Lessons learned that first day at Indy
— -- Perfect.
There they stood in Gasoline Alley, the old one, the storied one, with its little garages made of cinder blocks and wood.
There were the Unsers. Both of them. Bobby, who had won in 1968, and Al, who'd won in '70 and '71. Just the two of them, chatting.
That made them easy targets for a rookie motorsports writer, early on his first day of covering the Indianapolis 500.
This was Wednesday of race week in 1975. Track silent. Grounds quiet. The day before Carburetion Day, which was run on Thursdays then.
And this, it seemed at that moment, was going to be easy -- just as easy as covering NASCAR, where I fancied myself a veteran with almost one year's experience.
At this moment, those "Keep Out" signs on A.J. Foyt's padlocked garage doors -- I'd been told the signs especially meant media -- didn't seem so ominous. I was scared of Foyt in those days. As was everybody else.
But now I had the Unsers cornered, and that would do just fine for my very first story out of Indy.
So I just sauntered right on up to the brothers, introduced myself, and told them I'd like to do a story on both of them. Right there. On the spot.
Bobby Unser didn't even grant me so much as a look of annoyance. It was just a sideways glance as he said, "Haven't you got something else to do?"
Al said nothing at all. I don't recall whether he even glanced at me.
Nothing, short of Foyt walking up and bloodying my nose, could have taken me more aback. I walked on, rattled, mortified.
I hadn't experienced anything like this in NASCAR, where you could walk right up to Richard Petty or Cale Yarborough or Bobby Allison and just start asking questions. They nearly always accommodated.
Except for Foyt, when he ventured south to run NASCAR.
I'd had one conversation with the man I'd come to fear upon reading an unvarnished story about him in Playboy, as preparation for my new job covering auto racing.
The conversation, at his Daytona garage stall, had gone like this:
"A.J., are you busy?" probably asked in quavering voice.
"Yeah. Real busy."
End of interview. Foyt stomped back into his garage and stayed there.
Now, summarily sent for a hike by the Unsers, I began to wonder whether all these guys -- the ones with more scars and steelier eyes than the NASCAR drivers -- were like this.
Then, relief. Here came Johnny Rutherford. Good ol' Johnny Rutherford, the defending Indy 500 champion, walking alone. This first day was going to work out just fine, after all.
Rutherford had talked to me plenty, leading into my first NASCAR race, the Firecracker 400 in 1974. (What I hadn't realized was that of course he talked to me. He was getting paid appearance money, as the '74 Indy champion, to drive in the July race.)
I happily approached him. Immediately he looked at his watch.
"I'm late for a function," he said. "I've got to go."
"Just a few minutes?"
"I gotta go, right now. I'm late."
Welcome to the biggest race in the world, kid. I don't think we're in NASCAR anymore.
Now I was panicked, perplexed and pissed. If this were Daytona, I'd have quotes for half a dozen stories in my notebook by now. Here I had nothing. And I was supposed to file a story that afternoon to the Sentinel Star, my employer at the time, now known as the Orlando Sentinel.
I found Bill Brodrick, the chief racing publicist for Union Oil Co., then branded Union 76, the company that supplied all the gasoline and motor oil for NASCAR. (You might remember him from countless photos and telecasts as the huge, red-headed guy who was in charge of victory lanes in NASCAR for decades.)
Brodrick wielded enormous clout down there. I figured he must here, too.
I went whining to Brodrick: Both Unsers just blew me off, and not even Rutherford would talk to me. Rutherford didn't even seem like the same guy I'd met at Daytona.
And Bill Brodrick, Mr. Fix Anything in NASCAR ...
Laughed out loud.
"Hey, pal, this ain't Daytona. This is Big Casino. This is for it all."
This race could change a driver's life. Or end it.
"So they're ALL uptight," Brodrick said. "Of course they ain't gonna talk to some rookie writer from Florida."
Turned out Brodrick was there on special assignment, a sort of commando raid onto the foreign, sovereign soil of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which fancied itself so far above stock car racing that once NASCAR founder and czar Bill France Sr. had been ejected from the grounds.
Going into the Indy 500 in 1975, car owner Dan Gurney had ticked off Ashland Oil Co., which, with its Valvoline brand of motor oil, ruled Indy. Ashland also supplied all the methanol fuel for the race, and wouldn't give Gurney a drop.
Stymied, fearing he might not even be able to field his cars in the race, Gurney phoned Brodrick. Turned out all the methanol in the U.S. came out of one little refinery in Texas, and it was just a matter of branding. Brodrick, through Union 76, secured several barrels of methanol. And he shipped Gurney several cases of Union oil.
Out of gratitude, Gurney and his lead driver, Bobby Unser, agreed that Unser's uniform would carry a Union 76 logo on the upper-left chest -- right where the Valvoline patch was supposed to go.
Indy officials, totally beholden to Ashland and Valvoline, said no.
And Bobby Unser informed them that if he couldn't wear the Union logo, he would not race. Indy officials did something unheard of at the time. They gave in.
That's what he and Al had been talking about when I encountered them. That's why they had no time for some punk writer from Florida. That's where I didn't understand just how big this Big Casino was. Photos of Unser would go worldwide if he won, and the Union patch was placed so that there was virtually no way cameras could avoid it.
The signs came down.
Indy is hallowed. But not omnipotent. Not infallible.
What I learned that week from Mario Andretti, Bill Brodrick, Dan Gurney and Bobby Unser, I have applied ever since.
That has caused me a lot of trouble, but no regrets, at Indy all these decades.
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