D
Digger
Guest
One Mean Mother
This story appears in the May 18 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
The Mag asked Darlington -- NASCAR's nastiest track -- how she feels about hosting her only Cup race on Mother's Day weekend. Man, did we get an earful.
I am a *****. No doubt about it. Always have been, always will be. Ask any NASCAR driver, young or old or dead. "You seen her slap me, didn't you?" That's what Dale Earnhardt said when somebody asked him if he really thought of me as the Lady in Black, the nickname drivers gave me decades ago. I roughed that boy up something ugly, but I also turned him loose and let him win nine times.
I am the mama who raised NASCAR -- ungrateful little bastards. My given name is Darlington Raceway. And I was a darlin', all right, in my prime. I was born in a peanut field in 1950, out here in the boondocks of northeastern South Carolina, and I grew up to be NASCAR's first big track, dragging that half-baked league off the half-mile dirt tracks. Now I'm old, warped, worn and forlorn. My boys have run off to Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles; run off every which way in those private jets they wouldn't own if not for me. But I ain't gonna die. I'm too damn mean, and I've got too many lovers. Those NASCAR honchos spit in my face in 2004, taking my Labor Day weekend race -- the one I was born with! -- and moving it to California. They got their comeuppance: Folks in LA didn't care, didn't show. Now that race will run in Atlanta, and the suits think the hardcore fans will be glad just to have it back in the South. They won't be. You can't fool my people.
I've been stripped down to one Cup race a year, so now I pine for 362 days, feeling forgotten, while all that traffic hurtles past town on I-95. Worse still, my race is on Mother's Day weekend. Everybody knows there's only one person who can keep a diehard fan away from the track: Mama. NASCAR went 19 years without racing on that weekend, before sticking it to the old Lady in Black. Well guess what? They can kiss my ass. I've sold out all four times they've run me on those Saturday nights. And even in this god-awful economy, I just might sell out again. So what if those big, fancy tracks have twice as many seats? At least I know in my heart that 63,000 fans don't mind going hungover to see their mamas.
This story appears in the May 18 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
The Mag asked Darlington -- NASCAR's nastiest track -- how she feels about hosting her only Cup race on Mother's Day weekend. Man, did we get an earful.
I am a *****. No doubt about it. Always have been, always will be. Ask any NASCAR driver, young or old or dead. "You seen her slap me, didn't you?" That's what Dale Earnhardt said when somebody asked him if he really thought of me as the Lady in Black, the nickname drivers gave me decades ago. I roughed that boy up something ugly, but I also turned him loose and let him win nine times.
I am the mama who raised NASCAR -- ungrateful little bastards. My given name is Darlington Raceway. And I was a darlin', all right, in my prime. I was born in a peanut field in 1950, out here in the boondocks of northeastern South Carolina, and I grew up to be NASCAR's first big track, dragging that half-baked league off the half-mile dirt tracks. Now I'm old, warped, worn and forlorn. My boys have run off to Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles; run off every which way in those private jets they wouldn't own if not for me. But I ain't gonna die. I'm too damn mean, and I've got too many lovers. Those NASCAR honchos spit in my face in 2004, taking my Labor Day weekend race -- the one I was born with! -- and moving it to California. They got their comeuppance: Folks in LA didn't care, didn't show. Now that race will run in Atlanta, and the suits think the hardcore fans will be glad just to have it back in the South. They won't be. You can't fool my people.
I've been stripped down to one Cup race a year, so now I pine for 362 days, feeling forgotten, while all that traffic hurtles past town on I-95. Worse still, my race is on Mother's Day weekend. Everybody knows there's only one person who can keep a diehard fan away from the track: Mama. NASCAR went 19 years without racing on that weekend, before sticking it to the old Lady in Black. Well guess what? They can kiss my ass. I've sold out all four times they've run me on those Saturday nights. And even in this god-awful economy, I just might sell out again. So what if those big, fancy tracks have twice as many seats? At least I know in my heart that 63,000 fans don't mind going hungover to see their mamas.