Benny Parsons, NASCAR Winston Cup Champion, and race commentator for ESPN, NBC and TNT, has passed away at age 65.
I don’t know how many remembrances I’ve written here that include the phrase “I didn’t know that about h(im|er).” And so it is with Benny; I didn’t know, for example, that he was the proprietor of a winery in North Carolina. I didn’t know he’d won the ACE Award, and the ESPN Emmy award. In fact, I didn’t know much about him, until he began his broadcasting career after his retirement from his on-track activities.
Benny’s racing heyday came in the time when I’d sit in front of the teevee, to watch 20 or 30 minutes of a race run weeks earlier, and taped for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. NASCAR’s exposure was nothing like it is now. Hence, I didn’t know that over half of BP’s career starts resulted in a top 10 finish, and that his lifetime average finish was 14.5. Benny came up the old-school way, racing local short tracks, then moving to ARCA, where he won two series championships. As a former taxi driver, he supposedly wrote “taxicab driver” on his application to NASCAR.
It has always amazed me how retired racers of Benny’s era, more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, with head under the hood of a race car, could make a seemingly effortless transition to the broadcast booth. Benny did that with aplomb. His enthusiasm during the course of a race, and his “Oh, man!” exclamations during the particularly exciting portions of races, will be sorely missed. His knowledge of the sport, his relations with drivers, owners, and NASCAR officials, added much insight to the televised coverage. His enthusiasm for the sport was infectious, and you could just tell that the man absolutely loved the sport.
I’m rambling, and not exceptionally eloquent at the moment, and I’m no NASCAR mover and shaker. I’ll just miss Benny. Every Sunday at race time.
RIP, Benny: 1941 – 2007.
-k-
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