Robbie Cowart - Racing's In My Blood

(published in the September/October issue of Pooler Magazine)

Some of the most recognized names in racing – Dale Earnhardt, Junior Johnson, and David Pearson among them – have taken the turns at Oglethorpe Speedway’s half-mile dirt oval over the track’s 60 years.  But a surname that has been one of the Pooler raceway’s most familiar is one than only an ardent local racing fan might recognize.  The Cowart family has been around race tracks, including Oglethorpe, for generations, and this year, Pooler’s Robbie Cowart took the family know-how and his love for speed and brought home Oglethorpe’s Southern Eagle Budweiser Late Model Series Championship.

“I love dirt track racing because you have to adjust to different track conditions every time you race,” Cowart says of why the clay, like that at Oglethorpe, has been his preferred racing surface for the last six years.  “Asphalt racing (what you watch if you are a NASCAR fan) is more and more about the amount of dollars behind you than actual racing ability.”  There aren’t many dollars in Robbie’s kind of racing, but there is plenty of driving ability, ability he began developing while still in middle school.

“I started racing go-karts with my brother when I was 11,” Cowart says of his youth on the South side of Savannah.  Born in 1963, he had racing in his blood in an almost literal sense, particularly since his father, Robert Cowart, was a racer himself.  “For many years, he was also Oglethorpe’s Chief Steward,” the junior Cowart says, which is the official in charge of the speedway any time cars are on the track.  Better known to race fans, particularly in the South, was Robbie’s uncle; the famous or, perhaps infamous Delma Cowart.  Delma’s car number was ‘0’, and he raced a little of everywhere, even occasionally on the major NASCAR cup circuit.  He is perhaps best remembered for throwing a legendary hotel party after qualifying for the Daytona 500 in 1992 (Delma supposedly told a reporter, “I ain’t never won a race, but I ain’t never lost a party”).

Robbie Cowart went to work for Delma’s team after high school, though he already had other aspirations.  “I wanted to buy a dirt track car after I turned 18 so I could race at Oglethorpe, but my uncle talked me into going into asphalt racing.  He said I was still young and could use the experience.”  Six years later, Robbie got behind the wheel on asphalt for the first time at one of auto racing’s hallowed grounds.  “It was really something to run your first race at Daytona,” Cowart says of the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series race in which he finished a respectable 16^th.  “My uncle told me you just have to go flat out all the way around the track.  At first, I’d get a little nervous and let up in the corners, but once I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun.”

Cowart drove for his uncle for several years, but then decided to return to his original plan to play in the dirt.  “In the late ‘90’s, I finally started racing on dirt like I had always wanted to,” Cowart says, racing at Oglethorpe and other dirt tracks across the South.  At first, he was primarily a driver, racing (and winning his first dirt-track race) in a car sponsored by Ward’s Auto Paint and Bodyworks of Savannah, but it wouldn’t be long before Cowart was a car owner again, as well as off the dirt.

“My dad and I decided to buy an asphalt car,” in 2001, and Cowart says they also decided to give the ARCA series another go.  “It was fun, you know, getting to race on some of the best known tracks in the country; Talladega, Charlotte, places like that.”  ARCA was and remains a proving ground for drivers looking to move up to the major circuits, and Cowart competed with the likes of future NASCAR Cup stars Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman.  Paying for it was another matter.  “Our family business (Southern Pavers) was our sponsor, and we just didn’t have the money behind us that a lot of those teams had.” After qualifying for ten races over three years and finishing in the top-ten just once, Cowart decided it was time to get dirty again.

“There’s just something about dirt-track driving,” Cowart says, clearly excited to be talking about his favorite racing surface.  “You never know from one day to the next how your car will handle or what adjustments you’ll have to make.”  Cowart recalls a lap he turned earlier this season at Oglethorpe, where everything on the car seemed to be perfect.  “We came in at 18 seconds, and I thought about the superstition I had heard from my father and a lot of people where you don’t touch anything on the car as long as it’s running well.  I didn’t even wash it, which is unusual for me, but the next time I took it out, we went a lot slower. It was all because of the condition of the track and the adjustments you have to make to those conditions.”

Cowart raced quite a bit at Oglethorpe and other tracks over the next few years, then gave another travelling circuit a try in 2009.  “We raced in the National Late Model Series for two years,” Cowart says of the Southern dirt track series, “but that was tough, spending the money to get the car ready for different tracks, and not a lot of time to get used to each track.”  This was on top of his day job at Southern Pavers, and the physical and financial strain of building driveways and patios during the week and travelling as far as Florida and Alabama to race on weekends caught up to Cowart and his family.

