Indianapolis 500 : It’s an Unser Family Outing

You always have to feel sorry for someone trapped by environment, inhibited in growth and locked into a limited opportunity in life.

It’s how people are born peasants, remain peasants and beget peasants. Sometimes, it’s how people are born thieves, or servants or to a station in life from which there is no escape.

Take the case of this young man who was born in the mountain town of Albuquerque on April 19, 1962. He was born into a family of chauffeurs, teamsters. His father, uncles, cousins, even grandfather, drove cars and trucks for a living. It was all he knew. They sat him behind a wheel as soon as he could walk.

No telling what he might have become--a doctor, lawyer, author, artist, maybe even Secretary of State. President.

Alas, Al Unser Jr. is in a rut. He makes his living driving other peoples’ cars. It’s depressing. Some years he doesn’t even gross more than a million dollars.

There are some corners of the world, say the Antarctica, where his name is not a household word, but the sad facts of the matter are, he’s far better known than the Secretary of State.

And it isn’t as if he were driving a cab. Or a limo.

The Unser family business has always been speed. There are no back seats in the cars they drive. No meters. No cargoes. They don’t hire out for weddings, trips to the airport. No speed limits to worry about. No stoplights. Caution lights only.

I suppose if Dad were a king, it would be all right to follow in his footsteps. And to some extent, Dad, Al Unser Sr., was a king of a sort. He is co-holder of the record for the most Indianapolis 500 race car victories, with four.

Uncle Bobby was a crown prince--three Indy 500 victories.

An Indy 500 is an Unser tribal rite. Another uncle, Jerry, was killed on this racetrack.

But if the nephew is in a rut, it’s a golden rut. Al Jr. has made $2,888,877 driving a car around this track. He’s three victories behind Dad and two behind Uncle Bob. But he’s only 32. And Dad won his last at 47 (within five days of being 48). And Al Jr. is on the pole this year. That, too, is an Unser family tradition.

Young Unser might have made almost as much out of automobiles as Henry Ford by the time he retires. If he had gone into politics, he probably couldn’t steal as much as he makes each year just by putting three hours into a race car the last Sunday of every May--after qualifying for it in a 2-minute 37-second run a couple of weeks earlier.

Those kinds of numbers may be why sports has become an inheritance business, full of hand-me-down careers, second-generation athletes. Bobby Bonds’ son, Barry, is a case in point. So is Ken Griffey’s namesake. It’s not exactly like handing down a plow and a brace of mules. You’re handing down a license to make money. You’d have to leave the family a railroad years ago to guarantee them this kind of income.

Of course, the annals of inheritance are full of tales of sons of riches who took Dad’s money or business and squandered it on chorines or nightclubs or booze or worse.

You can lead a kid to drive, but you can’t always make him a driver. Are the Unsers like a line of thoroughbreds--born to race? Just putting a steering wheel in his hand won’t let him win Indy unless the genes are at work.

What the Barrymores were to the theater, the Sinatras to song, the Goldwyns to film, the Unsers are to racing. The Andrettis come close, but eight Indy victories are a one-family mark hard to attain.

Al Unser Jr. lacks the reckless fire of his Uncle Bobby. Neither is he as low-key and matter-of-fact as his father, Al Sr. But he is as unflappable as a crossing guard and approaches what he does as analytically as a surgeon.

He doesn’t even mind that his name around the track is “Junior” or “Little Al,” which might be seen as quasi putdowns. Not much bothers young Unser, who gazes out at the world with the innocent stare of a guy who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a street-corner huckster and has the even disposition of a guy who sells brushes for a living. He doesn’t get mad. Not even when Emerson Fittipaldi knocked him out of the victory and into a wall on Lap 198 of the 1989 race. It’s well established that traffic arguments escalate into homicide on some freeways, but Little Al merely stood at trackside beside his wrecked car and rooted rival Fittipaldi home with applause.

On the track, though, he is a dogged competitor. More like his father than his uncle, who would have driven a car through the Berlin Wall to win.

Being an Unser almost means being born with a fuel pump instead of a heart, 90-octane fuel instead of blood, a steering wheel for hands and an accelerator for a foot. They live life in a helmet and look naked without a car around them.

Does Al Jr. feel deprived? Has posterity lost a great statesman? Medicine a great surgeon?

He laughs. “I’ve always been in love with racing. Ever since I was 9 years old, right through when I was 15 and got in Go-Karts. I felt at home in a race car.”

Did he opt for it? Or was he shoved into it?

He smiles. “Well, I always said it was my choice. But once when I sat up here in a press conference with my father, he said he steered me toward racing. I didn’t know about it. He said it was a sport in which you get to know about yourself.”

On reflection, is Little Al glad of the nudge?

“Oh, yes,” he answers. “You know, my father said: ‘I taught him everything he knows about racing--but not everything I know.’ Now that he’s retired, I hope he’ll teach me everything he knows, too.

“I have a blast when I’m in a race car. I feel more alive. I can’t think of anything I could have more fun at.”

Is he the last of the House of Unser?

Little Al smiles. “My son Al is starting out in little cars.”

How does he feel about that?

“Scares me to death,” he grins. “I know what’s going on out there. I just close my eyes. But he loves it.”

The dynasty is thriving. And a good thing. What would an Indianapolis 500 be without an Unser?