Cale: Fast, furious and fun

When you come up with the list of great drivers who never won at Hickory Motor Speedway, Cale Yarborough might top the list.

Yarborough was winless in four Cup races at Hickory, but he made up for it elsewhere. He won three Cup championships and four Daytona 500s. His 83 victories are sixth on NASCAR’s all-time list, behind Richard Petty (200), David Pearson (105), Jeff Gordon (85), and Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip (84 each). His 70 poles trail only Petty's 126 and Pearson's 113.

Cale drove every lap like it was his last. And in one of the most memorable incidents in NASCAR history, he got in a fight on the last lap of the first NASCAR race ever run flag-to-flag on TV.

With millions watching the 1979 Daytona 500 on CBS, Yarborough and Donnie Allison were battling for the lead down the backstretch when they crashed in turn three. The two were out of their cars and arguing when Bobby Allison stopped to check on his brother and to take a shot at Cale.

The donnybrook started, and an Associated Press photo immortalized a helmeted Bobby swinging at a bareheaded Yarborough, with Donnie in the background. On TV, announcer Ken Squier shouted that there's a fight. No joke.

Petty and his fans were grateful. As the battle ensued in turn three, Petty crossed the finish line with Waltrip in tow. It was Richard’s sixth Daytona 500 victory.

Yarborough became a permanent part of racing lore, although he says he's patched up his relationship with the Allisons in the last 32 years.

"I'm an honorary Allison," Cale once told me, laughing.

William Caleb Yarborough was short, squat and tough, and he had a comb-over haircut, but his intensity was legendary. One year, Cale actually flipped a car in qualifying at Daytona.

"It's called being a hard charger," Yarborough said of his driving style, "and there's only one other type of driver, and that's an also-ran."

Yarborough, the American Driver of the Year in '77, was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in '93 and the National Motorsports Press Association's hall of fame in '94. And he’ll be voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012.

Yarborough once told me that he didn't worry about championships — or his three second-place finishes in points. He ran to win races.

"I always approached them (the championship battles) the same way: I went after wins," he told me. "I felt that, if you won enough, the championship would come."

He won the Southern 500 a record five times, and he's probably the only driver to sail a car over the wall in a turn at Darlington Raceway and be able to talk about it. That was 1965, and Cale put a scare into the home crowd. Silence prevailed until Yarborough, after scrambling uphill on hands and feet, came into view and waved. For years, the car's flight appeared in the introduction to ABC's Wide World of Sports.

In ’88, Cale retired to be a successful businessman and, for a while, a car owner.

Yarborough had a chance to really mess up Richard Petty's NASCAR legend in the 1984 Firecracker 400 at Daytona. President Reagan was in attendance, and Petty, in a three-year skid, was going for victory No. 200. Yarborough had won his fourth Daytona 500 that year and was trying to sweep Daytona.

They were racing to the caution for the win. It was Richard by a foot.

Most people don't realize that Cale didn't finish second. Harry Gant inherited second after Yarborough went down pit road, mistakenly thinking the race was over at lap 158.

Although Yarborough admired Petty, he had a running feud with Darrell Waltrip, another racing giant.

"He was always running his mouth, and he was always eating up race cars," Cale has said. "So I nicknamed him 'Jaws' because he was always flapping his jaws. I respected him as a driver, but I wasn't going to let him run over me, too."

Once at Michigan, Yarborough and Waltrip were battling back and forth for the lead, and, finally, Cale won and slowed as he took the checkered flag. DW floored it, heading straight for Yarborough. In a classic wrestling move, Cale swerved, and Darrell whiffed and sailed into the infield mud. One assumes that Yarborough was grinning ear-to-ear as a tow truck pulled Waltrip's car out of the muck.

It probably still galls Cale that Darrell wound up with 84 wins to Yarborough’s 83.

Waltrip once told me that he and Yarborough weren't bitter rivals, though; in fact, he said that, when Cale was about to leave Junior Johnson's team, he called DW over and suggested he ask Johnson about the ride. Waltrip did and won two of his three Cup titles with Junior.

Yarborough stories abound, but the best might be about the snakes.

Cale and Tiny Lund — Tiny was Mutt to Cale's Jeff — were good friends and roommates on the road. Once, Tiny threw a fake snake into Cale’s race car and got the expected panic and gyrations. Then Cale, who was good with real snakes, caught a live rattlesnake, defanged it, waited until the huge Tiny had buckled into his car for the next week's race, and threw in the snake.

Realizing he had a live, rattling rattler in his lap, and not knowing it was toothless, Lund screamed and squirmed.  He exited his car head first, much faster than he'd entered it. He grabbed a ball-peen hammer and chased Cale around the garage, and Lund had to be restrained. After the race, though, they were laughing again.

Typical Cale.