Eldora Speedway
'Caretakers' guide Eldora as Earl's Dream rolls on
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt.com senior writer
Eldora founder Earl Baltes died in March. (rickschwalliephotos.com)
This weekend’s $100,000-to-win Dream presented by Ferris Mowers at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, will be unlike any of the event’s 20 previous runnings.
There will be something — someone — missing, a part of the Eldora landscape so important that everyone in attendance will notice the void. | Complete Dream coverage
Earl Baltes — the legendary founder of Eldora, the promoter extraordinaire, the man who in 1994 launched this annual Dirt Late Model race offering a mind-blowing $100,000 top prize — won’t be in attendance. An era ended when Baltes passed away at 93 on March 23, and now, nearly three months later, his loss will resonate as the Dirt Late Model community gathers for Eldora’s first crown jewel of 2015 and Baltes is not seen sitting in the tower seat he occupied for every major event since he sold the famed track in 2004 to NASCAR star Tony Stewart.
“I think for us as the Eldora family — and I say that being mindful to (Baltes’s) grandchildren, who are two of the most important people on our staff — we’ve had time to adjust to the realization that Earl’s no longer with us,” said Roger Slack, Eldora’s promoter and general manger. “Berneice (Baltes’s wife of 67 years) had her stroke on the Friday night of the Four Crown Nationals during the World of Outlaws (sprint car) feature last fall, so Berneice and Earl weren’t actually here on the Saturday of the Four Crown (weekend) … so that was extremely odd for us. And for them not to be at our employee party or the banquet (during the off-season as both battled health problems) — well, we’ve been aware of what’s been going on for awhile.
“But I don’t think it’s something we’re ever going to get used to,” he continued, referring to Baltes’s absence from the Eldora scene. “I mean, every time you go through the door (in the homestretch tower) to go up the stairs and you don’t see him, sitting in that usual spot, it’s just something that you’ll notice. You’re just so used to seeing him there.”
Baltes’s spirit, of course, will forever live on at the facility he built in 1954. The two men most responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Big E, Slack and longtime Eldora director of operations Larry Boos, have been influenced too much by Baltes — and are surrounded by too many direct links to him — to let Baltes’s overwhelming presence fade away.
“We still consider this to be Earl and Berneice’s track and always will,” Slack said. “There is so much of Earl’s (immediate) family around Eldora. Berneice still comes here and sits in the press box even though she had a stroke last fall. Tess Clark, our ticket manager, is their granddaughter. Chad Schmitmeyer, who is our facilities manager and prepares the racetrack, is their grandson. Both of (Clark and Schmitmeyer’s) kids work here in the concessions. Starr and Joe (Schmitmeyer, the Baltes’s daughter and son-in-law) come here. Terry Baltes (the Baltes’s son and a former Eldora announcer) and his family are here frequently.
“We’re just here sort of as caretakers for what Earl started,” he added. “He wanted to see it grow as big as it could be, and that’s what we’re doing now — trying to maintain its traditions, make the improvements and make it grow the way that he wanted it to.”
Baltes’s words of wisdom about track operation and promotion course through the minds of Eldora’s stewards every day.
“First and foremost, ‘teaching’ and ‘taught’ are the best words to describe what I learned from Earl because he’s by far the greatest teacher I’ve ever had in the industry,” said Boos, who began working at Eldora part-time as a scorer in 1991 and has been a full-time employee since 1993. “There are just a couple things he taught me in particular that I really remember and have really stuck by, things I think have really allowed me to grow into the position I’m in. He always told me, ‘Larry, go for respect, don’t go for friends’ — and he would hold out his hand and he would motion, ‘You see this? That’s a straight line. As long as you follow that straight line, and don’t go left or right, you’ll be a success.’
“That’s pretty much what I and the track staff just continue to do — just treat everybody equal, follow the rules and get the earned respect.”
Boos, 63, also takes Baltes’s laser-focus on Eldora’s huge marquee events into every major weekend like the Dream, which for two decades has been the lone Dirt Late Model race in the country to feature a six-figure winner’s check.
When asked what Baltes’s demeanor was like during crown-jewel shows at Eldora, Boos said, “I think you look up the definition of bear, and you’ll find him. He was just … a bear. He was determined, he was Earl at his finest. He had a mission, and he wouldn’t quit until that mission was accomplished. He pushed, he pushed hard, but he did it in a way that you wanted to work for him and not against him.
