Philly Front Office

Growing up, I really only cared about NASCAR sarcastically. I thought it was funny to tell people “the only real sports left are NASCAR and Professional Wrestling.” NASCAR stories and the names that went with them were undeniably great though. Dale Earnhardt, Fireball Roberts, Cale Yarbarough, Rusty Wallace…come on with those names! Throw in my love for Days of Thunder¹ and I was probably just itching for a reason to get into it. Little did I know, I had one brewing.

I grew up in a small town called Tuckerton in South Jersey. When people ask where I’m from, I start with Atlantic City then tone it down to LBI before bringing up T-Town. It’s that small. Well, there’s a sliver of a town even smaller just down the road from where I grew up. In fact, it is more of a street than a municipality. Mayetta, NJ happened to be the home of the Truex family. Despite being the smallest of small towns, I didn’t know them personally, but we all knew the name. The Truex family made its money clamming and had a kid that raced. We heard he moved down to the Carolinas and got in with Dale Earnhardt Jr. That was pretty cool. Hell, no one from our town had ever really done anything.² He raced for Junior in the Busch Series and won the championship in 2004. The Clam Prince of South Jersey had made it.

Well, made it as far as anyone from home was concerned, but Truex had bigger ideas. After a second Busch Series championship, he moved full time to the Cup Series. It didn’t go well, but he had all of our attention. What started out as a joke, then some light hearted curiosity transformed into me getting VERY into NASCAR. Unlike traditional team sports, to get into auto racing, you need to have a rooting interest in a person rather than just a city. You need a reason to watch. You need your guy. Well, with Truex on the top level, I officially had “my guy.”

In typical Philly fashion at the time though, my guy was cursed. Trouble just seemed to find him through no fault of his own. He started his Cup aspirations with DEI, the team started by Dale Earnhardt, then taken over by his wife and Dale Jr after his death. After a winless and mostly non-competitive rookie season, things started rolling in 2007. He won his first race at basically his home track in Dover, Delaware followed by 3rd place and 2nd place finishes the next 2 weeks. This looked like a coming out party for the next star of the sport…then things started to go south. He went winless in 2008 and then infighting between Dale Jr and his stepmother caused DEI to close.

Truex moved to Michael Waltrip Racing where things took a while to get going. After several years without another win, 218 races to be precise, the streak was snapped about as far away from where we grew up as possible. Both in distance and culture, Sonoma, California couldn’t be more opposite from the hunting, fishing, binge drinking we grew up with in our small town.³ Truex was given a glass of wine after the race instead of a Keystone Light. It was pretty cool. Then things fell off a cliff.

On September 7, 2013 in the final race before the start of the NASCAR playoffs, Truex was battling with Ryan Newman for the final spot in the field. Unbeknownst to Truex, another Waltrip driver at the command of the boss purposely spun out bringing out the caution flag. A different Waltrip driver then made an unnecessary pitstop. The series of events caused Truex to finish with enough points to edge out Newman for the final playoff spot. After the race, Truex was cleared of any individual wrongdoing, but he was docked points, his team was fined, and he was taken out of the playoff field. This race manipulation is considered one of the darkest marks on the sport and led to the eventual closure of Waltrip racing putting Truex out of a job, just when things were starting to look up.

His best offer in the offseason was a single car team based out in Colorado owned by a furniture salesman who just happened to really like NASCAR. Furniture Row Racing was self-financed without any big sponsorships and was away from all the big teams in the Carolinas. Truex was basically one level from being out of the show completely. Things were bleak and they were about to get worse. Shortly thereafter, his long time girlfriend Sherry Pollex was diagnosed with breast cancer. She battled the illness for years and eventually died in 2023. With all this going on, the 2014 season was a drag, ending with only a single lap led.

In 2015 though, everything changed. He started running up front more, he was leading laps. Lots of laps. Despite finding new and creative ways to lose (running out of gas with the lead, a washer falling into his tire, accidents not his fault), he was now a force every race day. After 69 (nice) races without a win, he finally broke through at Pocono Raceway and never looked back. He made the championship race that year and finished 4th overall.

2016 began with the closest damn finish ever in the biggest race of the year. Truex got nipped at the line by .01 seconds to finish runner up at Daytona.⁴ No bother though. Truex would win 4 races that year but rollover in the playoffs for an 11th place finish. The highlight of the season though was in the season’s longest race. Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts a 600 mile race every Memorial Day weekend called the Coca Cola 600. Truex led the thing nearly wire to wire in the most dominant NASCAR race you’ll ever see. Of the 400 laps, he led 392 of them. That’s all but 12 of the 600 miles.

2017 took all of that 2016 momentum and leveled up. Everything came together. The races that used to get away from him now became dominant victories. Despite being on the smallest team, Truex was the favorite damn near every time he took the track. He won his first race in the 3rd week and his second a few weeks after that. He had 4 wins going into the 10 race playoffs that year.⁵ First playoff race of the first round: WIN. First playoff race of the second round: WIN. Despite already advancing, he added another win in the second round. In the semis, he finished 2nd, 2nd, 3rd to advance to the final.

On November 17, 2017, Truex would face 3 former champions in Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Brad Keselowski. All 4 were running top 5 after the first stage of the race (80 laps) with Kyle Larson leading. Larson held his lead over the Championship 4 after the second stage, but Truex had climbed from last to first among the contenders. Over the final segment though, as the sun set over Homestead (close to the Florida Keys) Truex took the lead and maintained about a 1 second lead for a tantalizing final 30 or so laps. Any time it looked like Kyle Busch might close the gap, Truex just built it back up and held off Rowdy for his first and only Cup Championship.

Truex would have a few more dominant years and was a player at the top of races over the next 7 seasons, but he hung up his…whatever it is that race car drivers hang up after the 2024 season. Without “my guy” I don’t have much reason to watch anymore. Not going to lie, I miss it.

Why do you care about any of this? My hometown is essentially half Philly fans and half New York fans. Truex is in the same boat. Thankfully, he picked the right side. As the 2017 NASCAR season wound down with Truex winning damn near every week, the NFL season was just getting started. He was asked for his prediction for the upcoming NFL season and he called Eagles over Pats in the Super Bowl. Part of the NASCAR Championship festivities included him bringing the trophy to the Super Bowl that year since the season opening Daytona 500 would only be 2 weeks later. He got to watch his Eagles fulfill his prediction up in Minnesota and win Super Bowl 52. What a goddamn season!

Disclaimer: If I have any of these facts wrong, bear with me. This was almost all from memory plus a few reminders from Wikipedia. I was pretty into it.

1. People think I named my kid after my favorite Phillie, Cole Hamels. While that certainly helped, in reality he’s named after Cole Trickle. ↩︎
2. Now we have a kid on Stranger Things and someone else who runs a fantastic Philly sports website ↩︎
3. I was never one for the hunting and fishing, but I could binge drink with the best of them ↩︎
4. This was the closest he ever was to winning the Great American Race ↩︎
5. For those that don’t know, there are 3 races in each of the first 3 rounds of the playoffs with 4 teams getting eliminated each round. If you win a race, you automatically advance to the next round. By the 10th and final race of the season, only 4 drivers are left and who ever finishes best in that last race wins the championship. ↩︎