NHRA has plenty of women to celebrate

Leah Pritchett and Courtney Force left the NHRA Southern Nationals in Atlanta with winner trophies and far less attention than Danica Patrick received for simply turning laps at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It’s May, the month of “Danica Mania,” and the buildup to her retirement after her final Indianapolis 500. She will be feted for her contributions to motorsports and as the only woman to lead laps in both the Indy 500 and the Daytona 500. The driver little girls have adored for almost two decades.

At the drag races, though, Patrick’s accomplishments are pedestrian.

Force and Pritchett shared the winners’ stage Sunday and became the second pair of women to sweep the nitro classes in NHRA history. Pritchett and Alexis DeJoria did it last year.

NHRA has female competitors in all four of its divisions, and Force’s win Sunday, her second of the season, put her on top the Funny Car standings. Her win came 10 years after elder sister Ashley Force Hood became the first female Funny Car winner at the same Atlanta Dragway.

Pritchett’s sixth career Top Fuel victory was her first of the season, and first since August.

Patrick insists she is headed into her May 27 career finale determined to win the Indy 500. It’s a lofty goal considering she has just one career IndyCar victory and never made it to the winner’s circle in NASCAR, but it’s the mindset a racer must have every time they get in the car.

The difference between Patrick and the women of NHRA is that on the dragway, the women have a proven record of winning. Drag racing is perhaps the most diverse racing series in the world and has always welcomed women. Many male drivers have encouraged today’s top stars to never feel limited by their gender and to believe no division was out of reach.

Shirley Muldowney shattered the drag-racing gender barrier in the late 1960s, and later became the first woman to receive an NHRA license to drive a Top Fuel dragster. She won Top Fuel championships in 1977, 1980, and 1982, becoming the first to win multiple titles.

Lori Johns (Top Fuel), Shelly Payne (Top Fuel), Angelle Sampey (Pro Stock Motorcycle), Karen Stoffer (Pro Stock Motorcycle), Melanie Troxel (Top Fuel), Ashley Force Hood (Funny Car), Erica Enders-Stevens (Pro Stock), Courtney Force (Funny Car), DeJoria (Funny Car), Pritchett (Top Fuel) and Brittany Force (Top Fuel) have won multiple NHRA events.

So how is it that NHRA has become the landing spot for female racers? Well, the cars don’t recognize gender.

In NHRA, the 33-foot-long Top Fuel dragsters weigh 2,330 pounds, including the driver. Women who are slighter than their male counterparts can move specialty weights around the car and usually place them over the back wheels for better traction on slick tracks. There is no clutch in Top Fuel or Funny Cars, so drivers don’t shift.

Engineering advances have made it simple, if not easy: Hit the throttle and then steer down the track. Reactionary time and hand-eye-coordination are vital, but it’s a racing series that embraces, celebrates and helps its women succeed.

A seemingly meaningless game between out-of-contention teams on the final day of the 1984 season produced one of baseball’s rarest of feats: a perfect game by Mike Witt against the Rangers in Texas on Sept. 30.

A crowd of 8,375 saw the 6-foot-7 right-hander with the wispy mustache outduel Charlie Hough in a 1-0 win. Witt needed 94 pitches to complete baseball’s 11th perfect game. Reggie Jackson drove in the only run with a seventh-inning fielder’s choice.

Act of inspiration: When Jim Abbott made his Angels debut on April 8, 1989, the left-hander from Michigan, then 21, was the 15th player to make the jump from high school or college to the major leagues since the inception of baseball’s amateur draft in 1965. He was the first to do so with one hand.

The Angels were second-guessed for rushing Abbott to the major leagues, with some charging the team of publicity-mongering, of using Abbott to sell tickets in the short term at the longterm expense of his development.

Abbott went 12-12 with a 3.92 ERA in 1989 and 18-11 with a 2.89 ERA in 1991.

Spectacular catch: Jim Edmonds was playing a shallow center field in Kauffman Stadium when light-hitting Royals infielder David Howard drove a ball over his head on June 10, 1997. Edmonds sprinted straight back about 60 feet and made a full-extension, over-the-shoulder diving catch with two on, two out and the score tied 1-1. The ball nestled in the tip of Edmonds’ glove as he slid face-first onto the warning track.

Among the fans who gave Edmonds a standing ovation was a 16-year-old who had just moved to Kansas City and was attending his first bigleague game: Albert Pujols.

Clutch delivery: It was the biggest home run in franchise history. San Francisco was eight outs away from the World Series title in 2002 when first baseman Scott Spiezio came up with two on in the seventh inning of Game 6 and the Angels trailing 5-0.

Spiezio hit a three-run homer off reliever Felix Rodriguez that barely cleared the wall in right field. Darin Erstad’s solo homer and Troy Glaus’ two-run double in the eighth gave the Angels a 6-5 victory, and Garret Anderson’s three-run double in a 4-1 Game 7 victory the next night led the Angels to their only title.

Vlad the Impaler: Of the greatest offensive seasons in franchise history —Don Baylor in 1979, Erstad in 2000, Vladimir Guerrero in 2004 and Mike Trout in 2016 — Guerrero’s MVP season in 2004 may stand one pinetar slathered helmet above the rest. In his first year with the Angels, Guerrero hit .337 with a .989 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 39 homers, 39 doubles, 126 RBIs, 124 runs, 15 stolen bases, 52 walks and 74 strikeouts to lead the Angels to the AL West title.

One-man wrecking crew: Anderson knocked in a franchise-record 10 runs to lead the Angels to an 18-9 thumping of the New York Yankees in Anaheim on Aug. 21, 2007. Anderson hit a two-run double in the first inning, an RBI double in the second, a threerun homer in the third and a grand slam to cap a fiverun sixth.

With runners on first and third and two out in the eighth, Anderson had a chance to break the major league record of 12 RBIs in a game, held by a pair of Cardinals — Jim Bottomley in 1924 and Mark Whiten in 1993. He grounded out.

No fish tale: Seven years into his big league career, Trout, 26, already has established himself as one of the best players in baseball history. He won AL MVP awards in 2014 and 2016, finished second in MVP voting three times and is a six-time All-Star.

He hits for average (.306 career mark entering last weekend), for power (212 homers, 590 RBIs in 6½ seasons) and in the clutch (.320 average with runners in scoring position). He’s stolen 30 or more bases in three seasons. He’s also made several spectacular defensive plays.

And he has barely hit his prime.

The Machine: Jackson hit his 500th career homer, Rod Carew notched his 3,000th hit and Don Sutton earned his 300th career win in Angels uniforms. But none ascended to the heights of Pujols, who hit his 500th and 600th homers and collected his 3,000th hit as an Angel, the latter accomplishment earning him membership in baseball’s exclusive 600-homer, 3,000hit club, which includes only three other players: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Alex Rodriguez.