Return of the King

Cale Yarborough was the king, at least for one night this week.

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Cale could also pull off a McCain impression if he worked at it.

It wasn't Ted Williams at the '99 MLB All-Star Game, but it was close.

On Friday night, Cale Yarborough strode onto the stage in the Grand Ballroom of New York City's famed Waldorf-Astoria and stole the show at the 2008 NASCAR Awards Ceremony before he'd even said a word. He smiled, joked, honored Jimmie Johnson for "tying, not breaking" his record of three consecutive Cup Series titles, and admitted that standing on the stage gave him the itch to go racing again.

Here's a man who won three Cups, 83 races, 69 poles and four Daytona 500's. He's also survived a parachute that wouldn't open, a gunshot wound, a lightning strike, a midair altercation with a bear as he was also flying the plane, and two hot pursuit car chases with Boss Hogg and Sherriff Rosco P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard. He once snuck grand marshal Mickey Mantle into his car to run a few "nice slow laps" at Rockingham and proceeded to scare the living hell out the Mick at 130 mph.

At 68 years of age, Yarborough looked no different than the video that had been shown of him earlier in the night, film that was shot nearly thirty years earlier.

In other words, at an event that included Crash Davis, Cole Trickle and the 10 biggest stars of the modern NASCAR world, Cale Yarborough was still the biggest bad ass in the ballroom.

"I still can't believe that he showed up," a stunned Jimmie Johnson admitted two hours later in the midst of his champion's party.

Neither could anyone else.

Over the years, Cale's relationship with NASCAR and its current leaders has become, to put it mildly, strained. His greatest success on the track came before the cash came rolling into the garage and like so many of the drivers of his era, the fourth-winningest stock car racer of all-time has found it hard to watch the league promote his image and accomplishments to grow the sport while seeing little or no personal benefit.

Sadly, the rift is not unique to Yarborough. His old rival David Pearson and Cale's combatants from the famous Daytona 500 fight of 1979, Bobby and Donnie Allison, have also had their issues with the suits in Daytona. Some of their bitterness is overblown and unfair. A large chunk of it is not.

But Friday night's whitewashed black tie gala of trophies, celebrity cameos (note to Kevin Costner: Dale Earnhardt was The Intimidator, not The Terminator), and teleprompter regurgitations was redeemed in an instant thanks to an old racing warrior who put aside his differences to pay tribute to a kid who grew up idolizing him.

It was the finale moment for a season that began with an honest effort by the sanctioning body to re-establish a connection to its past, once-abandoned roots that embittered longtime fans who claimed that the league had forgotten those who'd gotten them there. In February NASCAR celebrated the 50th running of the Daytona 500 by bringing in nearly every living 500 winner for a publicity blitz that included a stirring roundtable television special produced by the NASCAR Media Group, the league's production arm.

The biggest name missing from the festivities and the resulting TV show was Cale Yarborough.

Yarborough stopped racing full-time in 1980, choosing to cherry-pick his rides and races where the speeds were fastest (and the checks were biggest). He wanted to spend more time at home in Timmonsville, South Carolina with his daughters, farm and multiple business interests, including a very successful car dealership. He returned full-time in '88 as a team owner, fielding the cars that essentially kick-started the Cup careers of Dale Jarrett and Jeremy Mayfield. But as the sport's growth curve became steeper and the financial risks became too great, he sold off what was left of his team after the '99 season.

"Racing was my job and it was almost too fun to call it a job," Cale told me during a paid appearance at Watkins Glen in 2000. "But there was nothing fun about being a car owner."

"Racing was my job and it was almost too fun to call it a job, but there was nothing fun about being a car owner."

Pearson also tried his hand at team ownership, as did Bobby Allison. But like great basketball players who become terrible coaches and executives (paging Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas), sometimes greatness in the field or on the track of play doesn't translate to greatness behind the desk.

In the week leading up to the 2008 Awards Ceremony—aka NASCAR Champions Week—the headlines were dominated by the latest list of legends suddenly finding themselves on the sidelines. On Friday afternoon every hotel room at the Waldorf was tuned to the Big Three automaker bailout hearings in Washington. Ray Evernham, generally considered the greatest crew chief that ever lived, is no longer an integral part of the race team he left Hendrick Motorsports to start. The Wood Brothers told ESPN.com's David Newton that they won't run more than a dozen races in 2009, and even King Richard Petty now finds himself without a race team to run after being pushed aside by the venture capitalists he brought in to save the family business.

"You heard it a lot here tonight," Yarborough said as he bolted New York and headed back home to South Carolina. "Times are tough for everyone these days, no doubt about it. But I didn't come up here to talk about that. I'm here and we're all here to congratulate Jimmie for doing something only one other driver has done in sixty years of NASCAR racing. I can't remember the guy's name that did it first, but I heard he is a really good looking smart fella."

And still the biggest bad ass in the ballroom.

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