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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.

Previous installments: Toughest drivers | Greatest races | Best title fights | Best-looking cars | Worst-looking cars | Biggest cheaters | Biggest what-ifs | Weirdest racetracks


Five best racetracks

As we continue to roll through our NASCAR 75th anniversary celebration via our weekly top-five all-time greatest lists, we also fight to properly roll through the best racing line, seeking to achieve the perfect balance between crazy and awesome. Like Cale Yarborough qualifying at Daytona in 1983, one lap you can be running 200-plus mph and the next you can totally lose the handle and wind up airborne and upside down.

One week ago, we revealed our top five weirdest racetracks. So, it only makes sense to counter that goofiness with greatness. So, grab a helmet, strap those belts tight and follow the pace car out onto the asphalt (although, please not as close as Dale Earnhardt messing with Elmo Langley back in the day) as we present our top five all-time greatest NASCAR racetracks.

Honorable mention: Charlotte Speedway

No, not the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Not even the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval or the Charlotte Fairgrounds Speedway. Nope, just plain ol’ Charlotte Speedway, the three-quarter-mile red-clay oval located just southwest of sleepy downtown Charlotte.

It was dirty, uneven, as dry on one end as it was a mud bog on the other. It hosted a dozen Cup Series (then Strictly Stock) events from 1949 to 1956 and crowned eight winners, four of whom are already in the NASCAR Hall of Fame and two more who should be (ahem, Fonty Flock and Speedy Thompson).

The reason it makes this list, though, is because it hosted the first race of what has become the Cup Series and it was the perfectly imperfect place to do so. The track is long gone, but you can still find a historical marker at the site, located between razor wire-wrapped trucking depots and parking lots just north of Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

5. Talladega Superspeedway

This place has never made any sense. It’s too big. It’s too fast. It was built atop both an abandoned military airbase and Native American holy ground.

The 2.66-mile monster (which is just a weird measurement, by the way) with the 33-degree turns that measure 26 feet in height has ignited countless “Big One” crashes and even more big controversies. The place was so intimidating that, when it opened in 1969, the superstars of the sport staged a walkout, leaving the inaugural race to be run by journeyman racers called up from lower divisions by a defiant Big Bill France.

In the 54 years since, though, it has produced so many ridiculous finishes (see: Dale Sr. passing 18 cars in four laps to win in 2000) and ridiculous moments (see: Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning four in a row) and ridiculous records (Bill Elliott’s 212.808 mph lap in 1987 is still a NASCAR mark) that can’t be outrun even by an equally long parade of weird and bad Talladega tales. Speaking of those Talladega curses, here’s a list I compiled 15 years ago.

4. Martinsville Speedway

The only track to be included on the OG NASCAR Strictly Stock schedule alongside Charlotte Speedway in 1949 and has never left that calendar since (sorry, North Wilkesboro). This mega-flat, half-mile paper clip tucked into the hills of southern Virginia still very much feels and even smells like it did back when Red Byron won the first of the 149(!) NASCAR premier series races this fabled bullring has hosted, beginning 74 years ago next week.

Sure, it’s been paved since then, but like that day in September 1949, the train still creeps its way along the backstretch so the conductor can check who’s winning, the place is still total hell on brakes, and those famous Martinsville hot dogs are still just as good, and still just as pink. I wrote this love letter to all the above back in 2008.

3. Charlotte Motor Speedway

In 1960, when Curtis Turner and Bruton Smith bankrupted themselves building a mile-and-a-half oval in the middle of nowhere north of Charlotte (Turner even managed to earn himself a lifetime ban), they were viewed by many as foolish and reckless. In actuality, they were a pair of motorsports visionaries. NASCAR was moving into its so-called Speedway Era, beginning its long shift away from a short-track-packed near-nightly schedule in search of weekend venues that were literally, figuratively and financially bigger.

That day in 1960, the uncured asphalt came up in chunks to the point that racers had to wrap their rides in chicken wire to protect their radiators from tumbling blacktop projectiles.

Ever since, Charlotte Motor Speedway has been a future factory, from former speedway president Humpy Wheeler finding funding to get a very young Earnhardt and a very resisted Janet Guthrie onto his racetrack to innovations such as the first speedway lighting grid, the Speedway Club, the Turn 1 condos, the NASCAR All-Star Race and, yes, the Roval. Its double-dogleg D-shaped intermediate layout also became the model for an entire generation of racetracks, for better or worse.

CMS never sits still. Never has. Never will.

2. Darlington Raceway

How awesome is this place? It doesn’t have merely one cool nickname but two! “The Lady in Black” and “The Track Too Tough To Tame.”

Darlington was “Field of Dreams” long before “Shoeless” Joe Jackson wandered in out of the corn, the dream of entrepreneur Harold Brasington, who visited Indianapolis Motor Speedway and left so inspired that he decided to build a big ol’ racetrack in … the sandhills of South Carolina? Brasington plowed under his peanut crops amid whispers from locals that he had lost his mind and ended up with a sufficiently quirky 1.366-mile oval that was egg-shaped because he had had to work around a minnow pond a neighboring farmer refused to sell.

