Junior Johnson, NASCAR giant, died Friday.
By the middle of the 1974 season, the accomplished former driver had two racing teams to his name. One was the No. 52 that had belonged to Allan Brooke, with Earl Ross driving. In late September, Ross won the Old Dominion 500 in Martinsville. More famously, there was the No. 11 team. Cale Yarborough already had six victories that year, and after the halfway point, the South Carolinian won four more, repeating as the second-highest finisher in the season standings.
What brought these two teams together was Carling beer. The Toronto company, according to Johnson, "had been sponsoring Ross on a smaller team," but wanted to boost the Canadian driver's chances of winning Rookie of the Year. The beer makers came to Johnson, who was Richard Howard's partner in the Yarborough venture, and proposed buying the team with the points leader. "As far as I knew," Johnson recounted years later, "to have a business like Carling actually own a team was a first in NASCAR."
This arrangement began with the Firecracker 400 in July, but ended that fall, when the brewery owners suddenly abandoned their NASCAR aspirations. Johnson bought back his enterprise. The Rookie of the Year from north of the border would return for a few more races thereafter, but not under the banner of Junior Johnson & Associates.
Yarborough stuck around, and later in the '70s, the man driving the white and orange No. 11 car would be the Winston Cup champion three times in a row. Darrell Waltrip would bring another three titles to that team in the '80s.
"Carling's sponsorship efforts had served the team very well," Johnson wrote, but from there, the owner and his driver would have to overcome a rough 1975 to build on the legend of No. 11 and the legacy of a man who came from moonshine-running roots.
Mr. Johnson's own account of 1974, written in 2011 for Motorsports Unplugged
Yarborough's 1974 season and Ross's, from Racing-Reference.info
Some more about Earl Ross, from NASCAR Yesteryear
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
Four Flawless Days
This fact about J.T. Poston, winner of the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., caught my eye in this morning's sports section: "He became the first player since Lee Trevino in 1974 to win a 72-hole stroke-play event on tour without any bogeys or worse."
Trevino was the first to achieve such a four-round run (at least since the Tour split from the PGA in 1968), doing so at the Greater New Orleans Open Invitational. He shot a 267 that weekend, going 21 under and leaving two runners-up in his dust eight strokes behind.
In the last tournament to be held at Lakewood Golf Club, the 12-year host of the local event, Trevino scored 65 in the final round, remarking that it hadn't been since the 1968 US Open that he had "hit the ball so solid." He had shot 67, 68, and 67 in previous rounds and earned $30,000 for winning the championship. Bobby Cole's three-round total was the same going into March 31, but a 1-over 73 that Sunday sent him into a tie with Ben Crenshaw.
This was Trevino's 15th PGA Tour win (including majors) since the Tour went off on its own, and his sixteenth would come at the 1974 PGA Championship.
For comparison: at par-70 Sedgefield Country Club, Poston went 22 under (65-65-66-62), but finished just one stroke ahead of Webb Simpson and two ahead of Byeong-hun An to secure the $1,116,000 prize and his first PGA Tour win. Poston is 26 years old, and Trevino was 34 when he achieved his bogey-free weekend. Times change, and history doesn't Xerox itself.
Trevino was the first to achieve such a four-round run (at least since the Tour split from the PGA in 1968), doing so at the Greater New Orleans Open Invitational. He shot a 267 that weekend, going 21 under and leaving two runners-up in his dust eight strokes behind.
In the last tournament to be held at Lakewood Golf Club, the 12-year host of the local event, Trevino scored 65 in the final round, remarking that it hadn't been since the 1968 US Open that he had "hit the ball so solid." He had shot 67, 68, and 67 in previous rounds and earned $30,000 for winning the championship. Bobby Cole's three-round total was the same going into March 31, but a 1-over 73 that Sunday sent him into a tie with Ben Crenshaw.
This was Trevino's 15th PGA Tour win (including majors) since the Tour went off on its own, and his sixteenth would come at the 1974 PGA Championship.
For comparison: at par-70 Sedgefield Country Club, Poston went 22 under (65-65-66-62), but finished just one stroke ahead of Webb Simpson and two ahead of Byeong-hun An to secure the $1,116,000 prize and his first PGA Tour win. Poston is 26 years old, and Trevino was 34 when he achieved his bogey-free weekend. Times change, and history doesn't Xerox itself.
