He may have been the Intimidator on the track, but Dale Earnhardt wasn’t exactly one to throw hands after a race.
The biggest story in NASCAR this week has been the post race fight between Carson Hocevar and Ryan Blaney following the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol on Saturday. And fighting is nothing new in NASCAR: The very first fully televised race in the sport’s history, the 1979 Daytona 500, featured a now-iconic fight between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison in the infield that made front page news and helped turn NASCAR into a national sport.
Plenty of drivers have been involved in fights at the track over the years, from Kyle Busch punching Joey Logano to Kevin Harvick fighting Brad Keselowski. But of all the drivers who have been involved in off-track altercations, one surprising name who never found himself throwing hands on pit road after a race was Dale Earnhardt.
On the “Ask Jr.” segment of his Dale Jr. Download podcast this week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. recalled the only time he could remember seeing his dad in a fight – and it had nothing to do with racing:
“Dad, I don’t think was ever in a fight. I don’t think I’ve ever – only time I know dad threw hands was on on the dude at the farm that shot his deer, but he never fought at the racetrack that I know of.”
The now-infamous fight happened back in 1993, and resulted in Earnhardt breaking his hand after punching a guy who was working on his property:
“So, a guy was working on a tractor during the day on dad’s property, fixing a big tractor. And he saw some deer, went to a bar later that afternoon, happy hour drinkin’ with a buddy of his tellin’ his buddy about the deer. The more they drank, the braver they got.”
Well apparently that bravery crossed into stupidity when the guy decided he was going to go back to Earnhardt’s property and shoot the deer that he saw earlier:
“They decided they were gonna come back to dad’s property at dark, around dark, jump the fence and shoot one of the deer, right?
Dad and his farm manager guy are walking the power line, and they’re in the tree line walkin’ this power line. Just happened to be there that day. And they heard the gun shot and they saw the deer run down the power line and fall down. And so they hid in the tree line and waited for those guys to come up to the deer.”
Well wrecking him on the track might not have been enough to earn yourself a punch from Earnhardt, but apparently killing one of his deer would do it:
“And when they got to the deer, dad just ran after the one with the gun and he tackled the guy and broke his hand on his face. And the only reason why he stopped punching the guy was cuz the guy, he recognized the guys voice, and his face I guess, once he started saying ‘Hey man, stop’.
So dad held him there until the cops got there.”
Well the incident happened shortly before the NASCAR awards banquet, where Earnhardt was being honored as the 1993 NASCAR Cup Series champion – which meant the champion was in a cast as he accepted his trophy:
“He ended up getting his cast on his arm and he went to the banquet with that cast and his tux, his black and white cast. And he told everybody a lie, he told everybody a lie about how it happened.”
The reason he lied about it though wasn’t because he embarrassed about beating the guy up: He just didn’t want anybody to know about his deer.
“He didn’t want people to know about his deer, he didn’t want more people showin’ up, trying to sneak into his property cuz he had some really big bucks on that property. He wasn’t hunting it, he was just wanting them to be there cuz he liked watching ’em. And so he told a different story.”
And when next season rolled around and Earnhardt was told that he wouldn’t be able to race in the Daytona 500 with his cast on, he decided to once again take matters into his own hands and cut it off himself.
What a legend.
