Bleacher Report - Articles by Jack Benton

Schwan's Offers Special Ice Cream To Support Jeff Gordon Foundation

Jack Benton — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:52:02 -0400

Schwan’s Home Service Inc. today announced a partnership with four-time NASCAR Cup series champion Jeff Gordon to raise money to support the fight against pediatric cancer.

One dollar from each sale of specially made ice cream tins featuring Gordon and his No. 24 Chevrolet will go to the Jeff Gordon Foundation, to assist in pediatric cancer research and support for the Jeff Gordon Children’s Hospital in Concord, N.C.

"I definitely have a sweet tooth, and I thoroughly enjoyed the 'research' I did tasting the different flavors," Gordon said. "While I enjoyed that experience, I really appreciate Schwan's joining my foundation in the fight against pediatric cancer."

Pediatric cancer is the cause of more childhood deaths than any other disease. The Jeff Gordon Foundation focuses its support on pediatric cancer research and the Jeff Gordon Children’s Hospital. Over the past 10 years, the foundation has funded more than $7 million worth of pediatric medical initiatives.

The collectible tins will be filled with one of Gordon’s favorite flavors, “Wide Open Mint Chip Swirl,” a combination of mint ice cream, chocolate fudge, and chocolate chips. One in every 1,000 tins has been autographed.

Additional information is available at www.schwans.com/jeffgordon.

Story Sources: Shwans Foods and the The Jeff Gordon Foundation.

Report: White Sox Finalize Six-Player Javier Vazquez Deal with Atlanta Braves

Jack Benton — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:43:08 -0500

The White Sox completed a six-player trade with the Braves today, sending pitchers Javier Vazquez and Boone Logan to Atlanta for catcher Tyler Flowers, infielders Jonathan Gilmore and Brent Lillibridge, and left-handed pitcher Santos Rodriguez.

Flowers, 22, was named to the Class A Carolina League All-Star Team in 2008 after hitting .288 with 17 home runs and 88 RBI. More recently, he batted .387 with 12 home runs and 23 RBI in just 20 games in the Arizona Fall League.

Gilmore, a 20-year-old third baseman, combined to hit .294 with four home runs and 35 RBI in 94 games with Advanced Rookie Danville and Class A Rome in 2008. He originally was selected as a sandwich pick (33rd overall) in the June 2007 First-Year Player Draft.

Lillibridge, a 25-year-old shortstop, spent most of the 2008 season with Class AAA Richmond, hitting .220 with seven triples, four home runs, 39 RBI and 23 stolen bases in 90 games. He also appeared in 29 games with Atlanta, batting .200 in 80 at-bats. Lillibridge was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 6 Prospect in the Braves organization following the 2007 season.

Rodriguez, 20, went 1-2 with a 2.79 ERA, five saves, and 45 strikeouts in 29 innings with the Gulf Coast League Braves in 2008.

In my opinion, this is a good trade for the White Sox, especially for acquiring Flowers, a great catcher prospect to back up AJ Pierzynski. The Sox's current lack of a third baseman and the addition of Jonathan Gilmore gives them some competition going into camp at third base.

Good Job, Kenny Williams!

Credit to the Chicago White Sox for providing the player stats information for this article!

Good Bye Charlie... Hello Again Joe Montana?

Jack Benton — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:19:56 -0500

I grew up on the south side of Chicago, and people alike were blessed with several "birth-rights." They are as follows: you were automatically a Chicago Bears fan, a Chicago White Sox fan and a Notre Dame Football fan.

These traits were not to be questioned, especially if you grew up as I did. I grew up as an Irish Catholic kid, which also meant I had to be a Fighting Irish fan.

For most of us, including me, the love for Notre Dame became quite strong, even if you attended college elsewhere.

Given that, the ups and downs... and the fact they have been primarily downs over the last two years, and have frustrated many of you as they have me. After all we were sold on Charlie Weis hiring as being the second coming of Knute Rockne.

I'll be the first to admit that he can do a halfway decent job of recruiting, but I keep scratching my head at what the Irish Alumni and athletic directors were thinking when they chose to give him that ten year contract extension... guaranteed no less.

If you look at the last three coaches at Notre Dame, both Bob Davie and Ty Willingham have a better winning percentage than Charlie Weis.

After watching last nights debacle at USC, admittingly between commercials of another show (come on, USC was favored by 32 points and usually the odds makers are pretty close, I didn't want to lose my voice yelling at the television).