It was stock car racing’s first asphalt speedway, and although the layout has been slightly altered over the years, to most modern racers with any sense of stock car racing history, Darlington is the place and the Southern 500 is the race where they can truly see and feel how they might have measured up against NASCAR’s moonshine-soaked pioneers who took Darlington’s first green flag on Labor Day weekend 1950.

1. Daytona International Speedway

Yes, this is a very old-school list. And yes, if it weren’t for touchstone racetracks like Darlington and Martinsville, then the World Center of Racing would never have been born in 1959. Of all the top-five lists we have compiled so far, though, this might have been the easiest No. 1 ranking to decide.

That’s because in every corner of this planet, if you say the word “Daytona,” chances are someone in the room, no matter what language they speak, is going to know the name. And speaking of top-five lists, if you asked any longtime NASCAR fan or competitor to compile their roll call of greatest moments in stock car history, there is zero doubt that it would include at least one Daytona moment — and more likely multiple ones.

Lee Petty’s photo finish in 1959. David Pearson vs. Richard Petty in 1976. “The King” and “There’s a fight!” in 1979. Petty’s 200th win in 1984. Darrell Waltrip finally winning the 500 in 1989 with a “Thank God!” Earnhardt finally winning it in 1998 and the world’s longest high-five line. Dale Jr.’s emotional July win in 2001. Kevin Harvick vs. Mark Martin. All of the wild checkers-or-wreckers finishes of recent years.

It’s as simple as this. NASCAR visits so many amazing racetracks every year, and has visited so many countless more over all these decades, but there is only one axis upon which the entire NASCAR world revolves, and it’s that big, beautiful 2.5-mile oval on the Florida coast.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t such an easy decision. When we threw it out to the interwebs, the race between Darlington and Daytona was closer than Ricky Craven edging Kurt Busch

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Jays knock out Yankees, reach 1st ALCS since ’16

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Jays knock out Yankees, reach 1st ALCS since '16

NEW YORK — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer each drove in a run, and eight Toronto pitchers shut down the New York Yankees in a 5-2 victory Wednesday night that sent the Blue Jays to the American League Championship Series for the first time in nine years.

Nathan Lukes provided a two-run single and Addison Barger had three of Toronto’s 12 hits as the pesky Blue Jays, fouling off tough pitches and consistently putting the ball in play, bounced right back after blowing a five-run lead in Tuesday night’s loss at Yankee Stadium.

AL East champion Toronto took the best-of-five Division Series 3-1 and will host Game 1 in the best-of-seven ALCS on Sunday against the Detroit Tigers or Seattle Mariners.

Those teams are set to decide their playoff series Friday in Game 5 at Seattle.

Ryan McMahon homered for the wild-card Yankees, unable to stave off elimination for a fourth time this postseason as they failed to repeat as AL champions.

Despite a terrific playoff performance from Aaron Judge following his previous October troubles, the 33-year-old star slugger remains without a World Series ring. New York is still chasing its 28th title and first since 2009.

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Cubs use 4-run 1st inning to keep season alive

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Cubs use 4-run 1st inning to keep season alive

CHICAGO — If the Chicago Cubs could just start the game over every inning, they might get to the World Series.

For the third consecutive game in their National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, they scored runs in the first, only this time it was enough to squeak out a 4-3 win and stave off elimination. All four of their runs came in the opening inning.

“I’m going to tell our guys it’s the first inning every inning tomorrow,” manager Craig Counsell said with a smile after the game. “I think that’s our best formula right now, offensively.”

The Cubs scored three runs in the first inning in Game 2 but lost 7-3. They also scored first in Game 1, thanks to a Michael Busch homer, but lost 9-3. Busch also homered to lead off the bottom of the first in Game 3 on Wednesday after the Cubs got down 1-0. He became the first player in MLB history to hit a leadoff home run in two postseason games in the same series.

“From the moment I was placed in that spot, I thought why change what I do, just have a good at-bat, stay aggressive, trust my eyes,” Busch said.

Counsell added: “You can just tell by the way they manage the game, he’s become the guy in the lineup that everybody is thinking about and they’re pitching around him, and that’s a credit to the player. It really is.”

Going back to the regular season, Busch has seven leadoff home runs this season in just 54 games while batting first.

The Cubs weren’t done in Wednesday’s opening inning, as center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong came through with the bases loaded for a second time this postseason. In the wild-card round against the San Diego Padres last week, he singled home a run with a base hit. He did one better Wednesday, driving two in on a two-out single to right. That chased Chicago-area native Quinn Priester from the game and gave the Cubs a lead they would never relinquish.

“I’m pretty fortunate in a couple of these elimination games to just have pretty nice opportunities in front of me with guys on base, and I think that makes this job just a little bit easier sometimes,” Crow-Armstrong said.

Crow-Armstrong is known as a free swinger, but batting with the bases loaded gives him the opportunity to get a pitch in the strike zone. He made the most of it — though that would be the last big hit of the game for the Cubs. The eventual winning run scored moments later on a wild pitch.

