Everybody has it tough coming up through short-tracking to the big time. But most at least have the nurture of their environs–Indiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Pennsylvania, even New York and California–and the good wishes of homefolks.
The Wallaces grew up in a black hole for their passion. Out of St. Louis and its suburbs, they raced in anonymity at best, ridicule at worst.
“I had people come up to me and go, `What do you do for a living, Rusty?’ when I was living in St. Louis,” the eldest and most famous of the three brothers said this week.
“I’d say, `I drive race cars.’ They’d giggle a little bit. `No, what do you do for a living?’ I’d go, `No, that is what I do.’ Conversation would be over.”
Every Wallace family member was consumed with racing. Patriarch Russ was a big winner on what few little tracks were in the region, most of those across the Mississippi River in Illinois.
“Mom [Judy] even ran Powder Puff [all-female] races,” said Mike, the middle brother.
“We just didn’t understand why racing wasn’t as big as we thought it was,” said Kenny, the youngest. “We traveled incredible amounts. It was nothing for us to leave on a Friday evening and be in Canada by six the next morning. We had to work extra hard.
“So it was a little aggravating, loving racing so much and growing up in a town that at the time just didn’t back it.”
St. Louis has been trying to make amends lately. Rusty, after 55 Nextel Cup victories and one championship, recently was given the key to the city in this, his final year on the tour.
The mass mea culpa culminates Saturday night with the Wallace Family Tribute 250, a Busch Series race at Gateway International Raceway, billed as a St. Louis track, just across the river in Madison, Ill.
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This is an off weekend for the Cup tour, so all three brothers will drive in the 250, and a lot of national attention will fall on the race via prime-time television. Russ and Judy will be in the stands.
The Wallaces are thrilled, honored, “blown away” in Rusty’s staccato jargon.
But the recognition comes late. The family is in its racing twilight. Rusty will turn 49 in a couple of weeks, after 30 years carrying the banner of St. Louis, virtually everywhere in America but St. Louis. Mike is 46. Kenny soon will be 42.
All the Wallaces, in fact, will be visitors now from North Carolina, where all have lived for more than 20 years.
Appreciating the moment as they do, the Wallaces cannot forget the hard years under the apathy, even the active disdain, of their hometown.
“In predominantly a stick-and-ball sports town,” Mike said, “being race car drivers or messing with race cars was not the cool thing to do. I honestly remember our principal and counselors out at Fox High School in Arnold, Mo., where we grew up, telling us we would never make anything of ourselves if we kept messing with those race cars.”
Dominating St. Louis stood what is known locally as “The Brewery,” the massive home facility of Anheuser-Busch, spewing its sponsorship dollars nationwide and worldwide for every sport, including myriad forms of motor racing.
“[But] I couldn’t even get a meeting with them,” Rusty said of the years of his meteoric rise, his domination of the American Speed Association tour on his way to NASCAR, in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
After his 1989 NASCAR series championship, there was a call from a brewery, but not The Brewery. The call came from Milwaukee, and Anheuser-Busch’s chief competitor, Miller Brewing Co. Rusty has been sponsored by Miller ever since.
Thus, the other night, when Rusty joined Kenny at Busch Stadium for a game between Kenny’s beloved Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers, Rusty’s loyalties were split, between the town that was supposed to nurture him and the town that did.
Nurturing or not, St. Louis and Missouri are now as well-represented in NASCAR as California, Indiana and North Carolina.
Veteran Ken Schrader of Fenton followed Rusty closely out of Missouri in the `80s. Young guns Jamie McMurray of Joplin and Carl Edwards of Columbia are rising stars sure to make tradition out of what the Wallaces began.
And Rusty’s youngest son, Stephen, 18, is moving through the ranks under Rusty’s guidance. But Stephen is a native North Carolinian who never has known anything but support from the neighbors.
Saturday night, Kenny’s car will carry the image of St. Louis’ riverside arch on its hood, as well as the St. Louis Cardinals logo in several places. No sponsorship money is involved. He just wanted those symbols there.
It’s not that the Wallaces ever have lost their love of St. Louis. It’s just that St. Louis never loved them back, until recently.
Pit stops
Erin Crocker, stock car racing’s answer to the Indy Racing League’s Danica Patrick, actually has two higher finishes in her realm. Crocker ran third at Pocono last Saturday, to go with a second-place finish at Kentucky Speedway earlier this month. But Patrick’s two fourth-place finishes in the IRL, at Motegi, Japan and in the Indy 500, were against much tougher competition than Crocker, 24, of Wilbraham, Mass., has faced in the ARCA series. . . . Sunday’s IRL race at Michigan International Speedway will be the first on ABC, rather than ESPN, for the IRL since the Indy 500 on May 29. Five of the next six IRL races will be on the big network. Next race for NASCAR’s Cup series is at Indianapolis on Aug. 7, in the newly renamed Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, formerly the Brickyard 400.
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