photo by Jeff Burk

HALLOWEEN CANDY

After a show like what went down September 11 and the resultant hysteria, it's hard to focus on drag racing, to find one topic and wail away. However, there are a few things that are noteworthy, and below is some dandruff from my Halloween head scratchings.

What can I say? It's October, the home stretch of the drag racing season. NHRA has two pro titles all carved out in Funny Car with John Force in Funny Car and Warren Johnson in Pro Stock slated to take the last Winston drag racing year-end checks in history. Top Fuel has a decent points race with Kenny Bernstein and Larry Dixon Jr. in Don Prudhomme's Miller dragster neck-and-neck for the lead.

In IHRA, who knows? I mean what gives with those guys? SFX (now Clear Channel) buys them out at the beginning of the year and I have to say my expectations were high. I mean you'd think IHRA'd at least get their qualifying and final-round national event results in the paper. Clear Channel can certainly bring updated communications into the picture given their track record, but noooooo ...

You'd have better luck getting LaCrosse results from Maine before you'd find out what happened at an IHRA race. I know that Top Fuel racer Clay Millican is ripping away in the Mike Kloeber-tuned Peter Lehman dragster, something like six straight national event wins, but other than that, who knows?

In my humble opinion, it is utterly minor league to not include your results in the main market daily's sports sections. No excuses accepted. Really, what's the deal? How hard is it for an association press guy or gal to get on the computer and e- mail the results to A.P. or whoever and get the story out on the wire. Same goes for the qualifying stats on Saturday.

What is it? IHRA drag racing is not worthy of exposure given to such back-of-the- bus activities like college soccer, municipal golf, judo, high school water polo, and pro bowling? C'mon, wake up! Treat yourselves like pros, for Chrissakes.

After what I've not seen, if I was Pro Mod Champ Mike Janis or the Pro Stock or Alcohol Funny Car champ, I'd mount those tower stairs after a national event, whip out the ole 38 snub-nose and say, "Nobody move. You over there, rolling the joint, get over to that computer, and start writing. Don't make me have to use this ..." You get the picture.

Are we a nationally important pro sport, or we are slapping Kojak? The only reason I can think for not doing this is that the Clear Channel front office intends to drive IHRA into the ground and use it as a tax write-off, and that fear might not be that far off the mark given the way the U.S. economy is spinning southward in the toilet bowl of life. Hey, Clear Channel looked downright idiotic with its pop music hit list a month back, but they're bright enough to know if they've plunked down a roll on a last-place finish.

Get with it, IHRA. Publish those results.

• Speaking of results, I was more than happy to see ex-NBA player Tom Hammonds nearly nail his first NHRA Pro Stock title at the O'Reilly Nationals in Ennis, Texas. He would've been NHRA's first winning black driver in a Pro car class had he beaten V. (as in Victory) Gaines in the finale.

It's a big deal to have a star from another pro sport come over and make some noise. One of the biggest pushes NHRA drag racing got in the last 15 years was the remarkable showing by ex-Houston Oiler quarterback Dan Pastorini in the mid- 1980s. Pastorini debuted at the '85 Bakersfield March Meet, but as early as the 1986 NHRA Southern Nationals he was in the Top Fuel winner's circle.

Guys like Pastorini and Hammonds are well connected in the sports world and help draw attention to drag racing. Let's face it, IHRA for sure, and NHRA to a lesser degree, can all use help in the exposure department.

• Gary Densham's Funny Car win at the NHRA O'Reilly rally really makes you believe that good things eventually happen to good people. Hot on the heels of his big win at Memphis, drag racing's "Mr. Kotter" takes all the marbles, beating car owner John Force in a spectacular all-4.8-second finale.

I will say that as good a guy as Force is, I still would have rather seen Densham win in a car that he owned. I've watched him race Funny Cars from the days of the Densham & Walker Pinto and the "Teacher's Pet" Barracudas and Datsuns, and the win, as nice as it was, just reinforces my notion that the whole game, more than ever before, spins on money. The Creasy family of Illinois races as hard as anybody and recently ran their first four-second run on a 300-mph pass, but realistically they'll win the day Osama bin Laden runs on the Republican ticket in two years. Without the big bucks, only a select few make the winners circle.

• I guess I'll eat a little crow at this point. I really had some reservations about NHRA elapsed times or speeds stepping up with the addition of the 90-percent rule's adoption. For a year, save for Tony Schumacher's 330-mph lightning bolt in 2000, I was bored stiff with the times out of NHRA national events. However, the results registered at the race in Joliet and now the Texas Motorplex have changed my mind. Kenny Bernstein runs a 4.47 in Chicago, Schumacher goes 333, Mike Dunn runs a 330 at the Motorplex, Force and Bazemore trade 4.75s in Funny Car ... okay, okay. That's a little better. Now if we could just find a way for more teams to get cash flow injections to make the fuel classes more competitive.

• Chuck Etchells getting out of Funny Car and drag racing. I'm genuinely sorry to see him go. He was one of the easiest people to interview and he, wife Shelley, brother Gary, and his crew were first rate people. It was my pleasure to see Chuck win his first NHRA national event at the 1990 NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, New Jersey, and I was also present when he made permanent drag racing history when he ran the sport's first Funny Car four with a 4.96 at the 1993 Heartland Park Topeka event.

He took wins with the same class attitude as he did a loss, and radiated class. And if there's anybody I owe a beer to, it's Chuck. You talk about an open ice chest. Chuck, if you ever find your way to the San Fernando Valley near L.A., look me up, I'll leap off the wagon, and we'll bend one. Here's to you.

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