December 14, 1947 was a Sunday afternoon. Yes, most of the men who gathered in Daytona Beach, Fla. on that chilly, gray day were dressed in suits. But no, it was not a church service. Far from it. There was entirely too much brown liquor on the table and cigar smoke in the air for that. However, it was a christening. The roll-your-quarters beginning of a billion dollar business, 75 years ago today. The birth of NASCAR.
That Sunday was the first of four days of meetings attended by a revolving door of nearly 40 businessmen, promoters, race car owners and race car drivers. You’ll notice that “bootleggers” is not included in that list of occupations. That’s because pretty much all of them were, from white lightning dabblers to downright moonshine titans, they just didn’t want anyone to know it.
“The way y’all remember it now was like the pictures we took, that we were this cleaned-up-looking bunch of men who knew exactly what they were doing,” recalled attendee Raymond Parks in 2007, three years before his death and ten years before his posthumous election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “In reality, we were a bunch characters all there hoping to straighten some things out. If we didn’t, fine, we’d go back to do what we were doing before. But it certainly worked out. At least for some folks it did.”
Welcome to the Ebony Room
It was a rough-hewn continental congress of racers, summoned to the space-themed Ebony Room, a rooftop lounge atop Daytona’s still-new art deco show palace known as the Streamline Hotel, a venue then best known for hosting Al Capone and his wise-guy cohorts as they migrated south during World War II.
The curious attendees showed up having accepted an invitation, really a challenge, via an advertisement placed in the de facto bible of American motorsports, Speed Age magazine. That ad had been placed by a Daytona Beach businessman and racer-turned-promoter named William Henry Getty France, aka “Big Bill”.
Recalled Parks: “That’s the nickname you get when you’re 6-foot-5 and you’re around race car drivers all the time, because race car drivers are typically little people.”
France had spent the prior decade rising from house painter and gas station owner to part-time racer and, eventually, the overseer of racing on Daytona’s famous super-fast white sand beaches. The two years after the end of WWII saw veterans returning home from Europe and the Pacific who immediately sought their post-war thrills behind the wheel. From coast to coast, they raced their street cars over country roads, around self-plowed oval racetracks and yes, on the beach course operated by “Big Bill”.
France, frustrated by what he perceived as condescension from AAA and the IndyCar crowd, went so far as to start his own sanctioning body in 1947. He called it the National Championship Stock Car Circuit, or NCSCC, racing under his penned phrase “Where The Fastest That Run, Run The Fastest.” Problem was, all of those racers scattered all over the nation had also started their own stock car series, from the American Stock Car Racing Association to the National Stock Car Racing Association to the poorly titled Stock Car Auto Racing Society — SCARS.
Every one of those series employed their own convoluted points systems and every rulebook was different, but none of that mattered because rules were essentially unenforceable. A spaghetti pile of names and cars, run by an unintelligible alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, ensured constant chaos that allowed shady track promoters to rob racers blind and kept any would-be race fan from having any clue as to who, what and where they should be watching.
“Every track and every area has a ‘national champion’ of every type of racing,” France declared to the Ebony Room as his guests took their seats. “This has so confused sportswriters that they give up in disgust after trying to give the public an accurate picture.”
Bill France Jr., aka “Bill Junior” and son of “Big Bill,” explained: “It was all a big mess, and my father knew it, but so did everyone else.”
He did so during Daytona Speedweeks 1998, the kickoff of NASCAR’s 50th anniversary celebration. His Winston-burned voice pushed through a tour guide’s microphone as he led a media bus ride around town. That tour had stopped in front of the Streamline, and “Bill Junior” was pointing to the rooftop.
“It didn’t take much convincing to get those guys to show up here and see if they could straighten it out,” he said. “It wasn’t the most educated, sophisticated bunch of men, but they were all smart. Smart enough to know that they could all benefit if it got organized.”
