We are closing in on the final handful of weeks of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, the stock car series’ 75th-anniversary campaign. To celebrate, each week through the end of the season, Ryan McGee is presenting his top five favorite things about the sport.
Top five best-looking cars? Check. Top five toughest drivers? We’ve got it. Top five mustaches? There can be only one, so maybe not.
Without further ado, our 75 favorite things about NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of stock car racing.
Top five toughest drivers
We drop the green flag over our world 600-ish NASCAR 75 greatest lists not with the greatest drivers (we will get to that later this fall) or greatest champions (yes, we’ll be doing that one, too). Instead, we present our first fast five, and it is a list of the dudes who would most likely break me in half if we did not include them on some sort of NASCAR 75 list very early on.
I’m referring to the Paul Bunyans of stock car racing. The most Herculean of hot shoes. Those who could have just have easily fit walking the hallways of Avengers Tower as they did striding through the garage area at Darlington Raceway. Their bones and muscle fibers seemingly made from the same steel used to construct their racing machines.
So, without further ado, adieu, ahem, here are our picks for NASCAR’s five toughest drivers.
Honorable Mention: Bud Moore
The kingpin of NASCAR’s highly underrated Spartanburg, South Carolina, posse, Moore never drove in a Cup Series event but became a legendary owner and mechanic, winning 63 races and a pair of championships over nearly four decades and earning election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s second-ever class in 2011.
On June 6, 1944, 19-year-old Moore hit Utah Beach as part of the Allies’ D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. As his friends and fellow Army draftees died around him, Moore nearly drowned when he stepped into an underwater crater. Over the next 17 months, he fought under General George Patton throughout the Big Push into Europe, including Cherbourg, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris, and his way across Germany and into Czechoslovakia, where he caught three enemy bullets in the left leg. One day, while on patrol in a Jeep with only one other soldier, Moore flushed out and captured an entire unit of Nazis, four officers and 15 enlisted men, for which he earned the first of his two Bronze Stars. He was also awarded five Purple Hearts.
Until his death in 2017, he bristled whenever NASCAR media members used any sort of war or battle metaphors when referring to the action on the racetrack. “Racing ain’t war,” he’d growl. “War is hell.”
5. Kenny Schrader
If this were a list of the beloved racers among their peers, Schrader — that’s what everyone calls him, just Schrader — would be on this list, too. Why? Because he has long been the epitome of the greatest compliment that any driver can bestow upon a colleague: He’s a racer’s racer. The man turned 68 on May 29, and how did he celebrate? By finishing fourth in the DIRTcar UMP Modifieds A-Main at Indiana’s Lawrenceburg Speedway. As of now, he’s scheduled to run 57 events over 17 different series, including SRX Thursday Night Thunder on ESPN … and that’s just the events we know about. He ran 763 Cup Series events from 1983 to 2013, winning four times and also suffering a YouTube’s worth of CGI-looking crashes, from a Talladega barrel roll in 1995 to a Daytona Duels crash in ’98 that is still perhaps the hardest hit I’ve ever witnessed live.
But Schrader is on this list because of something else I’ve seen in person: the large section of thumb missing from his left hand. At Evergreen Speedway for the sixth-ever NASCAR Trucks race (he won the third one), the man with the day job racing for Hendrick Motorsports was fiddling with an alternator belt when a crew member fired up the engine. That belt took off the top half of his thumb. He joked with the team that he now had “one less nail to bite” and said he was going to put it under his pillow that night to see if he could maybe “get some money from the Finger Fairy.” It wasn’t sewn back on because, he explained, “It was too small a chunk to try and save.” In his first race back, the grueling Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, he led 169 laps and was in the lead late before a blown engine ended his night early.
4. Ricky Rudd
The man they call “the Rooster” raced alongside Schrader throughout the 1980s and ’90s and has always indeed been, as they say back in Chesapeake, Virginia, tougher than woodpecker lips. Rudd, who is a nominee for this year’s soon-to-be-elected NASCAR Hall of Fame class, won 23 Cup Series races and in 1998 was voted onto the coveted 50 greatest drivers list compiled for NASCAR’s 50th anniversary.
