JIM MURRAY
A. J. and the Volcano
The thing about Anthony Joseph, or A. J., Foyt, is, you might call him "the terrible-tempered Mr. Foyt" - but first, his disposition would have to improve 100% before his temper could merely be called "terrible." Calling what Foyt does "terrible" is like calling the sinking of the Titantic "unfortunate."
Foyt wasn't born mad, but he made up for it.
People just seem to get on his nerves. He wins the pole in the temper derby by 20 miles an hour. If they named a car after him it would be called the Volcano.
Some guys run on methanol. A. J. runs on rage. He drives as if he were sorry there are no pedestrians.
A. J. plays no favorites. He bullies the car, the track, his own pit crew, mechanic, the stewards, starters, press and public with equal fervor. Anyone who would go down to A. J.'s pit at race time would go into a lion cage at feeding time.
A. J. just wants the world to keep off his rear wheels. He doesn't want society tailgating on him. If he can see you in his rearview mirror, you're too damn close. He's as irritable on race day as a guy whose pants are too tight. When he won at Indy on closed-circuit TV one year, they shoved a glass of milk in his mouth, and A. J. sprayed it all over the ground and made a face that would have soured the milk.
He doesn't fraternize with the other drivers. "I don't trust nobody," he grumbles. He likes a nice distance between him and his competition, on and off the track.
When asked when he was going to retire, A. J. growled, "When I do, I'll just drive in and park it and say 'To hell with all of you.'" He once ran half a mile from a parked car to punch in the mouth a rival driver whom he thought had shut him off.
He considers himself a better mechanic than anyone he could hire, and the arguments in the Foyt garage frequently drown out the carburetion tests. He has run through more mechanics than Zsa Zsa Gabor has husbands. "Either A.J. or the engine is snarling," his crewmen say.
He bristles when someone suggests the car is more important than the driver in his sport. "It's just a dumb piece of iron," shoots back A. J. "Do you give credit to the baseball when somebody hits a home run? Do you cheer the racket in tennis? A bad driver cannot win even in a good car. But a good driver cannot win in junk."
To be sure, he does not get in junk. A. J. spends more time around the garage than a drop light. "He's either in a car - or under it," his crew admits. There are times when they wish he'd take up polo.
Still, he just may be the world's greatest race driver. It's for sure he's America's. At an age (39) when most of us are afraid to get in our nice, two-toned and two-ton Continentals and venture on the freeway, A. J. is still taking on the kids in those open-cockpit, 200-plus-m.p.h., winged speedway brutes and sliding through the corners so high and low in the groove the customers can't bear to look.
When A.J. started racing, engines were in front, you couldn't have all the fuel you could carry or store, and cars were cars and didn't need wings to hold them on track. It was wheel-to-wheel, not clock-to-clock, driving, and there were no flameproof suits or plastic facemasks.
The first Indianapolis race he was in, 12 of the 33 drivers in it since died in a race car, including one, Pat O'Conor, who was to die that day (1958). Of the others, A. J. is the only one still racing. Jimmy Reece, Jud Larson, Al Keller, Short Templeman, Eddie Sachs, Johnny Thomson, Ed Elisian, Jerry Unser and Art Bish all died on or because of the track.
Mad Anthony is on the pole at Ontario in the California 500 today. He's been on dozens of poles. He's won three Indys and more championship points than any driver alive. He won't announce his retirement he says because "four or more of my friends who said they were going to run one more race or two more races died in those races."
Death is always on the pole in this game. No 500-mile guarantee comes with these cars. Neither car nor driver has a warranty.
It could happen to A. J. as it did to so many of the company he started out with. He has walked away from cars on fire and on a stump of an ankle. He has been lifted out of stocks with his back broken.
It's unthinkable to A. J. he would go to join that ghostly company from the starting grid of the 1958 race. But if he does, I'll tell you one thing: God's going to get an awful earful.
