In anticipation of tomorrow's All Hallows' Eve, today's DRAGSTER Insider offers a mixed bag o' tricks … my treat to you. It's a mix of fond memories and a dash of this and that. And away we go ...
If there's one thing other than death and taxes that one can count on in this world, it's that everyone loves an underdog. For many of us who have been around this sport for a while, Tom Baum was loved. I've rooted passionately for other underdogs in my day – Rodney Flournoy, for example – but "the Bomber" was someone you couldn't not root for.
The Midwest dragster veteran passed away Tuesday, of congestive heart failure at the age of 67, and there'has been a touching outpouring of sentimentality about his loss that outstrips that of other, brighter lights who have preceded him to that Great Dragstrip in the sky.
I first found out about his passing from his nephew, Bill, who summed up his uncle this way: "Not a lot of success on the track but had more friends than anyone else I knew."
While it's debatable that he didn’t have a lot of success on the track – he was a regular in the UDRA top 10 and won the Olympics of Drag Racing in 1988 over a pretty good field -- there doesn’t seem to be any debating his second point.
Our ol' pal Bret Kepner, one of the Midwest's most notorious drag denizens, shared his thoughts, and probably the thoughts of many who knew "the Bomber," in this tribute.
It's a sad day for fans of the underdogs in the sport. As much as he was a determined drag racer, he was a true character. His personality always shown through even when things were worst. He was excited to wake up every morning as long as there was a race car in his garage. He could be hilarious, intense, or nearly nuts, but he was always a friend to anybody ... including those who'd never met him.
"The Bomber" was one of the only individuals who made a living racing on the UDRA circuit through the 1970s and 1980s. He pushed his homebuilt engines to the absolute limit on nearly every run and, by his own admission, he blew up a lot of stuff. Still, when he'd saved up enough money, he would hit the road for the nearest AHRA, IHRA, or NHRA national event and give it a shot. He was a fixture at NHRA WCS events in Divisions 3 and 5 and booked himself for match races against anything including jets, Funny Cars, and fuelers.
Routinely, he would finish in the top 10 point standings in UDRA competition. At one time, he was the quickest driver in history at the wheel of a cast-iron Chevy blown Alcohol Dragster. His greatest moment, however, came when he won the overall TAD title in the grueling Olympics of Drag Racing at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wis., in 1988. He considered "the Grove" his home track and had a truly massive following there. Track owner "Broadway Bob" Metzler had a special place in his heart for Baum, who once crashed his first front-engined dragster off Metzler's property in 1960.
The Olympics featured category-specific competition for the first two of its four days but always deteriorated into a free-for-all for its last two days. In those final 48 hours, any and all pairings occurred, but the racers still battled for points to determine the overall championship. On the final day of the '88 event, "the Bomber" beat UDRA and Olympics kingpin Tony Zizzo, multi-time UDRA world champ Hal Canode, NHRA national champion Al DaPozzo, and the short-wheelbased Top Fueler of "Diamond Dave" Miller to win his biggest title. It was one of the few times "the Bomber" was ever publicly overcome by emotion.
During the 1991 Olympics at "the Grove," Baum barrel-rolled his Fel-Pro Gaskets Xecutioner four times on the first day of the event. He was battered and bruised but loaded the remains of the car into his ancient homemade trailer and headed back to his garage. Twenty-four hours later, he returned to the track and unloaded the same car, rebuilt by Baum alone, and continued to compete in the event.
It seemed everybody in drag racing knew him. He was a phenomenal promoter of his own racing team and often displayed his car for charitable organizations free of charge, feeling the "good karma" would come back to him someday. He was the kind of guy you couldn't dislike, even if he had just oiled the left lane from starting line to turnoff with an engine even he knew shouldn't have even been able to fire. He raced hard, drove all night to make an event the next day in another state, unloaded, and raced hard again. He laughed when he lost in the first round and was still smiling when he headed out the gate for an all-night drive home. He was as hard core as they will ever come. Tom Baum was one of a kind.
Jody Schmeisser, a fellow Illini of Baum and a longtime Super-class racer and owner of Pit Pal Products, shared his thoughts with me as well.