The bulk of the attendees were locals, but they also came from Atlanta and North Carolina, from New England and New Rochelle, N.Y., from as far as deep into the Midwest. The buttoned-up and the dressed-down, representing nearly every corner of the United States from the right side of the Mississippi River.
But the room was filled with as much distrust as it was smoke. There were open arguments punctuated by whispers. Group discussions laced by secret one-on-one asides. A lounge full of alpha males found it difficult to agree on what their race cars should look like or even what to call their new organization.
The man who bankrolled the meetings at the request of France was Parks, already a legendary car owner with racers Lloyd Seay, who was dead, and Roy Hall, who was in prison. But the man who’d made his fortune in real estate and cars, not to mention gambling houses and moonshining, was so skeptical of the happenings inside the Ebony Room that he initially refused to sit at the table with France and the others. Parks chose instead to sit at the bar with a couple of female students from a local charm school that “Big Bill” had brought in for the meetings.
“I wanted it to work. Heck, I paid for everyone to be there. But until I saw that everyone there was actually serious about it, I wasn’t buying in,” Parks said on the 60th anniversary of the Streamline meetings. “By the second day, Red and Red assured me that there was progress being made, so I went in there, too.”
‘Next thing you know, NASCAR belonged to Bill France’
The first Red was Red Byron, who drove for Parks. The second was Red Vogt, who built Parks’ cars. Like everyone else in the room, they were blown away at how “Big Bill” took charge of the proceedings. He’d opened the first day with a rousing call to arms.
“Nothing stands still in the world. Things get better or worse, bigger or smaller.” He kicked off day two of a hangover by setting a blue collar tone. “Stock car racing has got distinct possibilities for Sunday shows. I would allow race-minded boys that work all week who don’t have enough money to afford a regular racing car to be competition to the rich guy. It allows them the opportunity to go to a racetrack on Sunday and show their stuff and maybe win a prize …”
France wanted stock cars. Right off the street. Raced on dirt and, whenever possible, on Sundays. There was some opposition, but not much. In fact, “Big Bill” seemed to allow just enough arguing to make those in the room believe that they were making the decisions and not him. That even went for the organization’s new name. Byron suggested National Stock Car Racing Association. Vogt suggested National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, which France liked because “NASCAR” rolled off the tongue. After Byron’s name won in a 7-4 vote, France reminded that there was already a NSCRA in Georgia, and perhaps they’d like to think about it. They revoted. This time, NASCAR won.
“‘Big Bill’ should have been a politician,” explained longtime Charlotte Observer motorsports scribe Tom Higgins, himself a NASCAR Hall of Famer, in 2017, about seven months before his death. “His invitation list to those meetings was just the right mix of friends versus foes. And when they closed those meetings with officer elections, which also determined who got the most shares of ownership, who do you think convinced them to give Bill France Senior the first presidency of NASCAR and the most shares? Bill France Senior, that’s who!”
It was true. The man who would later brag, “I can hold my board meetings in a phone booth” left the Streamline Hotel on Dec. 17, 1947, with the title of NASCAR president and 50% of those shares. Not knowing yet what they had signed over, the group posed for the now-famous photo of their meeting in the Ebony Room, “Big Bill” having smoothly positioned himself at the head of the table.
As Parks liked to say with a shake of the head and he-got-me grin, “Next thing you know, NASCAR belonged to Bill France.”
A new age, a new Streamline
France’s belief in one-man rule has proven wise beyond his 82-year life, which ended on June 7, 1992.
NASCAR was formerly incorporated on Feb. 21, 1948. The winner of its first race and championship was Red Byron, driving for Parks in a car prepared by Vogt. But, oddly enough, none of that was in a stock car. The postwar lag in streetcar production out of Detroit forced NASCAR to start by racing in ’48 using fender-less Modifieds, with the Strictly Stock division finally taking the green flag in Charlotte on June 19, 1949.
