Day of surprises
- Updated: October 1, 2015
Earnhardt surprises young fan, then gets a surprise from football Hall of Famer; talks Chase, Talladega, retirement
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (L) races sixth-grader Austin Freeman during a promotional appearance at the College Football Hall of Fame. Freeman, a pediatric bone cancer patient, fulfilled a dream by spending the day with his favorite driver.
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
ATLANTA — When you’ve had the kind of career Dale Earnhardt Jr. has enjoyed as a NASCAR super driver you’d think nothing surprises him anymore.
Well, there he was Thursday, looking like a kid on Christmas morning when he met a boyhood hero during a promotional appearance for Talladega Superspeedway at the College Football Hall of Fame.
After surprising 12-year-old cancer patient Austin Freeman with a personal appearance and some quality time, Earnhardt himself was surprised when former Washington Redskins lineman Dave Butz emerged from behind a backdrop to present racing’s most popular driver with the last helmet he wore in an NFL game.
Earnhardt at first thought the gift was on loan and promised to take good care of it, but Butz reiterated the helmet was for him. He said it hadn’t been handled or out of his house until Thursday.
The helmet bore the scars of life in the NFL trenches, and the way Butz, a 2014 College Hall inductee who spent 14 of his 16 NFL seasons with the Redskins, described the subtleties of a goal-line stand it sounded a lot like racing three-wide at Dega.
“I can’t believe he wants to part with it, but I will definitely take great care of it,” Earnhardt said. “I’m a huge, huge fan.
“I remember Dave playing in the Super Bowl against the Dolphins and how good he was. For him to give me this game-worn helmet is just crazy. I thought we were having an awesome day and I’m glad Austin is here to be a part of this. He was surprised here today and he gets to see me get surprised. It’s pretty awesome.”
Austin had the same reaction when Earnhardt came around the corner to meet him. They threw around the football and raced motorized coolers and radio-controlled cars before touring the Hall.
Even as big a Redskins’ fan as Earnhardt is, there came a time when his passion crossed his career path. Still, Junior said he wasn’t at all conflicted when legendary Redskins coach Joe Gibbs became a race team owner and Earnhardt had to trade paint with his drivers.
“It wasn’t tough at all,” he said. “We were so happy to have Joe in the sport … because of what he did with the Redskins and how he brought so much success to the team. When he became part of our sport it was exciting for me. I was glad he was going to be around.
“I had never met him, so to see him walking around the garage it was like Christmas. To be able to go up and talk to him was amazing. The Redskins players are like heroes to the fans, so to see the coach or a player is just awesome. I was really excited.
“Even today he’s always Coach to me. He puts a great race team out there every weekend but he’ll always be Coach. The Redskins connection is the first thing I see when I think of Joe Gibbs.”
One of Gibbs’ former series champions, Tony Stewart, announced Wednesday he was stepping away from NASCAR following the 2016 season. With Jeff Gordon retiring at the end of this season – a fact that caught young Austin by surprise — the highest level of the sport is starting to lose some of that generation’s most glowing personalities.
Earnhardt was “excited” the drivers were able to retire on their own terms and said they’ll be missed especially outside of the car but he’s confident the sport will “be fine.”
“These guys are getting up there,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of guys getting up there so you’re going to hear this in the next several years, a lot of guys moving on to do different things.”
At 40 and a husband-to-be, Earnhardt isn’t close to making that move, but whether that day comes for him in the next five or 10 years, those plans need to start well before the decision date.
“You start making it early,” he said. “Stewart announced today; I bet he’s been talking and forming and working with his financial partners and planners for a year or two to prepare for that. It’s such a big change – your lifestyle’s going to change, a lot of things are going to change aside from the racing part so you’ve got to start planning that stuff way out in front. I think once you turn 40 you start thinking about that.
“I’m putting things in motion to start planning for my retirement. Whether it happens at 45 or 50 or whenever I want to be ready … so it’s a simple, seamless change.”
Before being surprised by Butz, Earnhardt spent time with young Austin like they were old friends. Freeman won the cooler race. Earnhardt nosed him out with the RC cars, but TSS chairman Grant Lynch called it a photo finish and declared Freeman the winner — against his better promoter judgment.
“Usually when an Earnhardt wins at Talladega you sell a lot of tickets,” Lynch said.
If that’s the case, sales promise to be up for this month’s Camping World 500 weekend, Oct. 23-25. Earnhardt won the spring race at Talladega and will be looking to become only the third driver in history to win three of the four superspeedway races in the same year.
The only two have been Pete Hamilton (1970) and a driver with a name familiar to him — Dale Earnhardt Sr. (1990).
Earnhardt said he was bringing the same car that won at Daytona and Talladega back to the track later this month. He hopes to still be in the Chase by then; he currently sits 12th in the Chase standings with the contenders being pared to 12 after this week’s race at Dover.
“It’s a great race car, it’s got an amazing track record and a lot of speed, so I anticipate us to be very competitive in the race,” he said. “It did everything it needed to do in the last event there and we were able to get the win. We went unchallenged the last 20 laps of that race; hopefully we’ll have the same luck … and get the job done.”
And this time, he’ll have an extra help. Young Austin will be atop the pit box cheering him to the checkered flag.
“Hopefully he can get to some more races after Talladega, especially if we win … we’re going to have to take him to a few more,” Earnhardt said. “He’ll definitely be a good luck charm in Talladega for us.”
College football Hall of Famer Dave Butz (L) gives Dale Earnhardt Jr. the back story on his Washington Redskins helmet. It was the last helmet Butz wore in an NFL game.
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