Anybody who had an opportunity to ever cross Tom Baum’s path would forever remember Tom as a great-spirited, warmhearted individual. He was known nationwide in the motorsports industry for his support and his character. If you ever had the time to talk to Tom, you would acknowledge that Tom was very intelligent and on top of current affairs. Tom had a sense of humor that can never be replaced; he could one-line you and clearly stop you for a minute because you were in pain from laughing so hard.
Tom spent his entire life in the drag racing community and was known and respected throughout the United States. Tom raced several different types of cars through his racing career. One of Tom’s biggest accomplishments was the first Chevrolet steel-block Alcohol Dragster to break the 200-mph barrier at the inaugural Joliet national event in his hometown Chicago with his famous Xecutioner race car. From the late '70s to late '80s, Tom was in charge of the NHRA display booth that was part of the major showcase in the famous Chicago new-car automobile show that would bring close to a million people in attendance. Tom would carefully pick some of the nation's top drag race cars (including his own) to display for fans and attendees to appreciate. Tom would prepare for months to attend these events and spend 14- to 18-hour days just trying to answer any questions to the best of his knowledge at these shows. He was always a true gentlemen and fun guy to communicate with. He always could bring the best out of anybody. Tom had a special way to always find out how you were doing and really listen. Tom had been a very special person to many people in his life to always help with no obligations in return. Tom will be well-missed forever.
As sad as we are to mourn Baum's passing, his nephew did assure me that "a lot of my schtick is based on 'the Bomber,' so in a small way, he will live on." Good news!
Hey, if you're a fan of good ol' Orange County Int'l Raceway (and who isn't?), if you're on Facebook (and who isn't?), a cool new group has been created that allows racers and fans to share their precious memories (and, best of all, their photos) from "the County."
The Memories of O.C.I.R. group has nearly 200 fans already and about 100 photos of varying quality and content (including some sweet pics from Auto Imagery's Rick Shute). Naturally, there are some fine photos of nitro cars, but also a lot of the bracket and other door cars that made their home there, including many early Pro Gassers. It's great stuff.
You'll see some pretty familiar names among the group's fans, including Roland Leong ("Good, bad and wild times but what memories. Crashed some cars but also won some races."), Roger Gustin, "Jungle Pam" Hardy, Gordie Bonin, Don Moody, Dean Skuza, Della Woods, Vic Edelbrock, Jon Lundberg, and many others. Come join the fun!
Former Funny Car owner and driver Jim Wemett, whose cars have been featured in past columns here, passed along this great shot of a current-day him, behind the wheel of his latest ride (a boat), which he's dry-docking for the winter. "Took boat out of the water today," he wrote me. "40 degrees in N.Y."
And how do ex-racers stay warm in those cool climes? Wemett dug out the jacket from his 1980s firesuit, of course. "My kids got a kick out of it," he said. "I knew it was the warmest thing I had."
Fans mostly know of Wemett as a car owner, most memorably of the Wombat Mercury LN-7 driven by Tom Anderson in the early 1980s. That car was an early star of the performance-rich 1982 U.S. Nationals, where Anderson booted it to the first 5.7-second pass by a flopper, a 5.79.at 236.22 on Friday. Don Prudhomme, of course, made that – and every run for several years after – look like last year's news when he rocked Indy with a 5.63 a day later. Wemett, though, also was a driver, wheeling his own cars from 1970 through 1975 before turning the wheel over to George Johnson from1976 to 1979 and Anderson beginning in 1980.
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Watching the World Series, I've been intrigued by the Fox Trax stats, which measure a pitch's velocity leaving the hurler's arm and when it arrives at the plate (typically a five-mph decrease), but the stat that got my attention was the time it takes to leave the pitcher's hand and travel the 60.5 feet to the plate. The number, on a 90-mph fastball, was down around .41-second.
Being the drag racing geek that I am, two things immediately came to mind. First, four-tenths of a second in the time between the amber light and the green on our Christmas Tree and a driver's reaction to that accounts for our reaction time stat (which used to express .400 as a perfect light but today is flagged as .000). I know the mechanics of a drag racing reaction tie but wondered what goes on in that four-tenths of a second from a batter's perspective, so I asked the only real ballplayer I know on a first-name basis, former future big-leaguer Bob Wilber, team manager for Tim Wilkerson, who came thisclose to making the bigs. Wilber, as usual, was not at a loss for words.