I personally have seen Rudd bend roll bar steel with his bare hands while trying to repair his Ford after a wreck. I was also standing in his pits in ’98 when he won at Martinsville Speedway amid a surface-of-Mercury heatwave kind of day, even after his in-car cooling systems had failed and his skin was covered in heat blisters. When the team stuffed a water hose into his firesuit during a pit stop, they’d unknowingly left the black hose in the sun, so the water that poured down his back was practically boiling. He said at the time, “I didn’t yell at them because I knew it was an accident.”
But the most legendary Rooster Rudd moment happened in 1984. During what was then known as the Busch Clash, Rudd’s Bud Moore-owned Ford became airborne as it rolled out of Turn 4, and once it came back to earth rolled over seven times. In the crash, which long predated the HANS device that stabilizes drivers’ heads and keeps them from smashing around the cockpit in an accident, Rudd’s head and face became so swollen that his eyelids were mashed shut. So, for the Daytona 500 one week later, the crew used duct tape to pull his cheeks down and create an opening that his zombie-like blackened eyeballs could see out. He finished seventh in the Great American Race. The following weekend, his eye sockets once again pried open, he held off Darrell Waltrip to win at Richmond.
Reminder: 2023 @NASCARHall vote is next week and Ricky Rudd is a nominee. Here’s the Rooster with his eyelids taped open at ’84 Daytona 500, face swollen from a wreck in the Clash a week earlier. He finished 7th. The next week at Richmond he – still taped up – won. #NASCAR75pic.twitter.com/xdxS1HrIAT
Because “the King” is so smooth and so cool, it is easy to forget that hidden inside that legendarily lanky frame lies an indestructible skeleton that would wow Wolverine. His Royal Fastness walked away from two of the most spectacular accidents in NASCAR’s 75 years, both televised nationally, in the days when not all races were.
The first was in 1970 at Darlington, when his Plymouth Road Runner hit the knee-high pit road wall with such head-on force that it sent chunks of concrete flying into the infield, one bouncing off NASCAR Hall of Fame writer Tom Higgins. As ABC Sports legend Jim McKay watched the car tumbling and Petty’s unconscious body being flung farther out of the window with each rollover, he was convinced Petty was dead. He wasn’t. In fact, as the ambulance hauled him away, “I had to sit up in my stretcher and tell the driver how to get to the hospital because he didn’t know how to get out of the dang racetrack,” Petty joked. That crash led to NASCAR finally mandating window nets.
In 1988, his Pontiac was shredded into scrap as it rolled down the Daytona frontstretch and up against the catchfence. As wife Lynda ran to the infield care center, crew members and a clergyman all stopped her to say that he was OK. “I thought, ‘They are lying to me. He’s dead. He’s got to be dead,'” she said. He was not. And it was also not the family’s first infield care center surprise. That came after a race at Pocono Raceway in 1980. Convinced he had broken his neck via another big fence-wrecking tumble, when the doctor hung Petty’s X-rays on the wall, he pointed to some older bone scars and asked the seven-time Cup Series champ, “When did you break your neck before?” Replied The King, “I didn’t know I had broke it before. I probably broke it sometime when I broke something else, and [that] hurt worse. Your body can only hurt one place at a time.”
2. Dale Earnhardt
If you are surprised to read this man’s name on this list, then I’m not sure why you’re even reading this at all. First of all, before he was “The Intimidator” or “the Man in Black,” his nickname, as bestowed upon him by Wrangler Jeans, was “One Tough Customer.” Earnhardt was so tough that few can recall seeing him actually fight anyone, and yet everyone always did whatever they had to in order to avoid an altercation with him because they were so convinced he could kick their ass.
“It’s the damndest thing I ever saw,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said, shaking his head. “Dad would do something on the racetrack that would make even the toughest guys super pissed. And then those same guys … would go to confront Dad, and he would just look at them or squeeze the back of their neck like he would do, and they would end up just saying, ‘Oh, it’s cool, Dale. We’re good,’ And then they’d walk away! How big of a badass do you have to be to have that kind of effect on people?”
Well, Junior, I’d say the kind of guy who spent his time away from the track voluntarily knocking down trees with bulldozers and picking up baby cows and carrying them around like bags of groceries. Or the kind of guy who broke his collarbone at Talladega in 1996 and then came back to win the pole and nearly win the race on a road course at Watkins Glen. Or the guy who in ’82 broke his leg at Pocono but kept it a secret because he didn’t want his team owner (Bud Moore!) to replace him. He had screws placed in that leg and later that year one of them came loose, so he put a rag between his teeth for something to bite down on and tapped the screw back in himself. He also survived a horse crash on the side of a mountain in New Mexico and climbed out of the window of his Chevy in the middle of a race at Richmond to scrape mud off the windshield, driving with his knee under caution.