I don't think I saw a worse beating of any other Irish team in recent memory. The season has been just as bad, especially when you have a lead on Syracuse and lose!!

As for a possible replacement for Charlie Weis, I had been thinking over the last four or five games as the television networks had shown him standing on the sidelines of each game that Joe Montana would be an excellent choice.

Not just because his son Nate is a freshman quarterback at Notre Dame, but from the brilliant mind of Bill Walsh who was his coach through a vast majority of his professional career. I mean, the man knows football, he certainly knows how to run an offense, score points, win games, heck I'll bet he can even design and call defensive plays!

I don't know how good his son Nate is, but from what I have read, he's not quite as good as his father... yet, but he is only a freshman.

During his senior season at Concord De La Salle High School last fall, quarterback Nate Montana didn't exactly set the world on fire. He was the third-stringer, and he finished the season 12-19 for 166 yards and one touchdown passing, plus 33 yards on 17 carries running. He even chose to be a walk-on at Notre Dame without any pressure from his father to do so.

But when your dad is Joe Montana, maybe the greatest quarterback ever to play the game, people look at you and see potential. So 30 years after Joe Montana's senior season at Notre Dame, Nate Montana is following in his footsteps for the Fighting Irish.

Although some Notre Dame fans will be excited just to see the name "Montana" on the roster, it's certainly not realistic to think that Nate can be the kind of player his father was, and it's probably not even realistic to think Nate will play in anything more than mop-up duty. Then again, Joe Montana came to South Bend as the seventh string quarterback.

Things turned out OK for him then, so why not now as the head coach? Heck he might end up coaching another great quarterback named Montana.

If I were a betting man, or a Notre Dame Alumni, I'd surely think long and hard about it and perhaps pass the collection basket around to buy out the remainder of Charlie Weis's contract and kick in an extra dollar or two to hire Joe Montana!

"Jeff Gordon Flashback": T-Rex Set NASCAR On Its Ear With 1997 "Winston" Win

Jack Benton — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:23:06 -0500

Being the BIG Jeff Gordon fan that I am, I was going through some old VHS tapes of all the races that I have taped and saved over the years, and came across the one from "The Winston" of 1997. I am sure most Jeff Gordon fans will remember this race as the emergence of a car aptly named "T-Rex," and that it only ran one time.

Here is the story behind that "monster" of a race car that was so good...it became an instant "dinosaur."

The dinosaur died early on a Sunday in an inspection bay at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Jeff Gordon had won The Winston on Saturday night, May 17, 1997. But by the time he and crew chief Ray Evernham had finished celebrations and interviews, it was a new day.

When Evernham went to check on post-race inspection of the No. 24 Chevrolet, a NASCAR official pulled him aside. "He said, `I'm gonna give you a tip,'" Evernham said. "`Don't bring this car back.'" T-Rex was extinct.

It began, as all great legends do, a long, long time ago. Rick Hendrick became a Winston Cup car owner in 1984. Within three seasons, he decided he wanted his teams to build their cars from the chassis up."When you come into the sport, you kind of just do what everybody else does," Hendrick said. "Nobody had a research-and-development program, and you really didn't have time to try stuff and race at the same time."

In 1996, Hendrick had three Cup teams. He won his first championship with Gordon in 1995 and would get another title in '96 with Terry Labonte. In January of '96, engineer Rex Stump was hired and put in charge of an R&D program Hendrick vowed to leave alone. "It was kind of like our own 'Area 51'," Evernham said. By early 1997, Stump's racing laboratory had come up with a big idea.

"We went around to all of the people in the shop and said, `If you had a blank sheet of paper, what would you do different in building a race car?'" Stump said.

"It was something like 60 different people's ideas on how to make a better car." James Garde was one of those people, and he had plenty of ideas. He had always been an avid reader."I would read the rulebook and try to find the gray areas," Garde said. "We decided that we would take every component of a race car and look to see how it complied (with rules) and whether it could be redesigned and manufactured."

Stump studied the rules, too.He also studied what they didn't say."It seemed we had a little more latitude as to what we could do," Stump said. "...Any place where there wasn't a rule, we took what we could."Every aspect of the car was examined in excruciating detail.Hendrick remembers the first time he saw the result.

"I got back there and saw that car, looked underneath it and everything," Hendrick said. "I said, `There's no way you're going to get to run this car.' "All the Hendrick crew chiefs got regular updates on Stump's team. Evernham, long a champion for the R&D effort, showed keen interest.

