Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I don't think of Greg as being synonymous with the #27, it's just the last  car he drove. When I think of him I usually think of the Apple #12 or 7TW. 

I'm with Danny Dietrich on this one. 

LOL LOVE IT! Thank you for stating it. 

Not being from Central PA myself, the fact he became a hero in Central PA for that part of his career as a World of Outlaw beater (not just in PA but outside of PA as well) after coming off the WoO tour and having the success he did in Florida, Knoxville and other places, his death in PA, in a PA car makes it a move that makes sense to me. I think the gesture of retiring the number is more for the fans, family and the owner, and I think we should/can/do appreciate that. I don't think any owner towing 27 car from outside of PA would have any problem being 27a at those tracks. 

As stated above, 11, 1, 3, have more meaning to us fans than to the people who drive/drove them. Steve, Sammy and Dale raced in cars with other numbers because racers just want to race and fewer racers are married to their car numbers than owners are. 

I have had two relatives die on dirttracks racing (Grandfather and Cousin). My Grandfather had a memorial race named for him a couple of times at the track he passed away at, but as time and track owners passed, so did the memorial race. Both ran different numbers through the years and neither would have wanted to have a number retired, they would want racing to continue and would want their family to continue in racing, regardless of number.  

Sorry if this post is disjointed, I wrote it and deleted probly 5 times over the last couple of days, just wanted to give my perspective. 

It is a nice gesture to retire the number.  But I don't think it was well thought out.

I think maybe we just opened a can of worms.   God forbid we lose another sprint car driver. So who judges that driver and says he is not worthy of having his number retired.  We all know what a champion is and Greg's career was full of wins and championships.  But I am talking the bigger picture.   Why don't we retire Billy Kimmel's number? On paper he was not a champion.  But in reality he had everything that makes a champion.  He had drive, sacrifice and hard work to live his dream. 

So who does judge who is worthy of retiring numbers?

Also I don't know how the tracks can enforce a team running the #27.  All the teams are independent contractors.  Numbers are not bought like in Nascar.   I know a team would never run the number because of the PR hit they and their sponsors would take. 

Legally I don't think the tracks can do a thing to stop it from being used.

At Nazareth, when a guy would show with an "83" on his car, the track just have the driver add a "1" with tape before or after the "83." It wasn't any kind of major argument or disagreement.

As far as running out of numbers if "27" is retired, it isn't like hundreds of different numbers are going to be retired and there will not be any left for new drivers. Two of the most famous numbers in central PA are 461 and 880. Does anyone somewhere outside of central PA run those numbers?

I know one of the things that race fans hate is when racing gets compared to the stick and ball sports, but for this topic let’s do just that.  
Numerous teams across all professional sports have retired numbers.  I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan, so I’ll use them as an example.  When they retired Brian Dawkins’ number I don’t think I heard anyone say, “What happens to a kid who’s been playing his whole football life with #20? Does he have to change his number if he gets drafted by the Eagles?”  The players know the deal if they get drafted by that team. I mean, if you are mega serious about using that particular number, just do what Peyton Manning did when he joined the Broncos.  He wanted 18 but it was retired in honor of Frank Tripucka, so he simply asked the family if they would be okay with him wearing the number.  They gave their blessing and that was that.

These professional sports teams are restricted to numbers 1-99 (I’m not counting 0 or double 00), and they don’t seem to have any issues with retiring numbers.  Sprint car racing, and local racing in general has always had access to scores of single, double, triple, and even quadruple digit numbers and beyond. You can get mega creative in selecting your “number”. There are literally numerous permutations of letters, numbers, and symbols that you can create when putting a car together to race. So, what is the big deal by retiring one number here? 

Others have suggested that because Hodnett’s number is being retired, it is somehow a slight to others who have not had their number retired.  How? Perhaps no one brought up this idea before. Perhaps the idea was brought up, but it didn’t gain traction for whatever reason. Who knows? Someone brought up Billy Kimmel earlier, why couldn’t someone try to get his number retired? You could try and maybe it would succeed. You never know until you try. 

