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HEMBREE: Old School Personified
Cotton Owens, Herb Thomas, Buck Baker join Hall of Fame this week…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 04, 2013   Charlotte, NC
Herb Thomas, Leonard Wood, Rusty Wallace, Cotton Owens and Buck Baker make up the NASCAR Hall of Fame's Class of 2013. (Photo: Getty Images)
The three NASCAR Hall of Fame inductees who will be at Friday’s ceremony in spirit only are so “old school” that one of them might have invented the concept.

Herb Thomas, the first two-time champion (1951 and 1953) of what became the Sprint Cup Series, was a dirt farmer who happened to like to drive fast. He wandered over to see a race not far from his home, figured he could drive fast cars as well as the others he had seen and steadily proceeded to do so.

Although he had one of the most successful careers of the pioneer driver group, at his heart Thomas remained close to his farm fields, a man of the earth, more farmer than athlete.

Years after his final race, he returned to the circuit for an occasional appearance, usually noticeably uncomfortable with all the hubbub around him. It was a different time. He was a different driver from another world.

Buck Baker? Put him down in the middle of today’s NASCAR, and he would be as out of place as Oprah at a cheerleading camp.

Two stories come to mind.

In 1998, Baker, along with his son, Buddy, was named one of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers from its first 50 years. The drivers were introduced one by one, and Buck walked out to join his son in the group. Each had been given a nice leather jacket with the “50 greatest” insignia and had been asked to wear it for a group photograph. Buck, still his own man late in life (he died four years later at 83), still wore the jacket he had on when he arrived that day. Buddy was heard trying to convince his dad to switch coats. It didn’t work.

Buck was bull-headed on the track, too. He once finished a dirt-track race despite the fact that his car’s steering wheel fell off. He picked up a conveniently situated pair of vise grips in the car and used them to “turn” the car the rest of the way.

Cotton Owens’ induction will be the most bittersweet of the evening.

He expected to go in with last year’s class. He missed election by one vote.

There was little doubt he would be elected in this year’s class. When that happened, he was nearing the sad end of a long battle with cancer. He wasn’t able to be in Charlotte for the announcement of his election, but family members said he watched the news at home and was well aware of his selection.

He wasn’t expected to live to experience his crowning moment at this week’s ceremony, although he had beaten the odds many times before.

Owens died last June, two months after Dot, his wife of 66 years. You can search long and hard and not find a better family than that one.

There have been better drivers and better owner-mechanics than Owens, but few have matched him in the combination. He won nine Cup races and dozens of Modified events before launching a successful career as a car owner and builder. He and driver David Pearson, both Spartanburg, SC residents, won the title in 1966.

There will be more than a few tears when Owens’ name is added to the list of NASCAR greats Friday night.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 31 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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