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Tuesday, March 26, was supposed to be a routine morning at the resurrected North Wilkesboro Speedway. The legendary 0.625-mile short track is carved into the foothills that rise from the red dirt northwestern corner of North Carolina, where the Piedmont region gives way to the Appalachian Mountains. The NASCAR All-Star Race, which takes the green flag Sunday night, was still eight weeks away, what should have been a comfortable span for the speedway ground crews that were starting the process of waking the 77-year-old bullring from its wintertime slumber. The drone of leaf blowers echoed off the crusty concrete frontstretch grandstand.

Then the machines fell silent.

Steve Swift was there, up from his office at Charlotte Motor Speedway, headquarters of Speedway Motorsports Inc., owner of a portfolio of NASCAR facilities including North Wilkesboro.

“One of the crew came to us and said, ‘Hey man, we might have a problem here,'” remembers Swift, SMI’s vice president of operations and development, aka The Guy Who Makes Sure the Racetracks Work Properly.

“We all ran up there and there was a foot-and-a-half crack in the grandstand, where we had taken some of the old seats out to do some maintenance work. Next thing you know, we take a look through that hole and it’s a not a hole. It’s a cavity. I mean, you could put a Ford pickup truck in there. I thought, this is a cave. Well, that isn’t good.”

Not good for track operators, sure. But for everyone else, be they NASCAR fans, historians, people who love liquor, or Swift’s coworkers who are in the business of promoting races, that hole in the grandstand was awesome. Like, Indiana Jones awesome.

Was it a moonshine cave?

For those who do not know, a quick primer on the intertwined, inebriated history of NASCAR and Wilkes County, North Carolina. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Carolinas were settled largely by Scots-Irish immigrants, who brought their ways of distilling homemade whiskey across the pond with them. The process, in short, is that one heats up a mixture of corn mash and water in a large vat, captures the steam via a system of twisted pipes, and collects the resulting clear 150 proof alcohol into containers for distribution and consumption.

Decades of battling with the government over the taxation of that liquor pushed the majority of the liquid cooking into the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. Why? Because the red clay soil was perfect for growing the ingredients, and the endless rolling hills provided all sorts of nooks and crannies where distillery rigs could be secretly built and fired up under the cloak of night.

When the United States Congress passed the 18th Amendment in 1920, banning all alcohol sales, illegal moonshining became instantly and massively lucrative. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, federal agents — aka revenuers — were still charged with enforcing the taxation of homemade liquor. And there was a lot of it. Thousands of bottles of moonshine were produced daily in Wilkes County alone, waiting to be sold and hauled out of those mountains to buyers in the trunks of tricked-out cars.

A single load of 22 cases produced about $110 profit, nearly $1,300 in 2024 dollars. Most of those delivery vehicles were Ford sedans, retrofitted with high-horsepower Indy 500-worthy engines and smoothly bouncing around on custom spring suspension systems. That allowed moonshine runners to outpace would-be arresting offices by slinging their machines through zigzaggy mountain roads, all while loaded down with hundreds of pounds of liquid weight sloshing around in crates of mason jars and plastic jugs.

When the men piloting those machines inevitably began arguing over who had the fastest rides, they started holding races to find out. That’s why the North Wilkesboro Speedway was plowed out of the dirt. Stock car racing — and ultimately, NASCAR — was born.

But in between all of those deliveries and all of that racing, all of that liquor had to be kept somewhere.

“That was the biggest problem, was where to put it all after we’d made it,” NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson explained during a drive around then-dilapidated North Wilkesboro Speedway in December 1999. Johnson, who grew up in nearby Ronda, North Carolina, drove his first race at the track in 1949, when he was just 17 years old. His father, Glenn Johnson Sr., was perhaps the most prolific moonshiner in the region, as proven one day in 1935.

“The federal guys came into the house. I was 4 years old. It was me, my mom, daddy, and my four brothers and sisters living there. They found boxes of whiskey in every room of the house. The kitchen. Under the porch. Every single bedroom. Everywhere. Because we didn’t have nowhere else to hide. You just put wherever you could until it was time to haul it off to somebody.”

