Looking for a home run: an upcoming visit to his hometown and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway might be just the thing Jeff Gordon needs to set straight his difficult season

Sporting News, The, July 29, 2002 by Mark McCarter

Come on, Jeff. Just a few lines. A little bit of "Back Home Again In Indiana." Sure, there's a tape recorder sitting on the table. But, honest, nobody else will hear you sing. It won't wind up on eBay tomorrow morning. That's a promise.

Jeff Gordon politely, but firmly, refuses. Can you believe it? Surely he sang along when Jim Nabors cranked up the traditional song before the Indianapolis 500 in years past. And surely he knows the words.

"Most of them, yeah," he says before admitting, "I don't know the part about the lilies and all that stuff." For the record, there are sycamores and new-mown hay to be found in Indiana's unofficial state song, but no lilies.

However, there is something appropriate in the second verse:

   Fancy paints on mem'ry's canvas
   Scenes that we hold clear
   We recall them in days after
   Clearly they appear
   And often times I see a scene that's clear to me.

It's appropriate because Gordon next week will be headed back home to Indiana. Back home to celebrate his 31st birthday, on the very day of the Brickyard 400. Back home to the awe-inspiring venue where he recalls bus tours and beer-commercial chants and, oh, yeah, several left-hand turns onto the black-and-white tiles of victory lane.

Back home where, perhaps, there is some comfort and maybe even some magic he can use to change his luck, end a winless streak that has reached 27 races and straighten out a season that has been trying both on and off the track.

Going back home to Indiana, says Gordon, "is usually a pretty happy time for me."

Jeff Gordon is in his motorcoach when you arrive early on a Saturday morning. He greets you in stocking feet, jeans and a gray sweatshirt. You leave your shoes on the steps.

The motorcoach is immaculate. An eggshell-colored fabric sofa. Beige leather chairs sitting opposite the sofa with a table in between. Gordon's top-of-the-line Palm Pilot sits on the table. Knick-knacks rest on glass shelves. Glancing down the hall, you notice he has made his bed. There are no dishes stacked in the sink. Except for a muted TV tuned to a race, this isn't a stereotypical bachelor's pad--albeit a pad on wheel--camping anonymously among the downs of other luxury coaches that make up NASCAR's 21st-century wagon train.

Gordon offers you water or a soft drink (Pepsi, naturally) that you politely refuse not because you're not thirsty, but because you're absolutely terrified you'd spill it.

You ask him to take you on an imaginary trip back to Indiana. You hear quickly that Gordon, born in California and now a citizen of the world, remembers fondly the place where he grew up--Pittsboro, a small burg just west of Indianapolis. "I've still got friends there I went to high school with, and I try to see them," he says." But everybody realizes I'm there to race. It's usually not the best time to hang out with me." He still regrets that a sponsor's commitment forced him to miss his 10-year high school reunion.

Gordon has been spectacular in Indianapolis. Of course, he's been spectacular most everywhere and on every king of track. As his crew chief, Robbie Loomis, puts it, "He's a natural. You can train drivers, and you can teach them. But you have to have the natural ability. Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon--those guys are just natural."

Why the extra success at the Brickyard? Could it be that Gordon loves Indy because Indy loves Gordon?

"I definitely get pumped up when I hear a crowd cheering for me" he says. "The two places where I go where I hear more cheers than boos are Indianapolis and Sears Point, and I think that certainly is some motivation.

"You've got to look more behind the scenes at the team and the preparation and wanting to do well than liking the track," he continues. "Some days I go there and, gosh, I feel like I don't know my way around here at all. We'll not qualify well, and I go, `Man I've lost it. I don't know. I don't have it for this place any more.' And then, by the end of the week, we're winning the race. That's what happened last year."

In the 2001 Brickyard 400, Gordon qualified 27th and was mired deep in the field the first third of the race, only to steadily progress with some fortuitous pit stops.

Though "my first lap around the track was in the tour bus," Gordon's early celebrity in the Indianapolis area earned some special treatment. As a teen-ager, "I was able to take my brand new Chevy truck around the track," he says. "Once, it was pretty cool because I was still so young. And, two, nobody I knew got to do that."

He first attended and Indianapolis 500 in 1983. "Al Unser Jr. was a rookie, Rick Mears was on the pole and (Tom) Sneva won the race," Gordon says with certainty. Near-certainty, anyway--Mears started third; Teo Fabi had the pole.

That year, the old Miller Lite beer commercials were in their heyday. "It was a few minutes before the race and the crowd was just starting to get into it," Gordon recalls. "One side is going `Tastes great!' The other side goes, `Less filling!' Just to hear that roar then, it was really cool to see the cars go around that fast. Now to be able to race around there is cool."