"I was kind of like Mikey from the cereal commercials," Evernham said. "It was like, 'Give it to Ray, he'll try anything.'"

Because Hendrick knew his team was working in the rulebook's margins, he made sure NASCAR was clued in."I do remember seeing the car in certain stages of the building process," said Gary Nelson, NASCAR's managing director for competition who in 1997 was Winston Cup Series director.

"We looked at our rulebook and looked at the car and said it was not outside the parameters of the rulebook. But we followed that by saying, 'Remember, we do control the rules. We can write more.'"

Stump is still reticent to talk in great detail about the car. "I don't want to give away the whole farm," he said. In general terms, it began with bigger frame rails that made the chassis more resistant to twisting forces as it went around the track.Close attention was paid to how much parts weighed. The distribution of weight and how that impacted the car's characteristics also went through intense scrutiny.

The car finally got on the track at a test at Texas Motor Speedway."It was wicked fast when we unloaded it," Stump said. Said Evernham: "We worked on some things and realized it just needed a different kind of a set-up than we were used to running at that time with Jeff. But once we got what it needed, all of a sudden it was wicked fast."One more adjustment was required.

"Jeff came in and said, `If you would move that seat so I didn't feel like it was falling over on the right front, I'll bet I could get another two or three tenths out of it,' " Garde said. "I ... changed the seat and he went out and, sure enough, ran faster."

That the car needed only a few tweaks was a good sign for Stump."We knew we had something," he said. "Jeff was winning with anything—I think you could have built a grocery cart and he could have won with it. That's tough to beat. The object wasn't to beat the competition. It was to beat what we had."

As The Winston approached, Hendrick Motorsports made a deal to promote "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," a sequel to the 1993 hit movie, with a special paint scheme. It featured a large dinosaur painted on the hood of the No. 24. Specifically, the dinosaur was a tyrannosaurus rex. Add that to Rex Stump's role, and the car's nickname was inevitable.They called it T-Rex.

Trained eyes in the Cup garage quickly fell on the car when it was rolled out at the Concord track. Some things were readily apparent."The valence was pretty high up off the ground," Stump said. "You'd walk down and see all the (other cars') valances 3 1/2 or four inches off the ground and this one was 5 1/2 or six inches. These guys in the garage are professionals and they would have noticed."

Despite sitting higher off the ground, when the car went through turns the opposite happened. "It was built to `land' in the middle of the corner to get all of the possible aero benefits, getting it as far down in front as possible and keeping the rear end up," Stump said.

That was a key to what made T-Rex special, Evernham said. "Everything was raised so that when you dropped the nose it created negative pressure under the car," he said. If that sounds like the ground effects that help hold Indy-style cars to the track, you're getting the picture.

On his qualifying attempt that Friday, Gordon came to pit road too fast and slid through his pit box. Since each driver's qualifying time was the total of three laps with a pit stop, that error put Gordon 19th on the starting grid.

The next night, Gordon sliced through the field in the 30-lap first segment of The Winston before settling into third place.Gordon lined up 16th when the field was inverted for Segment Two. He was fourth, behind Bobby Labonte, Terry Labonte, and Ricky Craven, after those 30 laps, waiting to show his cards.

"I just remember that car being stuck to the track in a way that I had never felt a car be stuck before," Gordon said. "It just gave me confidence, and it was fast -- it was awesome."It took him less than a lap and a half of the final 10-lap segment to take charge.He passed his teammate, Terry Labonte, for the lead and took off.

"When I got by Terry, I said, `If this thing feels this good for the remainder of this thing, there's no way they can touch me,' " Gordon said that night. Looking back now?

"We killed them," Gordon said. "It was ridiculous."

Stump wonders now if it would have been better if nobody had said anything about T-Rex being different."But that would have been hard," he said. "So many people's efforts went into that car, you wanted to say, `Man, look at what this guy built,' and, `Look at the idea this guy came up with.'

"Ultimately, that bit us."Evernham said it would have been wrong not to be proud.Besides, NASCAR and rival teams had their radar up."I kind of saw it coming," Hendrick said. "People would walk by and look at it, the guys in the garage.

So much attention was being paid to it. When we'd pull the wheels off of it people were looking up under it. I had a feeling, and when the race was over I kind of knew there would be some moaning."

Moaning was an understatement.

"The other car owners looked at it and they all whined and flipped out and said, `We'll have to build all new cars!' " Evernham said. "Everybody panicked. It's easier to kill Frankenstein than it is to figure out how to get along with him."