1. Cale Yarborough
So, who in the wide wide world of NASCAR could possibly be tougher than a man named “One Tough Customer”?
How about a guy who survived a skydive after his parachute failed to open properly? True story, 1958 in Jacksonville, Florida, Yarborough was member of a stunt team when he jumped from 5,000 feet and bounced off the ground, suffering a chipped shoulder.
How about a guy who survived a lightning strike? True story, he was a kid standing in the family farmhouse when a bolt struck the ground outside, bounced into the house and blew him across the room, unconscious.
Rattlesnake bite? Yep. Right behind his toe. If his uncle hadn’t tied a tourniquet around Cale’s foot and rushed him to the doctor, he likely would have died.
Fending off a bear while piloting an airplane, a la Mission Impossible? Oh, hell yes. Cale had always wanted a pet bear (because of course he did) and was flying the sedated ursine in the box in the back of his self-piloted prop plane. The bear woke up early and was making quick work of the box before Yarborough got landed and could get it back to napping.
Yarborough was also launched out of Darlington Raceway and down a hill mid-race, dramatically turned his car upside down solo at Daytona shortly after breaking the 200 mph barrier in qualifying … and then won the race in a backup car. Oh, yeah, he was also involved in NASCAR’s most iconic fistfight, slugging it out with Bobby and Donnie Allison on live television at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500.
As the great Barney Hall used to say on MRN Radio, “Cale Yarborough is tougher than a locust post.” I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds pretty dang tough to me.
MILWAUKEE — The Cincinnati Reds lost 1-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday night to become only the second team in the live-ball era (since 1920) to lose three consecutive 1-0 games.
The Reds joined the Philadelphia Phillies, who lost three straight in the same fashion in 1960, according to ESPN Research.
“Nobody’s happy with what’s happened the last three games,” Reds manager Terry Francona said after the string of 1-0 losses continued in the opener of a four-game series at Milwaukee. “We’ll figure it out together. I feel strongly about that.”
Cincinnati’s lineup showcased its potential Monday in a 14-3 victory over the Texas Rangers, but the Reds haven’t scored since.
Milwaukee’s Nestor Cortes shut down Cincinnati on Thursday, allowing one hit, striking out six and walking two over six innings.
Cincinnati’s Nick Lodolo gave up four hits and one unearned run in 6⅔ innings Thursday, but he took the loss because the Reds mustered just two hits.
“It’s part of the game, you know?” Lodolo said. “I’ll be honest with you. Obviously I want us to score, but I’m not really thinking about it. I’ve got to do my job at the end of the day, regardless. We’ll turn it around. I guarantee that.”
That’s the attitude Francona wants to see from his pitchers as Cincinnati’s hitters try to break out of their slump.
“We’re not going to have a situation where it’s ‘us’ when we win and it’s ‘they’ when we lose,” Francona said. “We’ll do this together.”
Francona said there’s no common thread between the games that explains his lineup’s struggles. The Reds have faced different styles of pitchers each time.
Eovaldi is a veteran right-hander who went the distance while allowing four hits and no walks. Leiter’s a hard-throwing rookie right-hander. Cortes, a veteran left-hander, doesn’t have the velocity of Eovaldi or Leiter but effectively mixed his cutter and changeup with his fastball.
Cincinnati’s struggles Thursday may have been particularly frustrating because Cortes looked so awful in his last start, a 20-9 loss to the New York Yankees. Cortes allowed homers on each of his first three pitches that day and ended up yielding eight hits and five walks in two innings of a game that drew attention to the Yankees’ use of “torpedo bats.”
The Reds made Cortes look like an entirely different pitcher.
“It was embarrassing, what happened to me last time,” Cortes said. “I think, as a starter, you’ve got 30 or 32 of these. There’s going to be a lot of bad ones throughout the way. You’ve just got to learn how to brush them off and go to the next one. That’s what I did.”
The Reds’ lone hit off Cortes came from Jose Trevino, who delivered a one-out double in the third off his former Yankees teammate. Cincinnati’s only other hit Thursday was a single by Jeimer Candelario off Elvis Peguero in the seventh.
