Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
I was doing my daily “NASCAR blogger crawl” today and I came across an interesting posting by fellow blogger Michael over at NASCAR Eclectic about 1973 Rookie of The Year winner Lennie Pond, and how Juan Montoya looks like he might be the winner this year by barely edging out David Ragan. Yep, David Ragan. Who would have thought he would be close enough? But he is.
This got me thinking about the whole “Rookie of The Year” thing. To me I always thought that winning The Rookie of The Year title was a bit of a curse. Here’s why: Look who won the title in the 1990’s and where are they now/what they did,
1990 - Rob Moroso: Dead due to drinking and driving
1991 - Bobby Hamilton: Died of cancer, won 4 races and made more of name for himself driving in the truck series than in Cup
1992 - Jimmy Hensley: He made his first ever Cup start in 1972. It wasn’t until he was near the end of his career that he finally had a good shot at Cup and after he won the title he started driving on a part time basis. Better known a Busch driver (9 wins) than a Cup driver
1993 - Jeff Gordon: Here is an oddity, he has had success since winning the title and is currently in contention to win his 5th title
1994 - Jeff Burton: Has had success at the Cup level and is well respected in the garage area, but still has not won the Championship and has had sponsorship problems these last few years
1995 - Ricky Craven: Suffered a bad head trauma while in a NASCAR race and was not able to recover fast enough to keep his ride at Hendrick’s, then got screwed over by Cal Wells, and really hasn’t raced since
1996 - Johnny Benson: Looked like he had a promising career going, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, was released by his team and replaced by Scott Riggs (who hasn’t done much either). Johnny has since become a full time Craftsmen Truck series driver.
1997 - Mike Skinner: Did you know he made his first Cup start in about 1985? Landed with a good team (RCR) and team mate (Dale Earnhardt). The Lowe’s car struggled unless it was a non-points race and Skinner soon found himself back in the truck series.
1998 - Kenny Irwin: Died in an useless accident at New Hampshire.
1999 - Tony Stewart: Whew, a diamond in the rough - just needs a little more media savvy - with 2 Championships so far.
Aside from Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, not a single one of these drivers has had a great Cup career since winning the title. Based on this it would appear that winning the title would not be a good thing, unless you are from Indiana.
So I decided to look into this ‘curse’ thing a little more and I found lots of other bad luck, bad career, etc. cases like Davey Allison winner in 1987 and Alan Kulwicki winner in 1986 who both died in aircraft related deaths. Or how about 1983’s winner Sterling Marlin? Wrongly blamed for Dale Earnhardt’s death in the immediate aftermath, and his one real shot at winning the Championship ended with a broken neck in the last 1/3 of the season. Speaking of Dale Earnhardt he won in 1979 and died in a car wreck in 2001. Richard Petty won in 1959, and lost his grandson Adam in a crash very similar to Kenny Irwin’s at the same track none-the-less.
Finally, how about Canadian Earl Ross who won in 1974? He won 1 race that year but that was really the only year he raced. He raced 2 races in 1975 and 1976 then raced back to Canada and eventually became a regular Friday night racer at a track near London Ontario after a brief stint in the CASCAR Super Series.
Based on all of this, I don’t know if I would ever want to win the NASCAR Rookie of The Year title - unless I was from Indiana.
Photo Credit: ‘Earl Ross’ found at heymableblacklabel.com
