Brodie Butterfield, a tech worker in Australia, walked into his job one day and saw a colleague in a vintage Dale Earnhardt Sr. shirt. Earnhardt Sr., who won seven championships in the top-level NASCAR Cup Series before his fatal crash in the 2001 Daytona 500, transcended the sport in his iconic No. 3 car. Butterfield thought he’d found a fan, greeting his colleague with: “Raise hell, praise Dale!”
It didn’t land.
“He looked at me like I had two heads,” Butterfield told ESPN. “I knew he was a casual Formula One fan, so I thought maybe he’d broadened his horizons. After probing, [it] turned out he had a tenuous grasp on what NASCAR even was.”
NASCAR streetwear is in. The challenge is bringing NASCAR along with it.
“The idea that Drake even mildly knows who my dad is, is cool to me,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. told ESPN. “I got a chance to interview him at the Kentucky Derby last year, and I don’t think he knew who I was. He still might not know who I am, but he’s wearing the jacket.
“I’m certain somebody said, ‘Hey, here’s who Dale Earnhardt was.’ He might have gotten at least a two-minute refresher course on what the jacket was all about. I think if that’s all it is, that’s great. But if Drake ends up coming to a race and wanting to learn more, I think that will encourage a lot of people outside of that NASCAR bubble to come check us out.”
Earnhardt Jr. said that’s always been the challenge: making NASCAR and its personalities mainstream, like his father or Jeff Gordon. If doing that means playing into nostalgia, the Y2K renaissance is the perfect time.
“It’s funny,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We kind of shift from decade to decade. We were obsessed with the ’80s. Before that, the ’70s. Now, everybody’s going: ‘Oh man, everything was better in the ’90s.’
“I think we should absolutely lean into the imagery and pop culture, but also what was happening in our own sport. Jeff Gordon was becoming a national — if not a global — icon, and I think we peaked around 2004. The ’90s was the buildup to that.”
Much like pop culture, modern NASCAR is trending toward the ’90s. North Wilkesboro Speedway — a beloved North Carolina track that hosted NASCAR’s top divisions from 1949 to 1996 — is back on the schedule after sitting in decay, thanks in large part to Earnhardt Jr.’s efforts to revive it. Meanwhile, the people behind some of NASCAR’s most iconic apparel are dialing back the years on their work.
Ryan Williams, a designer for Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports race team, remembers how his father wore giant NASCAR shirts and jeans when he was growing up. Back then, he hated it.
“I would be like, ‘I’m so embarrassed for him to pick me up from school or be walking around in the Home Depot with him. What is he doing?'” Williams said. “Now, it’s so fashionable to wear your dad’s clothes, and wear these big, goofy NASCAR tees. I’m so fortunate that’s a thing, because it’s my entire wardrobe.”
It also inspires Williams’ work for JR Motorsports. The team’s website is full of shirts that have throwback cues or follow a theme, like one with driver Justin Allgaier‘s car getting abducted by aliens in a cornfield. The sponsor on the shirt, Brandt, sells agricultural products.
“I’ll usually get on a kick where I’ll watch a movie or something, then in the shower later, I’ll come up with the idea of doing a shirt around it,” Williams said. “I think I watched ‘Signs,’ and then I was like: ‘Brandt. Professional agriculture. Crop circles. That sounds like a good idea.'”
Themeswerecommon back in the day. They’re also what inspire Harris Lue and Emily Butler, who design graphics and apparel for NASCAR drivers and teams through their firm, Lue Creative.
“I think the beauty of the old merch is, there were so many people doing it,” said Lue, who wore a ’90s space-themed “Yates Rocket” NASCAR shirt while we spoke. The shirt had a starscape background, blue beams of light all over and Robert Yates Racing driver Ernie Irvan‘s No. 28 car depicted as a hovercraft in the center.
