The Tangled Web of the US National Championships

[D-Type]

Don,
Just making the point that one should view "motor racing history" in a different light from serious history. Admittedly a poorly thought through example, but intended to illustrate that the mindset can justifiably be different.

[Don Capps]

Don,
Just making the point that one should view "motor racing history" in a different light from serious history. Admittedly a poorly thought through example, but intended to illustrate that the mindset can justifiably be different.

Your example of "proper history" was a tad off base, which was my point, but sports history -- of which automobile racing history is a subset -- is far too often barely recognizable as "serious history" given its lack of grounding in the art of historical inquiry. While things have certainly improved of late, there being nowhere to go but up, much still remains to be done to incorporate more "real" or "proper" history into the study of automotive competition.

As a military historian, there were those "real" historian who looked upon that field --and its practitioners -- with great askance and scarcely concealed their disdain for those of us who labored in that particular part of Clio's vineyard. That we were being lumped in with those who merely wrote memoirs or nut cases such as David Irving -- but one among many -- is still a source of irritation to many in the field. For the most part, we are now accepted as "real" historians by the other "real" historians. Of course, given the paths that some of those historians have wandered down, it difficult not to raise an eyebrow at some of the topics now being pulled into the mainstream. But, I digress...

To produce "serious" history in the realm of automotive sport is much easier said than done, of course.

[Don Capps]

Recently, in another forum, John Genn Printz presented the contents of two letters written by Russ Catlin in response to queries sent to him. At the moment, a third letter -- to Jim O'Keefe, is being posted.

The letters reveal just how wrong Catlin got things regarding the Contest Board and the national championships, both real and imagined.

The theory that JG Printz has long proposed regarding Catlin's complete misinterpretation of the material that Arthur Means and Val Haresnape developed in the mid-Twenties seems to have a very firm basis given what is found in the letters.

Here is something taken from the third letter concerning the 1920 national championship, Catlin being a firm supporter of Milton being the "true" champion and having the records altered to reflect that in 1952; Catlin gives voice a notion that would be parroted by Bob Russo several years later in an article that appeared in Indy Car Racing:

What had happened is this. Kennerdell, the CB chairman then, certainly must stand as the most secretive, inept, conniving yellow-spine chairman in history. He not only failed to release points orb standings during the year but wouldn't allow others to do so. When Chevrolet was killed the press, in the obit, called him the champion off his Indy win but Eddie Edenburn was upset and wired the board office prior to the Tacoma race for the point standings. Kennerdell found he was caught and that Milton was actually leading so he devised a rule that only races of 350 or 400 miles (I forget which) or longer was to count for championship. This did give Chevrolet the title and Edenburn so wrote his year-end column and this rule to the board for approval (in February) it was turned down by the opposition led by Edenburn. So, the problem was plain to Eddie. Should be, as a newsman, bare the fact or, as a sworn-to-secrecy board member say nothing and inasmuch as the new season was underway in California Eddie buried the entire thing.

There is also this:

Where news accounts lead modern researchers astray (and, believe me I can understand this) is news clips from year-end summaries in 1920 stating Chevrolet was the 1920 champion and no champion had been named since 1916. Oh, what a can of worms! How can anyone know otherwise when there was no official AAA comment, retraction or followup? The clips were in the 1920 or 1924 folder I rescued from AAA with hand-written notation by Means that "This is as it should have been." I tell this in my history and just pray AQ doesn't flub the proofs. However, the minutes of the 1924 executive session of the Contest Board carries this notation, "Championship races and point awards back to and including 1909 are now approved with the stipulation that such champions to be known as 'point champions'." I interpreted this as a ploy to save face for Dingley, Chevrolet and the press." Obviously the compilation was done by Harnape and he had converted all points to the method in use that time, i.e. 2 points-per-mile per winner. Point values did change three or four times during history.

All this is, needless to say, complete and utter nonsense.

8W - When? - Rear View Mirror, Vol.7, No.6
8W - When? - Rear View Mirror, Vol.8, No.4

What Russ Catlin -- as well as a number of others -- has left us is a Legacy of Ashes. That many continue to believe this rubbish is almost beyond understanding.

[Don Capps]

Correction: The third letter written by Russ Catlin was to Ken McMaken -- I had Jim O'Keefe on the mind due to some work I was going, which meant taking a look at Jim's book on race winners.

Now that the third letter is complete, it is as bad as I imagined.

Thanks to Gordon White, I do have some of the A.A.A. Contest Board records and material that are housed in Indianapolis on microfilm. What one discovers is that mixed in amongst the actual records of the Contest Board, the bulletins and so forth, one also finds materials and results that are obviously ex post facto given the information that one finds as part of the material, particuarly references to championships and points for years when there were no such things, or listings of "championship drivers" for years when there were no championships. The unwary can walk into -- and obviously have -- the same trap that Catlin did.

Whatever the real story is regarding the records of the A.A.A. Contest Board, Catlin himself provides several, much of the remaining records and related material are scattered far and wide, with Indianapolis having a cache of some size, while people and places have collections of varying sizes and quality. The late Phil Harms managed to find and assemble a number of CB records that do not otherwise exist as far as we know, the record book for the 1916 season being the most notable of this type of material. It should be kept in mind that for all of Harms' efforts, he was really a statistician and not a historian, something that came up a number of times in our exchanges. Harms was content to provide others with the necessary help to sort out the rather messy bits of history while he concentrated on what he was interested in -- races results and so forth. Harms was a great help in helping me finally have many of missing parts of the puzzle that allowed me to piece together and understand the tangled mess of early US racing.