Nelson, the NASCAR official, remembers his father taking him to a theater to see a closed-circuit broadcast of the Indianapolis 500."It was the first year that a rear-engine car showed up," Nelson said. "I've always remembered that. If one official at Indy had said, `Sorry, but your engine is in the wrong place, you're not racing,' racing would have been different from that point on.

"But they let the car race and didn't react. The next year, 80 or 90 percent of the field had engines in the back, and every car owner in the sport had instant obsolescence for all of his cars."

Nelson uses that story when he's asked about how NASCAR reacted to T-Rex.

"As caretakers of the sport, NASCAR's responsibility is to prevent car owners from having to constantly chase things like that," he said. "We don't want them to have to throw out everything they have because we didn't recognize something soon enough."

But if T-Rex was so radical, why let it race, let Gordon's victory stand, then order the team not to bring it back?

"Every detail of that car had been optimized," Nelson said. "But none of it was outside the rules. ..."So we said, `Let's let them race it and get to work on our rulebook.' "

The wheels were in motion when Evernham made it to post-race inspection."They said, `Don't bring it back,' "Hendrick said of NASCAR's inspectors. "I said, `Hold on a minute. You can't tell me one week that it's OK and then the next week tell me not to bring it back!' "

Evernham also was aghast.

As teams prepared for the next week's Coca-Cola 600, NASCAR inspectors came to Hendrick Motorsports for a closer look at T-Rex."We asked them to tell us what was wrong with it," Stump said. "Maybe that was a mistake, because they spent a good bit of time really looking at the car. Then they went back and wrote a whole bunch of new rules that basically outlawed it."

The co-operation, however, helped NASCAR. "By letting us come over to examine the car closely, that helped us to write more definitive rules," he said. "That way, only one car was affected."

Stump said NASCAR added at least a half-dozen rules specifically to address issues raised by T-Rex. Nelson won't argue."They were going to write new rules anyway," Evernham said. "What we did by letting them poke around and measure everything was probably saved the rest of our fleet.

"We were trying to win championships and do different things and it was like, `Do we want to fight this battle and give up everything else, or do we give up on this one and go on?' I know Rex took that hard because it was his baby. I didn't like it all and I still don't, but they didn't want the car, bottom line, and you have to pick your fights."

Hendrick couldn't be too angry with his rivals."I would have done the same thing," he said. "That's the unique deal in this garage area. You're either going to do what the other teams are doing, or you're going to turn them in. ..."We couldn't force them to let us keep using T-Rex. We had already started taking pieces of what we had learned and put it into our other cars."

Nelson said everyone was trying to do the right thing."The motives were right on our end to protect the garage," Nelson said. "The motives were right on their side to take rules as they're written and make the car better. I don't fault them, that's their job. But I don't fault what we did, because that's NASCAR's job."

The legend of T-Rex is that it retired undefeated. That's a tale.

It was said that the car was turned into a show car and never raced again. The truth is the chassis was used in the 1997 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gordon finished fourth.

"We had it pretty disguised, and we had fixed a lot of the stuff that NASCAR had complained about," Evernham said. "T-Rex was undefeated in its original form, but when we made some of the changes that we had to make, it got beat."

Though the team got minimal use of T-Rex, almost everyone involved believes it was a worthwhile project."Ultimately, it didn't matter how many rules they changed for that car," Garde said. "They're still making rules about stuff we built for it."

Garde now has a shop at his house near Charlotte and makes parts for several Cup teams. "I am still building a lot of stuff now that evolved from that process, because it made you think carefully about the process," he said.

"That's exactly what it was, a new thought process," said Evernham, whose team builds its own chassis, no doubt using some of the things learned."We learned stuff off of that car that we wound up using inside the new rules they wrote that have helped us on and on and on," Hendrick said. "That car paid us big dividends."

Even Nelson sees value in T-Rex."The evolution of ideas is a healthy thing," Nelson said. "... I read a quote once that said, `The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.' "Junior Johnson, maybe? No, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

T-Rex, or what's left of it, is on display at the Hendrick Motorsports museum in Harrisburg.

"That's good," Nelson said. "It's a perfect thing for a museum."

NASCAR’s Ray Evernham Leaving Team To Become Dirt Track Owner

Jack Benton — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:48:54 -0500

The next career moves for Hazlet, N.J., native Ray Evernham, according to two Lincoln County newspapers, are to retire from NASCAR car ownership and run East Lincoln Speedway here in 2009.

