The 4th Turn

~ by Tom Boggie 

Back in the late 1990s, there was a movie titled “For Love of The Game,” which starred Kevin Costner. Costner played Billy Chapel, a 40-year-old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who was near the end of his career. The Tigers were ending the season at Yankee Stadium, and Chapel was making his last start.

To make a long story short, Chapel pitched a perfect game. Before going out for the ninth inning, Chapel autographed a baseball for the Tigers’ owner, who had become a pseudo-father figure to him. On the baseball, Chapel wrote. “Tell them I’m through. For love of the game.”

I thought about that phrase when I looked at the results from Fonda Speedway Saturday night. Bobby Varin won his seventh modified championship, Chad Edwards walked off with his first sportsman crown and Rocky Warner scored the first modified victory of his career.

And all three are driving for owners who have that “love of the game.”

First, there’s Alton and Carole Palmer, the owners of Varin’s car. Alton Palmer is a five-time sportsman champion at Fonda, and has 56 career wins. The Palmer’s Service Center logo has graced a number of cars throughout the Northeast, including the Fonda Speedway triumvirate of Lou Lazzaro, Dave Lape and Jack Johnson.

The Palmers had sponsored both Jack and Ronnie Johnson since 2005, and it was that association that kept Alton Palmer in racing when he thought about spending more time with his business.

The Palmers have dedicated their lives to racing, and they were rewarded in 2012, when they received the “Gene DeWitt Outstanding Car Owners” award at the Northeast Hall of Fame in Weedsport.

Varin joined the Palmer team two years ago, and their combined love for the game culminated with a championship this year.

Then, there’s Tommy Spencer, the owner of Edwards’ sportsman. I’ve known Spencer for years, when he was a mainstay at Fonda with Tim Clemons and the Romanos. He got out of racing for a while, but returned a couple of seasons ago to field a crate modified at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park.

Now, after getting his feet wet, he’s back in the deep end of the pool. In addition to putting Edwards behind the wheel of his sportsman, Spencer is also a big sponsor at Glen Ridge, and I run into him almost every week in the pits at Albany-Saratoga Speedway. He loves racing, and likes to joke that he must be crazy for getting back into the sport. But the big smile he usually wears proves that he loves what he’s doing.

Finally, there’s Jake Spraker, who owns Warner’s car. Spraker, who got involved in racing in the 1980s, when he bought a car for C.D. Coville after Coville wrecked Cliff Barcomb’s car, loves to win, and over the years, he’s done plenty of it, from Ray Dalmata to Mike Romano to Steve Welch to Clemons and now with Warner, Spraker has posed for a ton of pictures in victory lane.

For the last couple of seasons, when Warner was running a sportsman for Spraker, they dominated the Northeast, including getting a win at Super DIRT Week.

The 2018 season has been a tough one for the team, making the move from sportsman to big blocks and also switching chassis, and Spraker certainly wasn’t happy with the results. But he and Warner stuck together, and were back in victory lane Saturday and Warner had trouble containing his emotions. After all, the win gave him the distinction of winning a feature in all of the classes run at Fonda. Had it not been for Spraker’s love of racing, who knows where Warner would be today.

Drivers always get the glory in dirt track racing, but without owners who have a love for the game, racing wouldn’t be the same.

BIG NIGHT AT MALTA

Tonight will be “Nostalgia Night” at Albany-Saratoga Speedway. Many stars of the past will be on hand to sign autographs before the races. That list includes Jack Cottrell, Dave Leckonby, C.D. Coville, Andy Romano, Brian Ross, John Kollar, Bob Hackel Jr., George Proctor, Mert Hulbert, Wes Moody and Win Slavin.

The racing will include double features for modifieds. One of those features will be the “Stan Da Man” tribute to the late father of Albany-Saratoga promoter Lyle DeVore. That race will be 32 laps and pay $3,200 to win, a reference to one of Stan DeVore’s favorite cars, his 1932 Deuce coupe.

“Nostalgia Night” will be bittersweet for organizer Chris Grady. Grady’s father, John, died last Saturday from dementia. John Grady was one of the area’s best racing photographers, and for a time in the 1970s, was the racing columnist for the Schenectady Gazette. He had an incredible knack of getting the shot that no one else saw coming, and was a legend in his field.

John Grady, who was an elementary teacher in the Niskayuna school system, started taking photos at the old Menands Speedway and became the track photographer at Albany-Saratoga Speedway in 1965. He and his wife ran the photo/souvenir booth at Albany-Saratoga, and later in life, Grady said those were 13 of the happiest years of his life.

You couldn’t walk into the pits of an area race track without running into John. The NYSSCA Hall of Famer was always eager to give me photos of drivers I was writing about when I did The 4^th Turn column for the Gazette. Area tracks were lucky to have a guy as talented as John.

A memorial race for Grady will take place next season at Albany-Saratoga Speedway. Memorial contributions in Grady’s name can be made to Dementiasociety.org.

AROUND THE TRACKS

After sewing up the track championship at Fonda with a fifth-place finish on Saturday, Varin picked up the top prize of $2,500 Sunday in the 66-lap “Aftershock” big block/small block shootout at Glen Ridge. Jeremy Pitts won the 602 Hoosier Daddy Don Warner Memorial feature. Pitts finished second behind Tim Hartman Jr., but Hartman came up light on the scales and was disqualified.

Varin had an emotional victory lane ceremony at Fonda. “I want to dedicate this championship to my mother, Carole’s father and Max Phillips, who are all looking down on us tonight,” he said.

Ken Tremont Jr. made his way back to victory lane Sunday in the 54-lap Charlie LaDuc Memorial race at Devil’s Bowl. That was Tremont’s first top-five finish at the Bowl since July 15 and gave him a 29-point lead over Joey Scarborough in the battle for the track championship.

Speaking about point races, two of the battles at Fonda went right down to the wire. Varin nosed out Josh Hohenforst by four points for the modified title, and Edwards had a 10-point margin over Ray Zemken in the sportsman division. Kenny Gates won his seventh pro stock title with a 28-point cushion over Josh Coonradt. The amazing thing about Edwards’ championship was that the team was in seventh place, 85 points behind the leader, in June.

There were a pair of disqualifications at the Bowl Sunday. Josh Sunn failed post-race inspection after finishing fifth in the sportsman modified feature, and Travis Billington was DQed after winning the limited sportsman feature.

Stewart Friesen wrapped up a spot in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series playoffs with a second-place finish at Bristol last Thursday. “That was probably the most fun I’ve had all year,” said Friesen after the race. “We’ll take it and move on.”

Friesen had a shot at winning the “Aftershock” at the Ridge Sunday, but with two laps left, tried to squeeze inside a lapped car. Varin, who was right on Friesen’s rear bumper, made contact with Friesen, sending the front end of Friesen’s car into one of the tires on the edge of the infield, ending Friesen’s night.

Ron Hedger, organizer of the Saratoga Auto Museum’s Lost Speedways program, announced this week that Coville will be one of the featured guests at this year’s event, which is always held the Saturday after Thanksgiving.