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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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2025 MLB All-Star rosters: Biggest snubs and other takeaways

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2025 MLB All-Star rosters: Biggest snubs and other takeaways

The initial 2025 MLB All-Star Game rosters are out, the product of the collaborative process between fans, players and the league. How did this annual confab do?

We already know that injuries will prevent some of these selectees from appearing in Atlanta, and replacement choices will be announced in the coming days. By the end of this post-selection period, we’ll wind up with something like 70 to 75 All-Stars for this season.

These first-draft rosters contain 65 players, the odd number stemming from the decision to send Clayton Kershaw to the festivities as a “Legend” pick. First reaction: Baseball’s newest member of the 3,000 strikeout club has earned everything he gets.

Now, on to the nitpicking.


American League

Biggest oversight: Joe Ryan, Minnesota Twins

The Twins’ lone representative on the initial rosters is outfielder Byron Buxton, a worthy selection. Ryan (8-4, 2.76 ERA) fell into a group of similar performers including Kansas City’s Kris Bubic and the Texas duo of Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi. Bubic and deGrom made it, which is great, and Bubic in particular is quite a story.

But Ryan and Eovaldi didn’t make it, and both were probably a little more deserving that Seattle’s Bryan Woo, whose superficial numbers (8-4, 2.77) are very close to Ryan’s. But Woo plays in a more friendly pitching park, and the under-the-hood metrics favor Ryan.

The main takeaway: If this is the biggest discrepancy, the process worked well.

Second-biggest oversight: Many-way tie between several hitters

The every-team-gets-a-player rule, along with positional requirements, always knocks out worthy performers from teams with multiple candidates. Thus, a few picks on the position side might have gone differently.

The Rays are playing so well they probably deserve more than one player. Their most deserving pick made it — infielder Jonathan Aranda — along with veteran second baseman Brandon Lowe. Infielders such as J.P. Crawford (Seattle), Isaac Paredes (Houston) and Zach McKinstry (Detroit) had good cases to make it ahead of Lowe, whose power numbers (19 homers, 54 RBIs) swayed the players.

While acknowledging that Gunnar Henderson has had a disappointing season, I still think he deserved to be the Orioles’ default pick instead of Ryan O’Hearn. But the latter was selected as the AL’s starting DH by the fans, and Baltimore doesn’t deserve two players. It’s a great story that O’Hearn will be a first-time All-Star just a couple of weeks before his 32nd birthday.

Other thoughts

• The default White Sox selection is rookie starter Shane Smith, a Rule 5 pick from Milwaukee last winter. Smith is my lowest-rated player on the AL squad, but he has been consistently solid. Adrian Houser, an in-season pickup, has been great for Chicago and has arguably produced more value than Smith. But I like honoring the rookie who has been there the whole campaign.

• The Athletics’ Jacob Wilson was elected as a starter and is easily the most deserving player from that squad. I’m not sure I see a second pick there, but Brent Rooker made it as a DH. Rooker has been fine, but his spot could have gone to one of the overlooked hitters already mentioned, or perhaps Kansas City’s Maikel Garcia.

• Houston’s Jeremy Pena is a deserving choice and arguably should be the AL’s starter at shortstop instead of Wilson. Alas, he’s on the injured list, and though reports say he might soon resume baseball activities, it’s likely Pena will be replaced. Any of the above-mentioned overlooked hitters will do.

• As for the starters, the fans do a great job nowadays. I disagreed with them on a couple of spots, though. I would have gone with a keystone combo of Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Pena rather than Gleyber Torres and Wilson, but I’d have them all on the team. And I would have definitely started Buxton over Javier Baez in the outfield.


National League

Biggest oversight: Juan Soto, New York Mets

Not sure how this happens, but I’m guessing Soto is a victim of his own standards. Yes, he signed a contract for an unfathomable amount of money, and so far, he hasn’t reinvented the game as a member of the Mets. He has just been lower-end Juan Soto, which is still one of the best players in the sport. His OBP is, as ever, north of .400, he leads the league in walks and it sure seems as if Pete Alonso has very much enjoyed hitting behind him.

The All-Star Game was invented for players like Soto, and though you might leave out someone like him if he is having a truly poor season, that’s not the case here. It is kind of amazing that he didn’t make it, while MacKenzie Gore and James Wood — both part of the trade that sent Soto from Washington to San Diego — did. They deserve it, and you can make a strong argument that a third player the Nats picked up in the trade — CJ Abrams — does as well. But Soto deserves it too.

