(Once again we credit the CMT film documentary Dale for the inspiration.)
Before we go on, ya gotta listen to “Hard Workin’ Man” by Brook & Dunn, one of Dale Earnhardt’s favorite artists to get you in the mood for this post.
With his bushy hair, bushy mustache and his dirty tee shirts, everything about Dale Earnhardt had a hard, lean hungry look about it early in his career.
The earliest stages of his career may have been a bit elongated, like the straightaways at Daytona, but once he got going, the distance from Cup debut to Cup champion went quicker than a lap at Bristol. Earnhardt is considered to be a part of the rookie class of 1979, though he debuted in 1975. Just one season after winning “Rookie Of The Year” honors- the “Man In Black’ captured a title in 1980.
Some would say the 29-year-old son of a dirt track racer wasn’t ready for prime time. He lacked polish, he lacked education and his father Ralph wasn’t known for being articulate either. It would take Dale Earnhardt time master the trappings of fame, but Wranglers executive Jack Watson said he knew his company was on to something when they elected to sponsor the raw North Carolinian. He had a swagger, a certain cowboy confidence that seemed to suggest “I may not be one of the greats now, but I will be.”
The campaign Wrangler came up with was “One Tough Customer.” It was a stroke of marketing genius. Earnhardt proved time and again he had grit in his gut, vinegar in his veins and a heart bigger than Talladega. If you watched the races or even had just seen the footage on YouTube, then you know traded paint with danger more than once, and then got in it’s face in Rocky Balboa-like fashion, declaring “You’re not so bad!”
Pocono, 1982- A reader named Glenn dropped me a line today to remind me that Tim Richmond was another driver with whom Dale Earnhardt shared a hotly contested rivalry. According to a post-accident T.V. interview, Richmond said Dale told him that he’d been having trouble with his brakes that day, pumping them to make them work. The #2 passed the #15 Wrangler car when Earnhardt caught him in the turn. The two spun wildly, sending the “15″ up to the wall and it flipped on its roof. For a moment, it looked like Dale’s car might flip over the wall. He stayed on the track, oil leaking everywhere. One photo shows Earnhardt climbing out of his car with eyes as big as saucers. Richmond got the better of the exchange and helped his rival off the track to board an ambulance.
In the interview, Richmond didn’t seem to think “The Intimidator” had much more than a “charlie horse.” In an interview for the movie Dale, Watson (the aforementioned Wrangler executive) got a call from someone on the team and he said the leg was broken. Everyone was sworn to secrecy on the injury because Earnhardt feared getting parked by NASCAR. They apparently never learned, because he raced the next week.
Whatever shortcomings he had as a pitch man were more than made up for by the fact that with Dale Earnhardt, one tough customer wasn’t a slogan, it’s who he was.
Richmond, 1986- This “Dale versus Darrell” epitomized one of NASCAR’s fiercest rivalries. If you saw the race, you saw two men fighting over track position like two starving hounds fight for a bone. Waltrip kept trying to take the lead from Earnhardt, rubbing him a few times, but Earnhardt kept shutting the door. D.W. said he’d loosen his old friend up, thinking he had, and the “3″ would slam the door shut.
Waltrip finally got position, when Earnhardt came up and hooked the “Bud Machine.” The collision also collected Joe Ruttman and Geoff Bodine. The wild spinout made Waltrip’s car look like a crushed can. Earnhardt got crumpled up pretty well on the front end.
The collision had two effects: it solidified Earnhardt’s reputation (if you’ll pardon my French) as a “badass”- someone you’d get plate full of if you elected to fire or return fire. It also had the effect of chilling over relations between the two for quite some time- though they would make amends years later with Waltrip driving a partial schedule for Dale Earnhardt Inc. in place of an injured Steve Park in 1998.
Talladega, 1996- This was easily the scariest crash Earnhardt ever walked away from. Earnhardt was running out front when Sterling Marlin got into him due to contact from Ernie Irvan. The hit got the “3″ into a spin, sending him hard into the wall. He and Marlin made further contact and Robert Pressley also got collected. Derrike Cope also tagged the black Chevy. Just the sheer speed and meeting between a rapidly moving car and an immobile, unforgiving wall made the incident look downright dramatic and frightening.
You want one tough customer? Get this: Earnhardt, clutching his broken shoulder, walked to the ambulance. The injuries busted him up bad enough, he started the next race for points, but let a substitute finish it out.
In later interviews, Earnhardt let it be known the accident got his attention. “It hit close to home.”
Daytona, 1997- No one would have blamed Earnhardt if he felt cursed with Daytona. In his 19th attempt at a Cup win at Daytona, The Intimidator got into a little hard racing with young Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt told reporter Ralph Shaheen he thought Jeff was getting a little impatient. According to “Big E” Gordon got under him, his car pushed off the corner, got into the wall, got back at Gordon, when Earnhardt got hit from behind by Dale Jarrett, though in ESPN Sports Center Kenny Mayne said there was no contact. I’ll go with what the guy in the car said. While the wrecked Chevy did a wild dance on the track, no further race casualties were incurred.
The amazing part was, Earnhardt saw that he still had wheels on the car while boarding the ambulance. Earnhardt stopped everything, went to the truck that had his car, and he had them try to crank the engine. It started. Earnhardt had the damage repaired and he finished the race.
Apparently his cars were tough customers too.
The 2001 Daytona crash is an altogether different story and we’ll save the one Dale didn’t walk away from for another day. The point here, is that all these incidents, along with his brilliant, if not dangerous passing maneuvers had us believing Earnhardt could walk away from anything.
Considering the evidence of these stories and more- its safe to say Dale Earnhardt came by the nickname “Ironhead” honestly.
(Photo courtesy of Ted Van Pelt. More of his photos can be seen at Flickr).