From everything I hear from Funny Car drivers, I think the act of hitting and act of driving the car are similar in one key way: You make a ton of decisions in a short amount of time, but nearly all of them are learned and instinctive, because you don't have time to think things out.
Basically, those four-tenths of a second it takes a pitch to leave the pitcher's hand and then cross the hitting zone can be broken into two halves. The first two-tenths are all about recognition. You're watching arm angle, arm speed, the way the ball comes out of the pitcher's hand (slightly upward for a breaking ball, and downward for a fastball), and finally spin. The ball might be halfway to the plate before your eyes pick up the spin and your brain processes that into useful information.
The next two-tenths are the execution phase. Your brain has already registered "fastball, outside, good velocity," so now your hips, arms, hands, and eyes all have to coordinate to bring the bat through that exact spot, at precisely the right moment in time, to make contact with the ball. Deception is the pitcher's best tool, so he's trying to make you miss at least one of the judgments you made during the first two-tenths. That's why a good change-up is a brilliant pitch. All the indicators I just mentioned tell your brain "fastball" but the grip is different, and that alone takes 8-10 mph off the pitch. You swing for that fastball, but the ball's not there yet.
Great velocity will also change the methodology. Once you get up into the 96-100-mph range, the pitch is coming so fast you don't have time to see it, register what it is, and then start your swing. You have to start your swing before you've finished the analysis, and then you have to try to adjust as you go. Rule of thumb at the plate: Think fastball, adjust to the curve. If only it was that easy.
All of that happens in four-tenths, and then you have to take that wooden cylinder and make perfect contact with a round ball. Hard enough, even in batting practice, but in the game, there are nine bad guys out there (including the catcher) who are trying to catch what you hit, no matter how perfectly you hit it. No wonder a 70 percent failure rate will earn you a ticket to Cooperstown! Just talking about it, I wonder how I ever got any hits...
For the record, "Bloggin' Bob" spent six years in professional baseball, first as a player in the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A's organizations, and then as both a minor-league coach and a scouting supervisor for the Toronto Blue Jays, so he knows of which he speaks.
On to part two: The 60-foot thing obviously caught my eye as it's a common place for us to measure acceleration. Seeing as how a good Top Fuel 60-foot time is in the .82 range, can someone please explain to me how it's possible for a baseball to cover 60 feet in .4-second, which is less than half the time it takes a 7,000-horsepower Top Fueler to do the same? I was very much offended. So I did some digging.
Simple math tells us a slightly different story:
An object traveling 90 mph will travel 7,920 feet (1.5 miles!) in 60 seconds. Therefore
7920/60 = 60.5/x
x = .458
So, mathematically at least, it would take an object traveling a constant 90 mph .458-second to travel 60 feet, 6 inches.
Of course, however, no pitcher releases the ball right above the rubber. With their follow-through, the ball probably leaves his hand about five feet closer to the plate. Advantage baseball. Also, although the ball is not constantly at 90 mph, it starts being clocked when it's at its highest velocity (the pitcher's arm is in full motion before the release), and a dragster is going from a dead stop. Advantage baseball. Also, drag racers have to accelerate a 2,250-pound hunk of metal. A baseball weighs about five ounces. Advantage baseball. Still, why does this fact bother me?
And, finally, also in the notable losses column, we join our good pal Billy Meyer in mourning the loss of his dad, the can-do Paul Meyer, who passed away from cancer Monday. He was 81.
Paul was a longtime Waco civic leader, international businessman, and philanthropist, but race fans will recognize the name of one of his endeavors, the Success Motivation Institute, which was branded on some of Billy Meyer's cars in the 1970s. It was the company that his father founded that instilled a basic mantra (if memory serves me) of "Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass."
I'm sure that his son, a successful businessman in his own right, used those guiding philosophies to get to where he is in life, including giving drag racing fans, among other things, the lasting gift that is the Texas Motorplex, featuring a concrete surface that no one had ever built.
According to an online bio, Paul Meyer also adopted these words of theologian John Wesley for his own and lived them fully: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." Man, I really like that.
He is survived by his wife, Jane, and five children -- Jim, Larry, Billy, Janna, and Leslie -- brother Carl Meyer, and 15 grandchildren. Paul Meyer's life will be celebrated at a memorial service this morning at the arena previously named in his honor at the Baylor University Ferrell Center.