has been known to “circumference the track” and be proud of “how we’ve been able to solidify the solidity of our team.” Kyle? Less so, but he has also contributed to mild unrest in the tomb of Noah Webster. Rusty Wallace?
The Emperor of Exaggeration. He’s always been a walking, talking racing story in need of fact checking. Rusty doesn’t intentionally stretch the truth; he just thinks optimistically. The press conference had barely started when Rusty matter-of-factly said he had been in Canada four hours earlier. Pretty fast plane. Possible — but when one factors in all the time needed before and after one actually climbs into the plane, even a private plane — unlikely. By the way, I’m fairly sure someone could’ve made a killing in Vegas betting on Rusty giving the evening’s shortest speech. That was a bigger upset than Appalachian State over Michigan. The longest speech was Jeff Hammond’s name-dropping introduction of Roush, for whom he once worked for, oh, 10 minutes or so. I have no idea how that idea transpired. Penske was all grace and humility.
Roush and Yates rambled. Rusty was probably the MVP of the evening. Yates requires special attention. Through 2007, when he turned over his race team to son Doug, Yates always seemed to be in sync with signals from outer space. Robert is obviously immensely intelligent, so much so that oft times guys like me just have no idea what he is talking about. Below are a couple “Yatesisms” from 2005. “So we’ve really, through the years, have cowboyed our teams with that, and certainly it’s turned into an engineering model anymore.”
He also said of rival car owner Roush’s teams that they “try to get the beach down every street available, and whoever gets there quickest, they can all jump on that.” Yates has never been as uproariously nutty as Kurt Busch (“We have heavy hearts in the backs of our minds.”). He specializes in sentences that are, to the non-brilliant-mad-scientist set, indecipherable.
Which, of course, is why I always enjoyed listening to him over the years. I’m in it for the humor most of the time.
Monte Dutton has covered motorsports for The Gaston (NC) Gazette since 1993. He was named writer of the year by the National Motorsports Press Association in 2008. His blog NASCAR This Week (nascar.rbma.com) features all of his reporting on racing, roots music and life on the road. E-mail Monte at nascar_thisweek@yahoo.com. (c) 2010 King Features Syndicate