“Big Bill” reigned as NASCAR chairman and CEO until handing over the keys to Bill France Jr. in 1972, having survived financial crises, gas shortages, driver strikes and the deaths of multiple superstars. As the sport raced into the 1970s, it began its so-called Modern Era and spent the next three decades on an alpine-like climb.
“Bill Junior,” who died in 2007, was succeeded by Mike Helton as president, followed by Brian France, grandson of “Big Bill,” and since 2018, Steve Phelps. “Big Bill”‘s second son, the soft-spoken Jim France, is now NASCAR chairman. He was only three years old in February 1947. His niece, Bill France Jr’s daughter Lesa France Kennedy, serves as NASCAR’s executive vice chair. Most have their eyes on her son, 30-year-old Ben Kennedy, as the heir apparent to the stock car kingdom.
On Wednesday, they will all gather at the Streamline Hotel for a Founder’s Day celebration. They will toast their stock car racing forefathers in what is now known as the Sky Lounge Bar, the space formerly known as the Ebony Room, now wallpapered with photos of the men who gathered there to burn tobacco, sip amber fluids and draw up the paperwork that started the world’s largest stock car racing series.
That series is experiencing a bit of a rebirth, a reversal of recent misfortune that is much like the Streamline itself. After decades of disrepair, the old hotel vibrates with life. Remember that ’98 bus tour with “Bill Junior”? The place was in such terrible shape that day that he refused to get off the bus and go inside because, “It might collapse on top of us.” Now, after a $6 million overhaul and one Travel Channel “Hotel Impossible” star turn, it has become a Daytona hot spot. When Dale Earnhardt Jr. launched his new vodka line last February, he did so alongside his wife on the same roof where Parks once hung out at the bar with the charm school students.
This year’s Dec. 14 festivities mark the kickoff of NASCAR’s 75th anniversary celebration, with the promise of both eyes on 2023 and beyond, while keeping one foot planted in 1947.
“How cool would it be to go back and watch a race on the beach, right? Having to make sure that you’re trying to figure out when what’s low tide? What’s high tide?” Phelps says of the view from atop the Streamline, looking across Highway A1A at the Atlantic Ocean. “Then I look out my window here at my office and I see Daytona International Speedway. The vision to be able to create this in the 1940s and ’50’s, I mean, it’s just extraordinary. This is what Bill Senior envisioned.”
NASCAR’s fifth-ever president speaks of the sport’s recent gains in television ratings and attendance and the successes of experiments such as racing at the L.A. Coliseum and the raciness — with safety work currently being done — of the new Next Gen car. He talks about the gift of guidance that is his ability to lean on the France family. Then he reminds that one of “Big Bill’s” speeches from the Streamline Hotel, the one about “Stock car racing has got distinct possibilities for Sunday shows …” is displayed across a giant wall in NASCAR’s Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. A constant, stories-tall reminder of what happened 75 years ago this week.
“There’s a statement that I’ve heard from both Jim France and Mike Helton and that’s where we are … they always say we are stewards for the sport. We need to leave it better than when we found it,” Phelps continues. “Everything we do ladders to that, that North Star. I think that’s helpful. So, when people come to work, when I come to work, we know what’s expected. And it started that day at the Streamline Hotel.”
NEW YORK — Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he discussed Pete Rose with President Donald Trump at a meeting two weeks ago and he plans to rule on a request to end the sport’s permanent ban of the career hits leader, who died in September.
Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Manfred said he and Trump discussed several issues, including concerns over how immigration policies could impact players from Cuba, Venezuela and other foreign countries.
Manfred is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. The petition was filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented Rose prior to the 17-time All-Star’s death at age 83.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
It’s unclear what a presidential pardon might include. Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.
The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks” but has not addressed the matter since.
Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.
An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M. Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.
Lenkov is seeking Rose’s reinstatement so that he can be considered for the Hall of Fame. Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.
Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside” and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”
“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto,” Manfred said. “I will in fact issue a ruling.”
Rose’s reinstatement doesn’t mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall’s board.
Manfred said he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.