Cliff Branch, 1948-2019
Cliff Branch died Saturday.
He was a Houston native who went to Wharton County (Texas) Junior College and the University of Colorado. The Oakland Raiders made him a fourth-round draft pick in 1972 and brought him on as a punt returner. By 1974, he bolstered the team's passing game and gave Ken Stabler another favorite receiver. With 60 receptions to the veteran Fred Biletnikoff's 42, Branch finished fourth in total receptions in the NFL, but he led the league in yards with 1,092 and in touchdowns with 13. That performance made him a unanimous All-Pro selection.
Branch's best game of the year may have been the Dec. 1 game against the New England Patriots, one of three in which he took the ball over the goal line twice. Those catches and four others gave him a total of 138 yards. His total of 1,092 for the season was just five ahead of the Dallas Cowboys' Drew Pearson, but he caught three more passes for touchdowns than did Isaac Curtis of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Branch scored a 72-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter of the Raiders' playoff game Dec. 21 against the defending NFL champion Miami Dolphins, a close game from which the black and silver emerged victorious.
Two years later, the team put together its first of three seasons as a Super Bowl winner, and Branch was there for all of them.
He was a Houston native who went to Wharton County (Texas) Junior College and the University of Colorado. The Oakland Raiders made him a fourth-round draft pick in 1972 and brought him on as a punt returner. By 1974, he bolstered the team's passing game and gave Ken Stabler another favorite receiver. With 60 receptions to the veteran Fred Biletnikoff's 42, Branch finished fourth in total receptions in the NFL, but he led the league in yards with 1,092 and in touchdowns with 13. That performance made him a unanimous All-Pro selection.
Branch's best game of the year may have been the Dec. 1 game against the New England Patriots, one of three in which he took the ball over the goal line twice. Those catches and four others gave him a total of 138 yards. His total of 1,092 for the season was just five ahead of the Dallas Cowboys' Drew Pearson, but he caught three more passes for touchdowns than did Isaac Curtis of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Branch scored a 72-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter of the Raiders' playoff game Dec. 21 against the defending NFL champion Miami Dolphins, a close game from which the black and silver emerged victorious.
Two years later, the team put together its first of three seasons as a Super Bowl winner, and Branch was there for all of them.
[EDIT 11/30/2023: Introducing the "football" label]
Monday, March 25, 2019
Did I Drop the Ball on the Hammer?
Every year I get my baseball annuals from the nearest bookstore, and the March/April issue of Baseball Digest is in this year's haul. Page 64 of that magazine tells me I might have erred greatly in relating a huge sports story for 1974. Here's what I wrote.
In doing my research for the Muhammad Ali tribute, I'd been given a little doubt about the usual story of his "rope a dope," but I didn't change my post. In this case, however, I've probably been misled into posting the opposite of what really happened. Kuhn, in fact, urged the Braves to have the Hammer play ball when they didn't want to risk the milestone happening on the road. I will correct the baseball post now.
He [Hank Aaron] had finished 1973 one short of 714 [home runs], but ties the record in his first at-bat of the season in Cincinnati April 4...Commissioner Bowie Kuhn wanted him to skip that road series, but no way.In this account ("The Game I'll Never Forget" by Hank Aaron as told to Bruce Levine and Joel Bierig), it is the Atlanta Braves' owner, Bill Bartholomay, who suggested that Aaron not play the two games following the first. But then, says the article:
...Commissioner Bowie Kuhn intervened. Barring tangible injury to Aaron, Kuhn ruled the Braves would face serious consequences if he didn't play in two of the season's first three contests.Along with the first game, Aaron played the third game of that series. Two weeks from today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the night he made history with his 715th home run.
In doing my research for the Muhammad Ali tribute, I'd been given a little doubt about the usual story of his "rope a dope," but I didn't change my post. In this case, however, I've probably been misled into posting the opposite of what really happened. Kuhn, in fact, urged the Braves to have the Hammer play ball when they didn't want to risk the milestone happening on the road. I will correct the baseball post now.
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