“There were so many different vendors and printers that everything was unique,” Lue continued. “[If] they were designing for Robert Yates and the 28 car, they were coming up with things just for them. Now, everything has become so streamlined that a lot of it is templated. You can buy the same Ross Chastain shirt as you can the Brad Keselowski shirt.”
“Now, they can just take a photo and plop it in,” added Butler, who sat next to Lue in her own space-themed shirt based on a ’90s Bill Elliott car. “To a lot of people, that’ll get the job done. But it’s art, and it should be art. People like when the work has been put in. There’s an effort behind it, and it’s really authentic and made special for them. I think that’s the difference between modern art and retro art.”
“In the long run,” Lue said, “if you make something cool enough, people who aren’t even into NASCAR might buy it.”
Lue and Butler saw that happen with a shirt they designed for Bubba Wallace and his sponsor, McDonald’s. The shirt showed Wallace celebrating with a fountain drink in hand, his upper body hovering over his 23XI Racing car as it spilled out from a carton of fries.
“It sold out because it was cool,” Lue said. “It was full blast, and it was fully McDonald’s.”
“We saw those everywhere,” Butler added. “[Lue] was at some random concert, and they were everywhere.”
For as often as NASCAR gets criticized for racing “rolling billboards,” Lue and Butler think for some buyers, it’s the branding that sells.
“The way that ’90s and 2000s NASCAR blended branding and racing, there’s never been anything like it that I’ve seen,” Lue said. “All the ball sports now, they’re putting logos on jerseys, but NASCAR and racing pioneered that. We found a way to sell every sellable space, and the merchandise itself — I mean, people buy M&M’s stuff and have no clue who Elliott Sadler, Ken Schrader or Ernie Irvan are. They just see M&M’s.”
That was the case for Flasch, a 25-year-old musician and content creator in Los Angeles who goes by just their first name. They started collecting throwback-style NASCAR jackets after visiting Japan and seeing them “in a bunch of stores.” When they got home, they found a brown M&M’s one for $20.
“I thought they were super cool,” Flasch told ESPN. “I got the brown one because it was my first one I saw in the USA, but I really liked the neutrality of it. I love the M&M’s branding and all the logos. To be honest, I don’t really care who the race-car driver is.”
Flasch, whose favorite jacket is a bright-blue Oreo one, almost went to a NASCAR race for their birthday last year. The plans fell through because of COVID.
“I would totally love to go to a NASCAR event in person,” they said. “I don’t really watch any sports, but I think race cars are cool even though I don’t really like driving in real life. I even have a lyric in my most recent song called ‘Popstar.’ The chorus is, ‘I wanna be a pop star, so I can drive a race car.'”
For some, vintage NASCAR is about the brands. For others, it’s about the designs. For Earnhardt Jr., it’s often about appreciating the past — the sport’s, the world’s and his own.
“We have a habit of thinking that everything in the past was better,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We do that with music, we do that with fashion, and in NASCAR, a lot of those things remind me of my childhood. They remind me of a more innocent time, or what felt like an easier time. It was probably anything but easy.
“For me, there’s this part of the history of the sport that I never got to experience, and that was in anything from the ’70s on earlier. There’s always this pursuit of trying to get as close as you can to knowing what it would’ve been like to be there, and there’s also this never-ending quest of learning about my father — learning new stories and little anecdotes, and filling in the gaps of things about his career that I don’t know.”
Butterfield, meanwhile, keeps running into colleagues wearing vintage NASCAR merch. It remains to be seen if they’ll become fans.
“[Since the Earnhardt Sr. shirt], I’ve had two additional similar experiences with colleagues; one wearing a Kyle Petty shirt and the other wearing what I assume is a bootleg official’s jacket,” he said. “Both admitted to being fans of the ‘Cars’ film franchise, but neither followed racing of any kind.
“None of the three culprits could shed any light on why, other than: ‘It looks cool.’ I agree.”
