The Best American Sports Writing 2014 by Glenn Stout

Author:Glenn Stout
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Short Track

Dick Trickle had a crown on his head. He’d just won the 1983 World Crown 300 in Georgia and the $50,000 that came with it. Dick looked over at the guy who’d just presided over his coronation in the victory lane. “I’m not a king,” he said. “I’m a race car driver.”

This was, at the time, the largest prize Dick Trickle had ever raced for. He spent a month preparing the car. If anyone else did any work on it, he went back and did it over. “I never look at the purse,” Trickle told Father Dale Grubba, a Catholic priest and chronicler of Wisconsin racing who’d known him since 1966. “My wife does. I come to race.”

But for the World Crown 300, Trickle broke his rule. He did look at the purse. The race itself had been nearly rained out, and instead of thousands of fans at the Georgia International Speedway in late November, there were only a couple of hundred. It was a problem for Ron Neal, the engine maker who owned the speedway. He promised a huge purse for the short track race, one that now, because of the weather, he might not be able to pay for in cash. It’s okay, Trickle said. I’ll barter with you. So instead of getting the entire purse, Trickle also got new engines, and engine service, for his cars. He did things like that.

There are tons of stories about Dick Trickle from the short track days. He once told a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter about the time when he blew a water pump in a race, got on the PA, and asked if anyone in the crowd had a Ford. A guy drove his car down to the pits. Trickle pulled the water pump off, put it on his car, won the race, and gave it back. Another time he blew an engine, pulled one out of a tow truck, dropped it in his car, and won that race also.

Trickle won a lot on the short tracks. Maybe more than any other driver. The number of wins that Trickle is supposed to have is 1,200, legitimized by a Sports Illustrated article in 1989. But unlike NASCAR, which has precise records, Wisconsin’s short track racing record book isn’t a book at all, but a patchwork of newspaper clippings and memories and word of mouth. One man, who has tried to piece together records of every race Trickle entered, says he’s found evidence of 644 wins up through 1979. He’s not sure of the ’80s. Trickle would have needed 556 more victories before heading off to the Winston Cup in 1989 to hit 1,200.

Might have happened.

He was good at the little things. He knew how to power through the corners. He always kept his car in control, even in traffic. Pit stops were critically important, because when a race was long enough to require one, one was all you got. At the 200-lap races at Wisconsin International Speedway in Kaukauna, he would pit on around lap 70 or 80 when everybody else thought about heading in around 120.

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