Finally, the Marlins’ most-deserving pick is outfielder Kyle Stowers, who indeed ended up as their default selection. But he probably ended up with Soto’s slot.

Second-biggest oversight: Andy Pages, Los Angeles Dodgers

It’s hard to overlook anyone on the Dodgers, but somehow Pages slipped through the cracks despite his fantastic all-around first half for the defending champs.

It was just a numbers game. I’ve got five NL outfielders rated ahead of Pages, and all but Soto made it, so no additional quibbles there. The fans voted in Ronald Acuna Jr. to start at his home ballpark. Having Acuna there in front of the fans in Atlanta makes sense. But he has played only half of the first half.

Other thoughts

• The shortstop position is loaded in the NL, but the only pure shortstops to make it were starter Francisco Lindor and Elly De La Cruz. Both are good selections, but the Phillies’ Trea Turner has been just as outstanding. Abrams and Arizona’s Geraldo Perdomo are also deserving. The position has been so good that the player with the most career value currently playing shortstop in the NL — Mookie Betts — barely merits a mention. Betts has had a subpar half, but who will be surprised if he’s topping this list by the end of the season?

• Both leagues had three pitching staff slots given to relievers. The group in the AL (Aroldis Chapman, Josh Hader and Andres Munoz) was much more clear-cut than the one in the NL, which ended up with the Giants’ Randy Rodriguez, the Mets’ Edwin Diaz and the Padres’ Jason Adam. It made sense to honor someone from San Diego’s dominant bullpen, and you could have flipped a coin to pick between Adam and Adrian Morejon.

• Picking these rosters while meeting all the requirements and needs for teams and positions is hard. I don’t have any real issue with the pitchers selected for the NL. One of them is Atlanta’s Chris Sale, who is on the IL and will have to be replaced. My pick would be Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez (7-2, 2.68 ERA).

• And for the starting position players, Alonso should have gotten the nod over Freddie Freeman at first base, though it will be great to see Freeman’s reception when he takes the field in Atlanta. For that matter, the Cubs’ Michael Busch has had a better first half than Freeman at this point, though that became true only in the past few days, thanks to his explosion at Wrigley Field. I would have gone with Turner at short, but it’s close. And I’d have started Wood in place of Acuna.

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Nats seek ‘fresh approach,’ fire Martinez, Rizzo

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Nats seek 'fresh approach,' fire Martinez, Rizzo

The last-place Washington Nationals fired president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez, the team announced Sunday.

Rizzo, 64, and Martinez, 60, won a World Series with the Nationals in 2019, but the team has floundered in recent years. This season, the Nationals are 37-53 and stuck at the bottom of the National League East after getting swept by the Boston Red Sox this weekend at home. Washington hasn’t finished higher than fourth in the division since winning the World Series.

“On behalf of our family and the Washington Nationals organization, I first and foremost want to thank Mike and Davey for their contributions to our franchise and our city,” principal owner Mark Lerner said in a statement. “Our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to Washington, D.C.

“While we are appreciative of their past successes, the on-field performance has not been where we or our fans expect it to be. This is a pivotal time for our club, and we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward.”

Mike DeBartolo, the club’s senior vice president and assistant general manager, was named interim GM on Sunday night. DeBartolo will oversee all aspects of baseball operations, including the MLB draft. An announcement will be made on the interim manager Monday, a day before the club begins a series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Rizzo has been the top decision-maker in Washington since 2013, and Martinez has been on board since 2018. Under Rizzo’s leadership, the team made the postseason four times: in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019. The latter season was Martinez’s lone playoff appearance.

“When our family assumed control of the team, nearly 20 years ago, Mike was the first hire we made,” Lerner said. “Over two decades, he was with us as we went from a fledging team in a new city to World Series champion. Mike helped make us who we are as an organization, and we’re so thankful to him for his hard work and dedication — not just on the field and in the front office, but in the community as well.”

The Nationals are in the midst of a rebuild that has moved slower than expected, though the team didn’t augment its young core much during the winter. Led by All-Stars James Wood and MacKenzie Gore, Washington has the second-youngest group of hitters in MLB and the sixth-youngest pitching staff.

The team lost 11 straight games in a forgettable stretch last month. And during a 2-10 run in June, Washington averaged just 2.5 runs. Since June 1, the Nationals have scored one run or been shut out seven times. In Sunday’s 6-4 loss to Boston, they left 15 runners on base.