In his first start since agreeing to a $170 million, six-year contract, the left-hander pitched a career-best eight innings as the Red Sox shut out the Baltimore Orioles 3-0 on Wednesday night. Crochet also threw 102 pitches, one shy of his career high.
“My first start in college I went eight, and I haven’t sniffed it since,” Crochet said.
Crochet (1-0) gave up four hits and a walk while striking out eight in his first victory since the offseason trade that sent him from the Chicago White Sox to Boston.
“That’s the reason he’s here,” manager Alex Cora said after the game. “That’s the reason we committed to him.”
Crochet went 6-12 with a 3.58 ERA last season, a bright spot on a Chicago team that lost 121 games. He threw 146 innings, which was double his previous career total since his debut in 2020.
Then Crochet was dealt to the Red Sox, and they made their long-term commitment to the 25-year-old earlier this week.
“Going back to when the trade went through, we knew Boston was a place where we would love to be long term,” Crochet said. “Credit to the front office for staying diligent, and my agency as well.”
Now the question is less about where he’ll pitch and more about how well. He’s off to a nice start in that regard.
“I can’t think of the last time I played baseball for pride. In college, you’re playing to get drafted, and once you’re in the big leagues, you’re playing to stay in the big leagues,” Crochet said. “So to have this security and feel like I’m playing to truly just win ballgames, it takes a lot of the riff-raff out of it.”
The news all around was good for Boston on Wednesday.
It reached a $60 million, eight-year deal with young infielder Kristian Campbell, and he went out and doubled twice against the Orioles.
And Rafael Devers ended a 21-at-bat hitless streak to start the season with an RBI double in the fifth inning. He finished with two hits and no strikeouts.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
LOS ANGELES — Aside from his ability to pitch and hit and stretch the boundaries of imagination, Shohei Ohtani has displayed another singular trait in his time in the major leagues: an ability to meet the moment. Or, perhaps, for the moment to meet him.
And so on Wednesday night, with his Los Angeles Dodgers looking to stay unbeaten, the score tied in the bottom of the ninth, and more than 50,000 fans standing and clenching the Ohtani bobbleheads they lined up hours in advance for, Ohtani approached the batter’s box — and his teammates expected greatness.
“He’s going to end this right here,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said he thought to himself.
“We knew,” starting pitcher Blake Snell said. “It’s just what he does.”
Validation came instantly. Ohtani stayed back on a first-pitch changeup from Raisel Iglesias near the outside corner and shot it toward straightaway center field, 399 feet away, for a walk-off home run, sending the Dodgers to a 6-5, come-from-behind victory over the reeling Atlanta Braves.
“I don’t think anybody didn’t expect him to hit a walk-off home run there,” Dodgers utility man Tommy Edman said. “It’s just a question of where he’d hit it.”
The Dodgers are now 8-0, topping the 1933 New York Yankees of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth for the longest winning streak to begin a season for a reigning champion. The Braves, meanwhile, are 0-7, the type of record no team has ever recovered from to make the playoffs. And Ohtani, with three home runs and a 1.126 OPS this season, just keeps meeting moments.
“He’s pretty good, huh?” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez said. “It’s Shohei. He’s going to do that. He’s going to do things better than that.”
On Aug. 23 last year, Ohtani reached the 40/40 club with a walk-off grand slam. Five days later, the Dodgers staged a second giveaway of his bobblehead — one that saw his now-famous dog, Decoy, handle the ceremonial first pitch — and Ohtani led off with a home run. On Sept. 19, Ohtani clinched his first postseason berth and ascended into the unprecedented 50/50 club with one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history — six hits, three homers, two steals and 10 RBIs. Barely two weeks later, he homered in his first playoff game.
When Ohtani came up on Wednesday, he had what he described as a simple approach.
“I was looking for a really good pitch to hit,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “If I didn’t get a good pitch to hit, I was willing to walk.”
Of course, though, he got a good pitch.