The feds found 7,254 cases of moonshine stuffed into every corner of the Johnson house, the largest illegal liquor seizure ever seen on dry land. On that cold, rainy day in ’99, standing next to the old speedway that had been shuttered nearly four years, Johnson pointed into the mountains … and wait … did he point toward the racetrack itself?

“I know I built about a thousand stills in my lifetime. That’s a lot of whiskey. We hid the stills and we hid the whiskey everywhere. Anywhere where we thought someone might not look. Some of ’em was pretty much right under everybody’s nose.”

Or perhaps under their butts.

Back in Section O, Row 7, Swift and his team started peeling back the concrete like the top of a Spam can. As they did, he couldn’t help but think of a warning given to his crew in 2022, when they started the seemingly impossible process of resurrecting the racetrack for its first Cup Series event since 1996.

“During the construction process we were working on the suites that were that were left from back in the day, the ones that sit up above that main grandstand on the frontstretch,” Swift says of the buildings that were basically double-wide trailers atop stilts that tower over the modest sixteen 20-row sections of seats that line the frontstretch.

The hill that serves as their foundation was made from dirt that was piled up during the track’s construction in 1947, the oval famously laid lopsided. The frontstretch runs downhill and the backstretch uphill because track founder Enoch Staley couldn’t afford to make it perfectly flat.

“When we started running equipment up that hill, Paul Call came up here and warned us that we needed to be really careful because there were things underneath that grandstand that might cause that equipment to fall through,” said Swift.

Paul Call was the caretaker and unofficial welcome director for North Wilkesboro Speedway. He lived in a house adjacent the racetrack and started working there in the 1960s for Staley. During most of the 26-plus years that the bullring sat empty, he was its only employee, mowing the grass and telling stories to anyone who stopped by to take a look at the place as it slowly disintegrated.

In Wilkes County, the surname Call is like Smith. It’s everywhere. See: Willie Clay Call, aka “The Uncatchable,” who streaked through the hills around the racetrack in his liquor-packed 1961 Chrysler New Yorker. Paul Call saw every single NASCAR event run at North Wilkesboro, including last year’s All-Star revival. He died four months later, taking the secret of exactly what was beneath the grandstand with him.

When Swift spelunked his way into the chasm, he expected to find evidence of a sinkhole. They aren’t very common in the Carolina high country, but that had to be it, right? After all, this was the racetrack that had been plagued by infamously awful drainage issues, including the 1979 Holly Farms 400, which had to be postponed two weeks because of a gully-washer of a rain shower that canceled pole qualifying, but also caused the surfacing of — in the words of the Charlotte Observer — “millions of earthworms” that squirmed out of the dirt of the soaked infield to cover the asphalt racing surface with slime and also completely clogged the pipes that had been installed to whisk away the water.

Instead of water, mud or even a handful of nightcrawlers, Swift, a construction guy, found just that. Construction. They ran sinkhole tests, even pumping water into the hole to see where it went, hoping to trace any potential paths of erosion that might create future grandstand collapse. Instead, the hole filled up like a cement pond and the water had to be pumped back out.

“We found a wall that had been placed and some columns that were underneath, stuff you don’t find inside of what is supposed to just be a dirt bank,” Swift recalls, still audibly shocked. “There was things in place there that just didn’t appear as something that had happened over time. This was a purpose-built structure.”

But for what purpose? Swift still doesn’t know for sure. Though he does sound like a man who has a pretty good idea.

“Down in there, all I could think about was Paul Call. He tried to warn us.”

Swift’s job is typically an endless race against time, especially when he discovers serious structural issues within a facility that is preparing to host a big league event. However, this go-round, he told his crew to slow down, take their time and make sure they sifted through every bit of dirt for some sort of clues as to why they were standing inside a designed concrete box.

“You felt like an archaeologist,” Swift says, laughing. “But you aren’t looking for the tomb of Cleopatra or anything. Instead, I had Marcus Smith calling me all the time, asking, ‘Did you find anything yet? Any moonshine down there?'”

Smith, a NASCAR history junkie, is the son of a NASCAR history-maker, promoter and track owner Bruton Smith, who spent nearly his entire 95 years dealing with a roster of questionable stock car racing characters dating back to 1940s. Marcus, now chairman of the company his father started, SMI, knows the stories about Middle Georgia Raceway, a half-mile oval in Macon, Georgia, that hosted nine Cup Series (then Grand National) races from 1966 to ’71, won by the demigod likes of Richard Petty, David Pearson and Bobby Allison.