There was industry speculation over the winter that the Nationals would spend money on free agents for the first time in several years, but that never materialized. Instead, the team made minor moves, signing free agents Josh Bell and Michael Soroka, trading for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe and re-signing closer Kyle Finnegan. Now, the hope is a new management team, both on and off the field, can help change the franchise’s fortunes.

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Kershaw gets special ASG invite; no Soto, Betts

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Kershaw gets special ASG invite; no Soto, Betts

The rosters for the 2025 MLB All-Star Game will feature 19 first-timers — and one legend — as the pitchers and reserves were announced Sunday for the July 15 contest at Truist Park in Atlanta.

Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw, a three-time Cy Young Award winner who made his first All-Star team in 2011, was named to his 11th National League roster as a special commissioner’s selection.

Kershaw, who became only the fourth left-hander to amass 3,000 career strikeouts, is 4-0 with a 3.43 ERA in nine starts after beginning the season on the injured list. He joins Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera as a legend choice, after the pair of sluggers were selected in 2022.

Kershaw said he didn’t want to discuss the selection Sunday.

Among the first-time All-Stars announced Sunday: Dodgers teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto; Washington Nationals outfielder James Wood and left-hander MacKenzie Gore; Houston Astros ace Hunter Brown and shortstop Jeremy Pena; and Chicago Cubs 34-year-old left-hander Matthew Boyd.

“It’ll just be cool being around some of the best players in the game,” Wood said.

First-time All-Stars previously elected to start by the fans include Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson, Baltimore Orioles designated hitter Ryan O’Hearn and Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Overall, the 19 first-time All-Stars is a drop from the 32 first-time selections on the initial rosters in 2024.

Kershaw would be the sentimental choice to start for the National League, although Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, who leads NL pitchers in ERA and WAR, might be in line to start his second straight contest. Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler, a three-time All-Star, is 9-3 with a 2.17 ERA after Sunday’s complete-game victory and also would be a strong candidate to start.

“I think it would be stupid to say no to that. It’s a pretty cool opportunity,” Skenes said about the possibility of being asked to start by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “I didn’t make plans over the All-Star break or anything. So, yeah, I’m super stoked.”

Kershaw has made one All-Star start in his career, in 2022 at Dodger Stadium.

Among standout players not selected were New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto, who signed a $765 million contract as a free agent in the offseason, and Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, who had made eight consecutive All-Star rosters since 2016.

Soto got off to a slow start but was the National League Player of the Month in June and entered Sunday ranked sixth in the NL in WAR among position players while ranking second in OBP, eighth in OPS and third in runs scored.

The players vote for the reserves at each position and selected Wood, Corbin Carroll of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fernando Tatis Jr. of the San Diego Padres as the backup outfielders. Kyle Stowers also made it as a backup outfielder as the representative for the Miami Marlins.

Unless Soto later is added as an injury replacement, he’ll miss his first All-Star Game since his first full season in 2019.

The Dodgers lead all teams with five representatives: Kershaw, Yamamoto and starters Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith. The AL-leading Detroit Tigers (57-34) and Mariners have four each.

Tigers ace Tarik Skubal will join AL starters Riley Greene, Gleyber Torres and Javier Baez, while Raleigh, the AL’s starting catcher, will be joined by Seattle teammates Bryan Woo, Andres Munoz and Julio Rodriguez.

Earning his fifth career selection but first since 2021 is Texas Rangers righty Jacob deGrom, who is finally healthy after making only nine starts in his first two seasons with the Rangers and is 9-2 with a 2.13 ERA. He has never started an All-Star Game, although Skubal or Brown would be the favorite to start for the AL.

The hometown Braves will have three All-Stars in Acuna, pitcher Chris Sale (his ninth selection, tied with Freeman for the second most behind Kershaw) and first baseman Matt Olson. The San Francisco Giants had three pitchers selected: Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and reliever Randy Rodriguez.

The slumping New York Yankees ended up with three All-Stars: Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Max Fried. The Mets also earned three All-Star selections: Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz.

“Red carpet, that’s my thing,” Chisholm said. “I do have a ‘fit in mind.”

Rosters are expanded from 26 to 32 for the All-Star Game. They include starters elected by fans, 17 players (five starting pitchers, three relievers and a backup for each position) chosen in a player vote and six players (four pitchers and two position players) selected by league officials. Every club must be represented.

Acuna, Wood and Raleigh are the three All-Stars who have so far committed to participating in the Home Run Derby.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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