“I thought we played with that urgency, especially in the first — we just did a great job in the first inning,” Counsell said. “We had really good at-bats.”

The Cubs sent nine men to the plate in the first while seeing 53 pitches, the most pitches seen by a team in the first inning of a playoff game since 1988, when pitch-by-pitch data began being tracked.

“We had more chances today than Game 2 but couldn’t get the big hit [later],” left fielder Ian Happ said. “That’ll come.”

The Cubs were down 1-0 after an unusual call. With runners on first and second in the top of the first, Brewers catcher William Contreras popped the ball up between the pitcher’s mound and first base but Busch couldn’t track the ball in the sun. The umpires did not call for the infield fly rule as it dropped safely, allowing runners to advance and the batter reach first base. Moments later, Christian Yelich scored on a sacrifice fly.

“The basic thing that we look for is ordinary effort,” umpire supervisor Larry Young told a pool reporter. “We don’t make that determination until the ball has reached its apex — the height — and then starts to come down.

“When it reached the height, the umpires determined that the first baseman wasn’t going to make a play on it, the middle infielder [Nico Hoerner] raced over and he wasn’t going to make a play on it, so ordinary effort went out the window at that point.”

The Brewers chipped away after getting down in that first inning but fell short in a big moment in the eighth when they loaded the bases following a leadoff double by Jackson Chourio. Cubs reliever Brad Keller shut the door, striking out Jake Bauers to end the threat.

Keller pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning to earn the save and keep the Cubs’ season alive. They are down 2-1 in the best-of-five series. Game 4 is Thursday night.

“That was a lot of fun to get in there and get four outs and come away with a win,” Keller said. “That was such a team effort there. We’re looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.”

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Báez leads Tigers breakout; Skubal on tap for G5

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Báez leads Tigers breakout; Skubal on tap for G5

DETROIT — For weeks, the Tigers have teetered on the edge of seeing their once promising season come to an abrupt stop. With an offensive breakout occurring just in time Wednesday, Detroit now finds itself in the position it hoped to be all along.

Javier Báez homered, stole a base and drove in four runs, leading a midgame offensive surge as the Tigers beat the Seattle Mariners 9-3 in Game 4 and evened the American League Division Series at 2-2.

Riley Greene hit his first career postseason homer, breaking a 3-3 tie to begin a four-run rally in the sixth that was capped by Báez’s two-run shot to left. Gleyber Torres also homered for Detroit, which had hit just two homers in six games this postseason entering Wednesday.

“I’m proud of our guys because today’s game was symbolic of how we roll, you know?” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s a lot of different guys doing something positive, multiple guys.”

After Seattle grabbed an early 3-0 lead, the Tigers plated three runs in the fifth to tie the score. Báez capped the rally with a 104 mph single a couple of pitches after he just missed a homer on a moon shot that soared just outside the left-field foul pole.

“We knew we had a lot of baseball left, a lot of innings left to play,” Báez said. “We believe, and we’re never out of it until that last out is made.”

Báez is hitting .346 in the postseason with a team-high nine hits, stirring memories of when he helped lead the Chicago Cubs to the 2016 World Series crown. These playoffs have been a high point of Báez’s Detroit career and continue a resurgent season after he hit .221 over his first three seasons with the Tigers.

“World Series champion all those years ago,” Torres said. “He knows how to play in those situations. I’m not surprised but just really happy. Everything he does for the team is really special.”

The Tigers flirted with disaster in the fourth inning when the Mariners loaded the bases with no outs after Hinch pulled starter Casey Mize, who struck out six over three innings, and inserted reliever Tyler Holton.

Kyle Finnegan came on to limit the Mariners to one run in the inning, keeping the game in play and setting the table for what had been an ailing offense. The comeback from the three-run deficit tied the largest postseason rally in Tigers history, a mark set three times before. The record was first set in the 1909 World Series.

Detroit entered the day hitting .191 during the playoffs, with homers accounting for just 17% of its run production. During the regular season, that number was 42%.

“I think hitting is contagious and not hitting is also kind of contagious, too,” said Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson, who chipped in with two hits and a run. “It’s a crazy game that we decided to play, but that’s why I love it so much.”

The deciding Game 5 is Friday in Seattle, and the ebullient Tigers rejoiced knowing who they have lined up to take the hill: reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, who has a 1.84 ERA with 23 strikeouts over 14⅔ innings in two starts this postseason.

After everything — the Tigers’ late-season swoon that cost them a huge lead in the AL Central and the offensive struggles during the playoffs that hadn’t quite yet knocked them out of the running — Detroit is one win from the ALCS, with the game’s best pitcher ready to take the ball.

“This is what competition is all about,” Skubal said. “This is why you play the game, for Game 5s. I think that’s going to bring out the best in everyone involved. That’s why this game is so beautiful.”

It’s the scenario the Tigers would have drawn up before the season, but even so, they know they can’t take Skubal’s consistent dominance for granted. Everyone can use a little help.

“We’re confident,” Torres said. “We know who is pitching that last game for us. But we can’t put all the effort on him.”

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