Cincinnati has a combined nine hits, three walks and 27 strikeouts during the skid.
“To be totally honest, you see this all the time throughout a baseball season,” Trevino said. “Pitchers will pick up the hitters and the hitters will pick up the pitchers. It will all switch at some point. We’re going to need them. They’re going to need us. And at some point, we’re all going to be together. That’s just how the baseball season goes.
“Right now, our pitchers are doing really well and our hitters, we’re grinding. It’s not like we’re out there trying to give outs away. We’re out there putting some good at-bats together. We’re going to turn this thing around. I have full confidence in this team.”
The move is retroactive to Monday. He hasn’t played since Saturday and is 3-for-12 this season with two home runs and four RBIs.
The incident happened at home during the Dodgers’ off day. Freeman’s wife had to drive him to Dodger Stadium on Sunday for a three-hour treatment session. By the time it was over, he was able to drive himself home. An X-ray showed no serious damage.
Freeman sprained his right ankle on a play at first base in late September and struggled in the first two rounds of the postseason, but it was hardly evident during the World Series. He homered in the first four games and had 12 RBIs, earning the World Series MVP award as the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in five games.
He had debridement surgery in December to remove loose bodies in the ankle.
“We all tell him every day: ‘Hey, we want to be you when we grow up,'” Chisholm said after Judge became the third-fastest New York Yankees player to reach 500 extra-base hits with a three-run homer in the first inning of Thursday night’s 9-7 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
And the two players who reached the mark in fewer games than Judge? Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig.
“When I’m an old man coming to Old-Timers Day, I can look back and we can joke about it and laugh about it,” Judge said.
Coming off his second American League MVP award, Judge fell a triple short of the cycle and is hitting .417 with five homers and 15 RBIs in the first six games this season. He has 320 homers, 175 doubles and five triples in 999 games, and only DiMaggio (853) and Gehrig (869) reached 500 extra-base hits in fewer games among Yankees.
“I feel like he’s still getting there, which is remarkable,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s that part of me that takes him for granted a little bit. I just feel like he should get an extra-base hit every time. I kind of say it out loud just to try and remind myself what we’re watching every day.”
Judge lined a 1-1 fastball from Merrill Kelly at 112.1 mph to the opposite field and into the Yankees’ bullpen for a 3-0 lead. He added a run-scoring single in the fourth inning as the Yankees moved ahead 7-3 and hit a 111.3 mph double in the sixth. He also flied out and hit a 109.5 mph groundout.
“I’m like, did you miss that one?” Boone recalled, laughing. “I catch myself having these ridiculous conversations with him sometimes, just because he keeps setting the bar so darn high.”
Judge knows he’s in for ribbing when he singles or doubles.
“He gives me a little smirk when I get on base like that,” he said.
Judge also stole his first base of the season, as did Chisholm. Judge swiped 10 last year to Chisholm’s 40.
“I told him I was going to catch him in stolen bases this year,” Judge said playfully.
“He’s starting to steal bags now. It’s just getting ridiculous out of him, man,” Chisholm said.
Chisholm and Trent Grisham hit two-run homers off Kelly (1-1), who allowed a career-high nine runs, nine hits and three walks in 3 2/3 innings. Chisholm is hitting .292 with four homers and eight RBIs.
“I’m OK compared to him. I’m trying to get to his level right now,” Chisholm said of Judge. “I told him I’m not going to try to fall behind him too far. I got to keep up with him.”
New York had 22 homers on a 4-2 opening homestand, five more than any other team ever hit in its first six games. Even though it was game No. 6, the Yankees felt an urgency after losing the Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Big G said a couple words before the game, just about this was our home turf. We got to go out there and we don’t get swept at home,” he said of Giancarlo Stanton. “Guys took that to heart.”
Carlos Carrasco (1-0) got his first Yankees win, giving up three runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings. After New York opened a 9-3 lead, Geraldo Perdomo hit a seventh-inning grand slam off Ryan Yarbrough. Luke Weaver got four outs for his first save this season, ending Arizona’s three-game winning streak.
Judge repeatedly refers to last year’s World Series loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It weighs on him far more than historical accomplishments.
“Especially after last season where we weren’t able to finish the job, guys are motivated to go out and do something special,” he said. “It starts every game you play.”