“I can remember when he put together those races,” Boos continued. “We’d get in the room and he’d say, ‘This is what I’m gonna do.’ We’d all kind of look at him, shake our heads, and then we’d say, ‘OK, let’s go.’ He pushed us along and allowed us to do what we could do to help him, and the end results pretty much speak for themselves.
“It all goes back to that respect factor. Any other racetrack would say, ‘I’m gonna pay a million dollars to win or a hundred-thousand to win,’ or anything like that, and people would say, ‘Show me the money.’ They never questioned Earl, because if Earl said he was gonna do something, he did it.”
Slack, 37, became familiar with Baltes’s promotional philosophy when he began seeking out the Eldora sage’s guidance before and after the 2000 opening of The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., which Slack was appointed to run. Slack developed an undeniable rapport with Baltes, who provided Slack invaluable short-track instruction that he successfully implemented during his years at Charlotte, the World Racing Group and, since the 2012 season, in his position at Eldora.
“After we had announced we were building the The Dirt Track at Charlotte we decided that we were going to try and model as much of Charlotte after Eldora as we could,” Slack said. “We would call up there to not just Earl, but his daughter Starr, too, and ask them some crazy questions, and they really were very helpful.
“After we opened The Dirt Track, there were some things that we weren’t necessarily doing right and I would ask Earl’s advice, and Earl … well, he was very reluctant to talk too much at first, especially around (then president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway) Humpy (Wheeler) because he held him in very high regard. He would sometimes shy away and say, ‘You know, I’m not someone to criticize another man’s track,’ especially when we were having some track issues. But he eventually gave me some great advice on track preparation, and at the first World 100 that I attended he was gracious enough to invite me to speak at the drivers’ meeting and plug our Late Model race the very next week.
“And the one big thing he always told me was that we would never make that track in Charlotte work without a big Late Model race — we would never make that track work without thinking big,” he added. “It was that kind of inspiration that inspired the Colossal (100 for Dirt Late Models) and eventually the World Finals.”
As Slack detailed, he had Baltes’s grand business plan in mind when he created the $50,000-to-win Colossal 100, which was run for the first time in 2006. He was thinking along those lines again when he joined with WRG’s Ben Geisler to develop the concept of the World Finals, which launched in 2007 and immediately became a juggernaut event.
“When Ben Geisler and I met at Quaker Steak & Lube (in Concord, N.C.) on that fateful night when we took our laptops and started hashing out a framework for the World Finals over four hours, that was the kind of thinking that Earl had always preached to me and the stuff I had learned from Humpy over the years,” Slack said. “That’s what inspired us to say, ‘Hey, if we’re gonna make this thing work, we’ve got to do something big.’
“Really, we created an event that really killed the Colossal (which ended its four-year run after the 2009 edition). It’s an event so big, it killed an event with a $200,000 purse five months later.”
Slack grew closer to Baltes through the 2000s as he steadily moved toward a seemingly inevitable job at Eldora. Soon after buying the track Stewart had discussed the possibility of bringing Slack on board, and Baltes obviously had an inkling that Slack was destined to work at the speedway sometime in the future.
“In 2006 while I was still at Charlotte I came through and visited Earl and Berneice on Thanksgiving weekend,” recalled Slack, who would ultimately relocate to Ohio to work at Eldora over Thanksgiving weekend 2011. “I had just picked up a new Corvette and I was driving back to Carolina (from his family’s home in Ontario) and Earl was the first person to ride in it. He got a kick out of that. He said, ‘Oh, man, we gotta go ride around town in this.’ We ended up in the (nearby) St. Henry Nite Club that day, and Earl said, ‘If you ever end up here, you’ve gotta know Dues,’ and he introduced me to Bill Dues (the Nite Club’s proprietor and the owner of a well-known Eldora-based Dirt Late Model team). I can’t tell you what a great friend Bill Dues has been to me ever since.
“Earl always made sure I knew the people that I needed to know up here, who was important to know, and I always appreciated that. And I always ran every big idea by him before we did it, including the expansion of the Dream and the World (100), and when we finally got confirmation that we could do the 50-50 (raffle) again, I stopped by their house and told Earl and Berneice and he just looked at me and said, ‘Well, I never would’ve thought you could get that done.’