This year, Cowart decided to stay home to race, and he thinks that’s one reason for his success.  “I’ve been around Oglethorpe all my life, and when you can race on the same track week after week, you pretty much know what you have to do to win every time on.”  Five race wins, including wins in the last two races of the season, clinched the Late Model Series title for Cowart.

Cowart wishes there had been more people in the stands watching those victories.  “It’s probably because of the tough economy, but it seemed like we had a little trouble drawing fans.  I know the economy took a toll on the number of cars and drivers,” Cowart says.  Indeed, only eleven cars competed in this year’s Late Model Series according to Oglethorpe Speedway’s web site.  “But we don’t do this for the money.  We love this business, and with tires alone costing $600 a piece, if you win some prize money, the best you can hope for is to break even.”

Break even or not, Robbie Cowart isn’t about to leave the driver’s seat.  “I love it and I’m having fun, and as long as I’m having fun, I’m going to keep driving.”  As he showed at Oglethorpe Speedway this year, that day is probably a long way off.

The Southern League of Colored Base Ballists

Don't you hate it when you feel like a coward and you have no reason to do so? Oh, I haven't done anything cowardly, at least not that I can think of, but a project on which I am about to embark makes me less sure of my manhood. Not that manhood, the other one. It is sobering to write about men who, obviously, have more bravery in their pinky fingers than I would have even if I were trapped for three days in that cloning scientist's lab from "South Park" and emerged as 30 Ray Steeles, which would only be terrifying for the high school French teacher I used to torture. There is no way that I or anyone else in this country today can understand the concept of putting your life on the line simply because you wanted to play baseball every day. But that is exactly what a special group of African-American men did a century-and-a-quarter ago.

Being a baseball aficionado makes one a bit of a baseball snob, and I assumed that I knew virtually everything about baseball's Negro Leagues, where some of the best athletes in the world were relegated for decades thanks to the stupidity of era's white people. The side effect of listening to me drone on about the history of the organized black leagues, the famous teams before the organized leagues, and their players is similar to the side effect of having eight shots of tequila, followed by a dozen martinis. But as is usually the case when I think I know everything, I eventually learn that I know nothing. A few weeks ago, I discovered something that I felt as if I should have already known, but that apparently isn't all that well known. Savannah was one of six cities to field teams for what was the first attempt at an organized Negro baseball league.

There is very little information about the Southern League of Colored Base Ballists. Researcher Bill Plott, who belongs one of the country finest group of junkies, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) has dug up most of what we know about the league. In March of 1886, a number of Southern newspapers carried notices asking "colored base ball clubs" with a "fair record" to join the league by sending their information to the league's headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida. Opening Day was scheduled for May 10 but, as was often the case in fledgling leagues both white and black, a variety of problems pushed back the beginning of the season until June 7.

Savannah had not one, but two teams when the league began play; the Broads and the Lafayettes. There were also two teams from Memphis, three from Jacksonville, and one each from Atlanta, Charleston, and New Orleans. A third team from Savannah, the Jerseys, was listed in some later game accounts before the league's only season ended in August, with the two teams from Memphis both claiming to be champions. Unfortunately, that's about all Mr. Plott was able to find, and no one else has augmented his research. Granted, black baseball got about as much news coverage in the mainstream media back then as anyone not named Tiger Woods or something involving sex or sex tapes does today.

The official "organ" of the 1886 league was the "Southern Leader", a black-owned newspaper in Jacksonville that appears to have ceased publication in 1888. If there are any copies or microfilms of the paper, no one knows of them. What fun it would be to make that archaeological discovery to see if there were some semblance of reports or box scores for the games. More importantly, what fun it would be to learn about the men who made up these teams, who wanted to play baseball in a part of the country where it was often dangerous for them to simply be out in public. Reconstruction laws that helped blacks in the South thrive were dying, and Jim Crow was settling in to reign for the next seven or eight decades. Some of the fears we have today are rather silly when you think about a bunch of guys who risked their lives to simply play a game they loved.

I don't know if my quest will get anywhere, but if there is information on the men who made up those Savannah teams, as well as the league's other teams, I will do my best to find it. The league did not exist in a vacuum. Those teams were made up of real men with real stories, and some of the teams kept playing for years after the league folded. Who knows. Perhaps it will turn into a masterpiece that will finally force my friend Jim Morekis at "Connect Savannah" to finally admit that when it comes to baseball, I am always right (while he is merely always right about everything else).

A note about the photo at the top. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City appears to be in serious financial trouble. I am ashamed to say I have never been there, nor will I likely get there in the near future. While we are lucky to live in an era that has seen the end of segregation and, largely, the end of racism, the paradox is that we pay lip service to "never forgetting", then promptly forget those who helped get us to this point by enduring humiliation that, absent a time machine, we will never be able to imagine. If you have it within your budget, and I know most of us don't right now, the museum sure could use some help.