On Sept. 23, 1967, three months after Petty won the Macon 300 and three years before Jimi Hendrix played a show on the frontstretch, federal agents discovered what one described as “the most cleverly run moonshine operation I have ever seen.” A secret trapdoor in the floor of a faux ticket booth entered into a 125-foot tunnel that led to a chamber hidden 17 feet beneath the grandstand, containing a pair of stills that produced an estimated 80 gallons of moonshine daily.

“I won the next race they ran there, just a few weeks later,” recalls Allison, a three-time Macon winner and a four-time victor at North Wilkesboro. “I asked them if there was any of that whiskey left, but they said the feds blew it all up.”

Alas, North Wilkesboro’s cave wasn’t Middle Georgia’s. In the end, Swift and his team found nothing more than dirt and speculation. After a couple of weeks of investigating, the urgent business of NASCAR All-Star Race prep was unavoidable. The hole was filled with concrete, the grandstand was repaired and the seats were bolted back onto the cement.

The skeptics of the internet have labeled it all as either a publicity stunt or this generation’s version of Geraldo Rivera stepping into an awkwardly empty Al Capone vault on live TV. But those who love NASCAR, liquor and fun chose to roll with the legend of it all, like a bootlegger hanging onto the steering wheel of a Flathead Ford as he hears oncoming sirens behind him in hot pursuit.

“I think there was definitely something down there,” surmises Petty, the career leader in North Wilkesboro wins with 15 checkered flags. “But if someone was keeping a bunch of cases of liquor down there and someone else knew about it, then it wasn’t going to be down there for long. Some guy either drunk it all or sold to a guy who drunk it all.”

This weekend, those lucky fans with All-Star tickets in the next-to-last section before Turn One will know they are rooting for their favorite racers while sitting atop the most notorious spot of NASCAR’s most notorious speedway, right smack in the middle of America’s most notorious moonshine running valley.

And they can do so while sipping from a jar of perfectly legal, government-approved moonshine purchased from the North Wilkesboro Speedway concession stands, including a jar of “The Uncatchable” with Willie Clay Call’s mug on the label.

“The best part of this whole project, even as hard as it has been getting a place that had been sitting there empty falling apart, ready for racing, has been living the history of that place while also bringing it into the present,” Swift explains proudly. “You just got to work one day and you find a cave that someone built that no one knew about? That place is almost 80 years old and it has history going on.”

Still.

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Hard-throwing rookie Misiorowski going to ASG

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Hard-throwing rookie Misiorowski going to ASG

Hard-throwing rookie Jacob Misiorowski is a National League All-Star replacement, giving the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander a chance to break Paul Skenes‘ record for the fewest big league appearances before playing in the Midsummer Classic.

Misiorowski was named Friday night to replace Chicago Cubs lefty Matthew Boyd, who will be unavailable for the All-Star Game on Tuesday night in Atlanta because he is scheduled to start Saturday at the New York Yankees.

The 23-year-old Misiorowski has made just five starts for the Brewers, going 4-1 with a 2.81 ERA while averaging 99.3 mph on his fastball, with 89 pitches that have reached 100 mph.

If he pitches at Truist Park, Misiorowski will make it consecutive years for a player to set the mark for fewest big league games before an All-Star showing.

Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander getting ready for his second All-Star appearance, had made 11 starts in the majors when he was chosen as the NL starter for last year’s All-Star Game at Texas. He pitched a scoreless inning.

“I’m speechless,” said a teary-eyed Misiorowski, who said he was given the news a few minutes before the Brewers’ 8-3 victory over Washington. “It’s awesome. It’s very unexpected and it’s an honor.”

Misiorowski is the 30th first-time All-Star and 16th replacement this year. There are now 80 total All-Stars.

“He’s impressive. He’s got some of the best stuff in the game right now, even though he’s a young pitcher,” said Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who is a starting AL outfielder for his seventh All-Star nod. “He’s going to be a special pitcher in this game for a long time so I think he deserved it and it’s going be pretty cool for him and his family.”

Carlos Rodón, Carlos Estévez and Casey Mize were named replacement pitchers on the AL roster.