“I mean, believe me, a lot of Hall of Fame dialogue on this one,” Manfred said.
If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.
Manfred said he doesn’t think baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting should color views on Rose’s case.
“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” Manfred said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that.
“It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”
Manfred did not go into details on his discussion with Trump over foreign-born players other than to say he expressed worry.
“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”
It was old faces in familiar places for the Atlanta Braves on Monday after they activated right-hander Ian Anderson to the active roster and signed outfielder Eddie Rosario to a major league contract.
In corresponding moves, outfielder Jarred Kelenic was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett, while right-hander Davis Daniel was optioned to Triple-A after Sunday’s game.
Both Anderson and Rosario emerged as 2021 postseason heroes in Atlanta as the Braves went on to win the World Series.
Anderson, who was claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, went 4-0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts for the Braves over the 2020 and 2021 postseasons.
In the 2021 World Series, Anderson famously pitched five no-hit innings in Game 3 to lead Atlanta to a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros. The Braves defeated the Astros in six games.
Anderson, who turns 27 Friday, was traded by the Braves to the Angels on March 23 for left-hander Jose Suarez. He struggled badly with his new club, going 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in seven relief appearances. He allowed 17 hits and seven walks in just 9⅓ innings.
Rosario, 33, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February and played in two games with the club, going 1-for-4. He was designated for assignment and became a free agent when Shohei Ohtani returned from the paternity list just over a week ago.
Rosario was the 2021 National League Championship Series MVP, when he powered the Braves past the Dodgers with three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.647 OPS in six games.
Over parts of 11 seasons, Rosario is a career .261 hitter with 169 home runs and 583 RBIs in 1,123 games with five different clubs, including five seasons with the Minnesota Twins (2015-20) and four with the Braves (2021-24).
Kelenic, 25, was batting .167 with two home runs in 23 games and is a career .211 hitter with 49 home runs and 156 RBIs in 406 games with the Seattle Mariners (2021-23) and Braves.
Daniel, 27, made his only appearance for the Braves on Sunday with a scoreless inning and has appeared in 10 games (six starts) over the past three seasons with a 4.95 ERA.
Mike Sullivan, who led the Pittsburgh Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, is out as the team’s head coach, it was announced Monday.
Sullivan was the longest-tenured coach in Penguins history after just completing his 10th season. The 57-year-old, who also coached Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off, was under contract in Pittsburgh through 2026-27.
In a statement, Penguins GM Kyle Dubas said the decision was “the best course forward for all involved” as Pittsburgh navigates a transitional period.
“On behalf of Fenway Sports Group and the Penguins organization, I would like to thank Mike Sullivan for his unwavering commitment and loyalty to the team and City of Pittsburgh over the past decade,” Dubas said. “Mike is known for his preparation, focus and fierce competitiveness. I was fortunate to have a front-row seat to his dedication to this franchise for the past two seasons. He will forever be an enormous part of Penguins history, not only for the impressive back-to-back Cups, his impact on the core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Bryan Rust, but more importantly, for his love and loyalty to the organization. This was not a decision that was taken lightly, but as we continue to navigate the Penguins through this transitional period, we felt it was the best course forward for all involved.”
The Penguins have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons as Dubas works to retool the team into a contender while Crosby is still competing at a high level. Crosby just completed his 20th straight season in which he posted a point-per-game scoring pace, and he was voted by his peers in the NHLPA as the league’s most complete player. The captain is under contract through next season on a two-year extension he signed prior to the 2024-25 season.
Sullivan was elevated to Penguins head coach in 2015 after leading the organization’s AHL team in Wilkes-Barre. With 409 wins in Pittsburgh, he leaves as the Penguins’ all-time wins leader.
Sources also said Sullivan is keen on coaching again next season and will be a top candidate for several of the vacancies. Sullivan worked as an assistant coach with the Rangers and as both an assistant and head coach with the Bruins earlier in his career.