“Their support was always really important to me,” he added. “In fact, I never would have moved up here if it wasn’t for their blessing because I don’t think you could do it without that.”
Even though Slack noted that he “didn’t have near the years with him as others,” the knowledge he gained from Baltes and the memories he made with the man were all unforgettable. Especially the memories, which included so many instances of the two men trading witty verbal barbs that it’s hard for Slack to pinpoint his favorites — though he did offer two that stick out.
“Back before Earl had to stop drinking (alcohol),” Slack said, “Earl, Berneice and I ended up in the hotel bar where the Promoters’ Workshops were down (outside) Orlando after Volusia got rained out that night. Berneice went to the restroom and she fell down, and I ended up having to go in and pick her up. I carried her right up to her hotel room. They were both very jealous and protective of each other, and here I am … I carried her all the way up and put her down in her room, and Earl looked at me with a stern eye and he said, ‘All right, I think you’ve went far enough.’ We used to tell that story at banquets and all that. We’d always get a big laugh out of that.
“My last visit with them together was over in Versailles (Ohio) at the facility they were living in. It was a really good day for both of them, and it was dinner time and we were joking around. A nurse came around and said it was desert time, and Earl looked at me — Earl was having a hot dog as usual — and he said, ‘Well, do you want any desert?’ I said, ‘Nah, I actually gotta get going,’ and I looked up at the nurse and I said, ‘Hey, on my way out, can you direct me to the nurse’s station for all the hot single nurses?’ Earl just started laughing, and he said, ‘You gotta watch this one. He’s lived in the city. He’s a wildcat.’
Not long after that, Baltes passed away. When he did, Slack has no doubt that Eldora Speedway was one of the things on his mind.
“Until the day he died, he was so proud of this place,” Slack said, “and there’s no question, whether he owned it or not, he was proud that Eldora was No. 1. That Eldora was still bigger than Charlotte, still bigger than Knoxville, that the World 100 was the biggest dirt race in the world.
“You know, not long before he died we had got the registered trademark for ‘The World’s Greatest Dirt Track,’ and he thought that was pretty neat. He was really proud that nobody else could ever have that.”
Indeed, from Baltes’s point of view, having a slogan like that associated with Eldora Speedway, and only Eldora Speedway, would be ratification enough of what he accomplished at the track over more than a half century. He would not be keen to repeated sentimental memorial ceremonies in his honor, which is why Baltes’s passing will be acknowledged with a giant “Thank you, Earl” banner on Eldora’s VIP tower elevator and other smaller remembrances during the Dream and subsequent major events at the track this season rather than multiple formal memorials at each one or a specific race.
“The thing is, he was not a fan of memorial races — he said if you do it for one, you gotta do it for everybody,” said Boos, who first met Baltes in the mid-1970s when he was involved in the operation of the paved Sandusky (Ohio) Speedway. “He always said, ‘Just remember me and remember what I’ve done.’ I think he would be offended if we did a memorial race for him, to be quite honest.
“And there’s nothing that you can do that would be the ultimate respect because he meant so much to so many people.”
According to Boos, the best tribute to Baltes — beyond a thriving Eldora — was already in existence before his passing. It stands right inside the main entrance to the speedway that thousands of fans will pass through during this weekend’s three nights of Dream competition: the statue of Baltes and his wife that Stewart had commissioned in 2008.
“This last weekend (during Eldora’s May 24 Johnny Appleseed Classic), I saw the neatest thing,” Boos said. “I don’t get down around the fans much because I’m perched upstairs, but I went into the grandstands for a little bit and was watching people go up to the statue. Earl’s like standing there waving, and people — adults, little kids — were going up and like giving him the high-five through the glass. It was just amazing that a man 93 years old had the respect of kids 5 years old — they didn’t know Earl Baltes, but they knew the legend of Earl Baltes. I can’t name another person who’s revered like that.
“It goes back to, What can you do to remember and celebrate his life? Well, I think that’s the ultimate legacy there, what Tony did with the bronze statue. Earl will always be at Eldora, he’ll always be there greeting the fans. I think that’s the greatest thing you can do — to keep Earl where he belongs, and that’s right here at the track.”