I understand the mentality of, “question everything”, but I just don’t see this number retirement as something that is worthy of that mindset. It’s not going to change anything about how any driver or team prepares for race. To me, it’s odd that some of the initial reactions to this are, “Why”, or “Yeah, but if his number is retired, what about…”

That is two completely different arguments. If you are offered a ride, you choose to leave your current ride or not. So you are potentially choosing to leave your number behind as well. Thats on you.

The argument that was made above, was suppose you are racing with the number 27, and that number has been used by your family for multiple generations, now you must change your number. That's not fair.

I'm sorry, but retiring a number, that by the way is not owned by anyone, unlike NASCAR, is just dumb! I mean no disrespect, but it's dumb.

Another point is the number 27, wasn't even the most famous or most succesful number Greg raced with.

The true way to honor Greg, would be to hold a memorial race, where the entire field raced with the number 27, if you really want to do something with the number.

That argument is apples and oranges.

Stick and ball sports, the numbers are owned by the team, so it's their prerogative to retire the number. Here the numbers are not owned by anyone.

Just like it's Heffner and the Central PA tracks prerogative to retire 27.

So.... apples to apples I guess, right?

No it’s not their prerogative, they don’t own the rights to the number! What part of that don’t you understand? 

See someone else gets it... it just dont work in Dirt track racing. There are many # 27s out there. Guys already using the # can keep them if they wish. So why retire the # to begin with? Say if they were made to change and didnt wanna change their # what could they actually do about it? 27 is 27 even if it has an S behind it.

I most associate Greg with the J&S 22, myself.

It doesn't matter one bit whether or not tracks "own" a number. A track can set any rule it wants and teams can either choose to abide by those rules or not race there.

By your way of thinking, tracks can't tell teams what they can and can't run because promoters don't own the cars.

^^^ This

I was honestly nervous to say anything bad about it being still so soon. This is cool but where does it stop and who draws the line. Every racer lost was/still is important, some just had a bigger impact on the sport. Greg was one of these guys. Memorial races seem like an excellent idea to have the memories stay with us.

Honestly, after reading everybody else's post, I have to say I agree with you.  However my question is, do the drivers really care about the number they drive?

Is there any drivers who actually care about this?  Or are the people opposed to this fans (I mean no disrespect by this, I'm just asking).

Well if drivers don't care about numbers,  then someone needs to talk to Fred Rahmer.

Does anyone remember that when he started driving for CJB the car was #69 and he had it changed to #51 because it was, I believe,  his dad's number.  And as we see now the numbers 51 and 88 are important to Fred's sons.

So now thanks to a small group of people Noone else can be like the Rahmers if their family number is 27.  Plus we all know if one of the bigger teams in the area also ran #27 right now there isn't any way the number is retired.

You missed the entire premise of the statement. It was in regards to comparing retiring a number in a stick and ball sport to a number in dirt track racing. Where in a stick a ball sport, the team owns every number, so they can do what they want. In dirt track racing nobody "owns" the number, just the car it's on.

Are you guys sure that #27 isn't being retired in honor of Tyler Walker??? 

Sorry, couldn't resist.....

In all seriousness, I'm a big Hodnett fan. Retiring the number was intended as a tribute to Greg... we can argue back & forth for days about the form of tribute, but the respect is what counts....

RIP Greg... wonder who's winning that Big Race in the Sky.... Greg? Opperman? Clausen? Ragin Cajun? or????

I'm gonna guess that Rich Vogler & Robbie Stanley is qualifying in most of them heavanly A-mains... Who knows, theres a pretty damn good field of drivers up there.

Couldn't agree more Jim. The only people I've seen so far who have an issue with are people who won't be affected by it at all. It's no different than a kid who plays baseball and has used the #3 his whole career. He damned sure won't be using it if he gets signed by the Yankees so he'll use a different number. If there was any driver in our area deserving of such an honor, it was Greg considering the tragic accident that took him from us too soon. It's a very nice gesture and any issues that come up with it will be dealt with by the appropriate people and it won't be our problem so I don't see why anyone cares whether they agree with it or not.