And, of course, he sent it out.
“You just feel that he’s going to do something special,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And I just like the way he’s not pressing. He’s in the strike zone, and when he does that, there’s just no one better.”
The Dodgers began their much-anticipated season with a couple of breezy wins over the Chicago Cubs from Japan, even though Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman did not play in them. They returned home, brought iconic rapper Ice Cube out to present the World Series trophy on one afternoon, received their rings on another and swept a three-game series against the Detroit Tigers. Then came the Braves, and the Dodgers swept them, too — even though Freeman, nursing an ankle injury caused from slipping in the shower, didn’t participate.
The Dodgers already have two walk-offs and six comeback wins this season.
Wednesday’s effort left Roberts “a little dumbfounded.”
A nightmarish start defensively, highlighted by two errant throws from Muncy, spoiled Snell’s start and put them behind 5-0 after the first inning and a half. But the Dodgers kept inching closer. They trailed by just two in the eighth and put runners on second and third with two out. Muncy came to bat with his batting average at just .083. He had used the ballyhooed “Torpedo” bat for his first three plate appearances, didn’t like how it altered his swing plane, grabbed his usual bat for a showdown against Iglesias and laced a game-tying double into the right-center-field gap.
An inning later, Ohtani ended it.
“Overall, not just tonight, there is a really good vibe within the team,” Ohtani said after recording his fourth career walk-off hit. “I just think that’s allowing us to come back in these games to win.”
The Dodgers’ 8-0 start has allowed them to stay just ahead of the 7-0 San Diego Padres and the 5-1 San Francisco Giants in the National League West. Tack on the Arizona Diamondbacks (4-2) and the Colorado Rockies (1-4), and this marks the first time in the divisional era that an entire division has combined for at least 25 wins and no more than seven losses, according to ESPN Research. The Dodgers’ and Padres’ starts mark just the fifth season in major league history with multiple teams starting 7-0 or better, and the first time since 2003.
The Dodgers famously overcame a 2-1 series deficit to vanquish the Padres in the NL Division Series last year, then rode that fight to their first full-season championship since 1988.
That fight hasn’t let up.
“It feels like this clubhouse is carrying a little bit of the attitude we had last year that we’re never out of a game and we’re resilient, and we’ve been carrying it into this season,” Muncy said. “It’s been fun to watch. The guys don’t give up. Bad things have happened, and no one’s really been down or out on themselves. Everyone’s just, ‘All right, here we go, next inning, let’s get after it.’ The whole team, top to bottom, has been doing that. It’s been making it really, really fun to play.”
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of death of the teenage son of former New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner, authorities in Costa Rica said Wednesday night.
Randall Zúñiga, director of the Judicial Investigation Agency, said 14-year-old Miller Gardner was tested for carboxyhemoglobin, a compound generated when carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin in the blood.
When carboxyhemoglobin saturation exceeds 50%, it is considered lethal. In Gardner’s case, the test showed a saturation of 64%.
“It’s important to note that adjacent to this room is a dedicated machine room, where it’s believed there may be some type of contamination toward these rooms,” Zúñiga said.
The head of the Costa Rican judicial police added that, during the autopsy, a “layer” was detected on the boy’s organs, which forms when there is a high presence of the poisonous gas.
Gardner died March 21 while staying with his family at a hotel on the Manuel Antonio beach in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific.
Asphyxiation was initially thought to have caused his death. After an autopsy was performed by the Forensic Pathology Section, that theory was ruled out.
Another line of investigation centered around whether the family had suffered food poisoning. Family members had reported feeling ill after dining at a nearby restaurant on the night of March 20 and received treatment from the hotel doctor.
Brett Gardner, 41, was drafted by the Yankees in 2005 and spent his entire major league career with the organization. The speedy outfielder batted .256 with 139 homers, 578 RBIs, 274 steals and 73 triples in 14 seasons from 2008 to 2021.