There He Is, Back in His Old Haunts

A few weeks ago, in a burst of hyperbole, I described the five worst places to be in the world of sport. I identified them, beginning with the 1-yard line of the Chicago Bears with the game on the line and the clock running out, the corner in a Dempsey fight with your eye swollen, the net at Wimbledon at match point, Amen Corner at the Masters, and the 1,400-foot homestretch at Churchill Downs in the Kentucky Derby.

I take it all back. The toughest place to be in all the world of sport is Turn 4 at Indianapolis, late in the day when the track is greasy, the field bunched, the heat in the cockpit about 200 Fahrenheit and your neck hurting and the boost turned up.

Listen! The next time you take out the family sedan, try driving it down the Santa Monica Freeway lying flat on your back, wearing a helmet packed with Freon gas and a fireproof suit, bubble mask and getting 1.7 miles to the gallon. Your speed is anywhere from 220 to 230, there’s a guy yelling in your ear on the radio and you’ve got 490 miles of this to go. You’re expected to come within--oh, an inch-and-a-half of the wall--and if you hit it, you become just another blood clot or human torch. The sound of taps has just died and you don’t know whether you’re going to join the names on the Borg-Warner trophy or the ones on a headstone.

That is the toughest place in the world of sport, the athletic equivalent of Stalingrad in the snow or Gestapo headquarters on a Saturday night.

Mario Andretti knows as well as anybody who ever tried to smuggle a race car through this half acre of hell without turning over or bursting into flame. This race track just lies in wait for Mario Andretti. What Tunney was to Dempsey, Little Big Horn to Custer, the iceberg to the Titanic, Indianapolis is to Mario Andretti.

When Mario first came to this track in 1965, a baby-faced little killer in a cockpit, born for speed, and he was named rookie of the year, it was confidently predicted that, by 1988, he would have won seven or more of these things. When he won in 1969, everybody said, “Well, that’s No. 1!” Now, for the other six.

We’re still waiting. For No. 2, never mind the other 5.

Mario Andretti is not quite Sam Snead. Ernie Banks. Rod Carew. Sam never won a U.S. Open. Banks and Carew never made a World Series.

Mario Andretti has led this race 460 laps. Only two active drivers have won this race four times--A.J. Foyt and Al Unser Sr. Only two drivers in history have driven in more Indy 500s than Andretti, Foyt and Johnny Rutherford--and between them they have won (count ‘em) seven Indys. Mario has won more lap prize money than any driver in the history of the Speedway.

For Mario Andretti, this hasn’t been a race, it’s been a hoodoo. Four hundred sixty laps of wild-eyed frustration. He’s not Snead, he’s Arnold Palmer who won only one U.S. Open but was in a playoff for three others.

Indianapolis is not a very forgiving track. Rick Mears, who has won twice, has called it “a fine line track,” a “mental” track. “You can’t hustle it,” Mears warns. It’s narrow, treacherous, it was built for the Marmon Wasp, not the Penske Chevy.

There are golf courses you can’t attack, that you have to romance, to defend yourself against. There are pitchers against whom you have to choke up, jump shots you shouldn’t take. There are defenses that defuse the long bomb.

Indy doesn’t respond to caveman tactics, either. It is a wounded animal. It has to be sweet-talked. You have to hit for the fat part of the green, soften up on the serve. You can’t drag it by the hair back to the cave, you can’t storm it, you have to creep up on it.

Mario is not very good at creeping. Mario likes to jump in feet first like a guy jumping through a skylight with a firing Luger or a cop raiding a crap game.

The only year Mario won, it is a matter of record, was a year when his first-line car hit the wall in Turn 4 in practice and rained parts for five minutes. Mario’s cheeks caught fire. The good news was, his backup car had such a tendency to overheat, he babied it around the track. All the way to Victory Lane.

But the first of his putative many trips there turned out to be his last. He won races from Trenton to the Grand Prix championships of Spain, France and Italy. He was on the pole at Indy three times and started in the first or second row 14 times. His car logo should have been snake eyes superimposed on a black cat and a busted straight.

He “won” his second Indy in 1981 when he finished second to Bobby Unser--but Unser was penalized one lap after a review of the films the next morning showed he broke the rules by passing cars under the yellow flag. But Mario’s trek under the checkered flag turned out to be short-lived and checkered with controversy. On Oct. 8, the USAC review board restored the title to Unser.

“They fined him $40,000. They let him keep the other $400,000,” Mario notes bitterly. “He passed 11 cars under the yellow.”

Has Mario been trying to hustle the hustler? Trying to get a fastball past a Henry Aaron? Outslug Dempsey? Go over the middle on the Chicago Bears? Go toe-to-toe with a guy whose nickname should be Rocky? Trade bites with a lion? Fade a shooter named Slick?

Mario doesn’t think so. He knows every trick this track can throw at him. He has burned on it, crashed on it, even run out of fuel on it. It owes him one. Or six.

Will it pay off this year? A lot of people think so. A lot more hope so. He has to get by the flossy first row of Penskes today. Getting by people has never been Mario’s problem. It’s getting out from under that little black cloud. If he can get by that, other cars--and other drivers--are easy.