Friday’s “Lincoln Tribune” carried a photograph of Evernham addressing the the Lincolnton-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce at the county’s economic development association the night before. Evernham suprised the business after hours audience that he and RPM Group Holdings’ Bob Mack are negotiating to purchase ELS from current owner Ralph Nantz.

Evernham, now of Cornelius, did not get into specific plans for the three-eighths-mile clay oval but told the “Lincoln Times” that he had sold off most of his intrest in Gillett-Evernham Motorsports. The former Wall Township (N.J.) Speedway winning driver and three-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion crew chief said that he had attended and tested there earlier this year.

“I want to get back into grassroots racing,” said Evernham. “It’s a nice Saturday night place. That’s my plan - to keep it a nice Saturday night place. First thing
we’re going to do is see what everybody needs.”

Mack, of Cornelius, added that safety and family entertainment are among his and Evernham’s goals for ELS. Nantz, when called by the “Lincoln Times” Friday, also chose not to get into details due to the negotiations.

“You might say he’s showing some intrest,” said Nantz. “If things go as planned, a lot of people are going to be really excited.”

ELS’s Late Model Modified Sportsman Champion and titlists from ELS’s other six divisions were hailed during the track’s awards banquet at Dino’s at nearby Gastonia

What opened as East Lincoln Motor Speedway in 1991 included Open Wheel Modified, Micro Sprint, Street Four, Rookie Four, Stars of Tomorrow and GASC as its other regular divisions. ELS has also hosted the USAC Carolina Ford Focus Midget Series and local INEX Legends Cars among its recent visiting groups.

ELS and Stanley are in southeast Lincoln County. The track is about 14 miles northwest of downtown Charlotte and about eight miles southeast of Lincolnton.

Evernham’s career, should he buy ELS, would bring him full circle. He started racing at New Jersey’s Wall and Flemington speedways in the late 1970s.

Evernham won seven modified stock car and 10 sportsman/pro stock/modern stock features at Wall 1976-81. “Hollywood” became the first driver of the paved,
banked one-third-mile oval to win a feature in the above divisions plus at least one American Three Quarter Midget Racing Association main and, in 2007, a RMP Modified Affordable Division match race.

Evernham traded his driver’s helmet for a tool box when he was hired by Jay Signorie and Roger Penske as a mechanic for the International Race of Champions
series in 1983. Signorie, of Point Pleasant, N.J., and Penske, then of Red Bank, were reviving the all-star series that pitted some of the world’s best drivers against each other in identically prepared Chrysler Daytonas.

Evernham left IROC’s Tinton Falls headquarters to team up with Jeff Gordon and Hendrick Motorsports in 1992. Evernham and Gordon together won 47 now-Sprint Cup races, including the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994 and two Daytona 500s. They, car owner Rick Hendrick and “The Rainbow Warriors” team won the 1995 and 1997-98 Cup titles.

Evernham then formed his own team in 1999 to help Dodge’s re-entry to NASCAR cup racing. Kasey Kahne, Jeremy Mayfield and former Cup champ Bill Elliott won seven races for Evernham, including a second Brickyard 400 and Pocono International Raceway’s Pennsylvania 500.

Evernham also fielded Dodges in NASCAR’s Busch/Nationwide and Craftsman/Camping World Truck series plus the ARCA RE/MAX tour. His engine program included supplying Mopar-backed USAC Silver Crown series drivers.

Gillett Evernham Motorsport, according to its Website, employs 300 people. Evernham welcomed Wisconsin meat packer and sports businessman George N. Gillett, Jr. to a majority share of his company Aug. 6, 2007.

Evernham, at the after hours meeting, expressed his concern about the decline of operating short track ovals. He said that he had heard about his native New Jersey being down to New Egypt and Bridgeport speedways.

Wall Township Speedway co-owner Tim Shinn, of Wall, said that he had approached Evernham about becoming an operating partner around Aug. 1, 2005. Shinn’s proposal including the new partner’s option to buy him or any of the other four co-owners out.

Evernham won his MAD match race against Kahne, Elliott Sadler and Elliott during their “Racing fo a Reason Night” Aug. 4, 2007. The foursome and development driver Erin Crocker also signed autographs during the fundraiser for childhood Leukemia research, treatment and education.

Shinn eventually hired Jim Morton as operations manager in 2006 but decided to end regular racing March 14 before the 2008 season’s start. He did allow Morton to lease the track and promote Turkey Derby XXXV Nov. 27-28.