He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back: The True Story of the Year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the Rest of NASCAR's Feudin', Fightin' Good Ol' Boys Put Stock Car Racing on the Map

by Mark Bechtel

Overview

On a cold February day in 1979, when most of the Northeast was snowed in by a blizzard, NASCAR entered the American consciousness with a dramatic telecast of the Daytona 500. It was the first 500-mile race to be broadcast live on national television and featured the heroes and legends of the sport racing on a hallowed track. With one of the wildest finishes in sports history -- a finish that was just the start of the drama -- everything changed for what is now America's second most popular sport.

He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back is the story of an emerging sport trying to find its feet. It's the story of how Bobby Allison, Donnie Allison, Cale Yarborough, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, A.J. Foyt, and Kyle Petty came together in an unforgettable season that featured the first nationally televised NASCAR races. There were rivalries -- even the sibling kind -- and plenty of fistfights, feuds, and frenzied finishes. Rollicking and full of larger-than-life characters, He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back is the remarkable tale of the birth of modern stock-car racing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316072137
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	02/08/2010
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Lexile:	1130L (what's this?)
File size:	736 KB

About the Author

Mark Bechtel is a senior editor for Sports Illustrated. Previously, he covered NASCAR for the magazine. A native of Alabama, he now lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 Something Borrowed, Something Blue 3

2 Birthplace of Speed 19

3 The Good Ol'Boys 36

4 The Prince 59

5 The Man in the White Hat 76

6 On the Air 86

7 So Fair and Foul a Day 96

8 The Fight 119

9 Round Two 138

10 Round Three 148

11 Wild and Young, Crazy and Dumb 154

12 Diamonds As Big As Horse Turds 166

13 Pearson's Kerfuffle 176

14 Old Chow Mein 192

15 Bring on the Dancing Bears 203

16 Gassed 213

17 Rising Again 224

18 The Gatorade Kid 236

19 The Beginning of the Trouble 244

20 Pretty Good Americans 256

21 The Shootout 271

Epilogue 281

Acknowledgments 292

Notes on Sources 295

Bibliography 299

Index 301