The New York Yankees‘ Rodón, an All-Star for the third time in five seasons, will replace teammate Max Fried for Tuesday’s game in Atlanta. Fried will be unavailable because he is scheduled to start Saturday against the Chicago Cubs.

In his final start before the All-Star game, Rodón allowed four hits and struck out eight in eight innings in an 11-0 victory over the Cubs.

“This one’s a little special for me,” said Rodón, an All-Star in 2021 and ’22 who was 3-8 in his first season with the Yankees two years ago before rebounding. “I wasn’t good when I first got here, and I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t to going to give up and just put my best foot forward and try to win as many games as I can.”

The Kansas City Royals‘ Estévez replaces Texas’ Jacob deGrom, who is scheduled to start at Houston on Saturday night. Estévez was a 2023 All-Star when he was with the Los Angeles Angels.

Mize takes the spot held by Boston‘s Garrett Crochet, who is scheduled to start Saturday against Tampa Bay. Mize gives the Tigers six All-Stars, most of any team and tied for the franchise record.

Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia will replace Tampa Bay‘s Brandon Lowe, who went on the injured list with left oblique tightness. The additions of Estévez and Garcia give the Royals four All-Stars, matching their 2024 total.

The Seattle Mariners announced center fielder Julio Rodríguez will not participate, and he was replaced by teammate Randy Arozarena. Rodríguez had been voted onto the AL roster via the players’ ballot. The Mariners, who have five All-Stars, said Rodríguez will use the break to “recuperate, rest and prepare for the second half.”

Arozarena is an All-Star for the second time. He started in left field for the AL two years ago, when he was with Tampa Bay. Arozarena was the runner-up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the 2023 Home Run Derby.

Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen, a first-time All-Star, is replacing Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi, who is scheduled to start Saturday night at Arizona. Rasmussen is 7-5 with a 2.82 ERA in 18 starts.

San Diego added a third NL All-Star reliever in lefty Adrián Morejón, who replaces Philadelphia starter Zack Wheeler. The Phillies’ right-hander is scheduled to start at San Diego on Saturday night. Morejón entered the weekend with a 1.71 ERA in 45 appearances.

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Giants’ Devers dealing with disk injury in back

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Giants' Devers dealing with disk injury in back

SAN FRANCISCO — Giants designated hitter Rafael Devers is dealing with a disk injury in his lower back that has limited his production since joining his new club.

Manager Bob Melvin is hopeful Devers won’t require a stint on the injured list given the upcoming time off for the All-Star break.

Devers has begun anti-inflammatory medication for the irritation symptoms he is experiencing and is playing through the issue. He underwent an MRI exam Thursday.

“He went on some medication, feels a little bit better today. We’ll see how he responds to that,” Melvin said Friday. “I’m glad we got the MRI done so we know what’s going on.”

Acquired last month from the Red Sox, Devers entered the series opener Friday against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers batting .245 with 23 strikeouts, four doubles, a home run and six RBIs over his past 14 games dating to June 26. He was hitting .261 with 17 homers and 67 RBIs overall.

The Giants took on Devers’ mega contract when they traded for him June 15 to boost their offense after the slugger made it known he didn’t want to play first base for Boston. But he arrived in the Bay Area insisting he would do anything asked of him to help San Francisco win.

A three-time All-Star, Devers signed a $313.5 million, 10-year contract with the Red Sox in 2023.

On Friday, he was in the lineup as DH batting third. He isn’t ready to play the field, including first base, where he has been doing regular fielding work.

“He feels it mostly running, probably a little bit at the plate, but not as much as when he’s running bases,” Melvin said. “I think with the break hopefully [he’ll be OK]. I think he’s been playing through it for a little bit, basically since he’s been here. It’s the reason he’s not out in the field right now.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Cardinals’ Arenado (sprained finger) exits early

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Cardinals' Arenado (sprained finger) exits early

The St. Louis Cardinals removed star third baseman Nolan Arenado from their 6-5 loss to the visiting Atlanta Braves on Friday night because of a sprained right index finger.

Arenado, who was 1-for-3, was replaced in the seventh inning by Thomas Saggese. While it was unclear how Arenado hurt the finger, it is the same injury that kept him out of two games last week during a series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Arenado has 10 home runs and 42 RBIs in 84 games this season.

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

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