A few days ago, I saw one of our budding young "journalists" refer to Jeremy Mayfield as having been the "most famous drug case in NASCAR", in one of the thousands of idle gossip columns penned regarding young A.J. Allmendinger. I have not one word to add to any conversation about either gentleman, except to say that the young journalist was mistaken and perhaps needs to do better homework.
Most famous? On what then, do we base fame? There was another young racer, back in the decade of the 1980s, who stood to soar clear to the pinnacle of stock car racing and was indeed on his way... until an almost unknown and greatly misunderstood disease claimed his body and eventually his life. Meanwhile, NASCAR, most of his friends and most of the Motorsports press went out of their collective way to strip him of his dignity as well. As you'll see, NASCAR's "drug policy" was invented solely for and because of this man, who never, to anyone's knowledge, partook of any substance deemed illegal on anyone's list.
