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Motorsports Notebook: Bump doesn't slow down Danny Sheridan
12:33 AM PDT on Thursday, March 27, 2008
By MATT CALKINS
The Press-Enterprise
If you've just eaten, come back to this in half an hour or so.
You won't need a dictionary to read this story, but you may need some Tums.
Four Wednesdays ago, USAC/CRA Sprint Car driver Danny Sheridan noticed a small bump on the back of his upper thigh.
By Thursday, it had grown a touch larger. By Friday, it was the size of a softball.
He was scheduled to race a day later but neglected to see a doctor.
Why not, you ask? Simple.
"Because I'm a guy," he said. "I hate the doctor."
So on Saturday night, after limping around the pits of Perris Auto Speedway, Sheridan stepped into his car and for 40 laps was sitting directly on the bump.
Let's see ... what else happened?
Oh, yeah, he won.
Nevertheless, he didn't exactly want to keep the bump around for good luck, so when it hadn't subsided by Monday, he finally saw a doctor, who just so happened to be his best friend.
They thought maybe it was a spider bite, but they weren't sure. Two days later, as Sheridan was walking around his home in Santa Maria, the whole thing popped, and he had to be taken to the hospital because of all the lost blood.
Now Sheridan, who will race at Perris again in two Saturdays, is going for the CRA points title and can ill afford to miss a race.
But this wasn't quite enough to convince his doctor to give him the go-ahead to race four days later, saying that he could be risking amputation as his wound was now exposed to infection.
Sheridan said it didn't matter, he was going to race. The doc said no. Sheridan said yes.
This went back and forth for a couple more days until the doctor, seeing that the wound had been healing faster than expected, finally relented.
Sheridan was instructed to wash the wound and pull out what ended up being a foot of gauze. Forget trading paint with a couple dozen crazy sprint car drivers, this was one of the scariest moments of Sheridan's life.
"I was like a 2-year-old kid," Sheridan said. "I was like, 'There's no way I can do this.' Finally, I built up enough nerve -- to go in the shower."
Needles to say, he eventually completed the task and got the OK from his doctor -- only to have his motor blow out on him at the Phoenix race. Sheridan is currently sixth in points, though he has been plagued by mechanical problems all year.
"We've been hurt pretty bad, leading a lot of races only to have motors come apart on us," Sheridan said. "We can't afford any more problems."
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