Columnist Ron Kantowski: Deaths of Moore, Payton strike up memories

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4088.

For the past four years, the established Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) has fought a bitter battle with the upstart Indy Racing League for open-wheel auto racing supremacy in the United States.

And to think that a couple of days ago that actually seemed important.

The CART family on Monday still was reeling from the shock of losing one of its most promising stars, 24-year-old Greg Moore who was killed in a terrible crash during Sunday's Marlboro 500 at California Speedway, when there was more tragic news.

Football legend Walter Payton, co-owner of the Payton-Coyne Racing team on the CART circuit, died Monday of bile duct cancer.

Moore was 24; Payton 45.

On Monday night, CART held its awards banquet -- at the Moore family's insistence -- in Los Angeles. It normally is a cause for celebration, the social event of the year for the world's fastest racers.

This year, it was more like a wake. Moore and Payton were two of CART's most popular personalities, both in and out of the paddock. And last month, the series lost another promising driver, rookie Gonzalo Rodriguez of Uruguay, who was killed in a freak accident at the Laguna Seca road course in Monterey, Calif.

Moore's death was the biggest blow, if for no other reason that he had the brightest racing future.

It was as if the racing gods -- or maybe even The Man himself -- tried to intercede on Moore's behalf last weekend. On Saturday, prior to qualifying, he suffered a broken hand and various bumps and bruises when he was knocked off his motor scooter by a truck in the paddock.

But as touched upon in this space last week, it takes more than a broken hand and bumps and bruises to keep a racer off the track. And sure enough, Moore was cleared to drive following the prerace warm-up on Sunday.

Just before the race, I mentioned to our group at the track that the hard-charging Moore, who was forced to line up last because he missed qualifying, should be fun to watch at the start. He was all of that, charging from 27th to 15th in just four laps, before Henderson's Richie Hearn crashed in Turn 2.

That brought out the yellow flag. The track went green on Lap 10. Ten seconds later, Moore's life was over.

I first met Greg Moore in 1992 when he was still a teenager. By winning that year's Formula Ford 2000 West championship (which included a victory at the then-Las Vegas Speedway Park paved oval), Moore was granted a test session at the old Las Vegas road course in an Indy Lights car owned by Alister McNeill, who operated a team out of the facility.

I dug that story out of the archives Monday. The youthful Moore looked about 12, instead of 17, in an accompanying photo. But what I recall most about that interview was his remarkable maturity, a trait by which his too-short career always would be defined.

"I hope to be in Lights for two or three years," Moore said at the time. "Hopefully, by then somebody will take me under their wing, like they did Paul Tracy."

But in three years, Moore would be beating Tracy, a fellow Canadian who now makes his home in Las Vegas.

In 1997, Moore won his first CART race at the precocious age of 22. Nobody in CART history had done it sooner. He won five times in 72 career starts. Given that he already had signed with the high-profile Roger Penske team for next season, that total was sure to go higher.

To put it in terms that non-racing enthusiasts can comprehend, the fun-loving Moore was the Peyton Manning of his sport. In a piece in this month's "Racer" magazine foretelling the state of champ car racing in the year 2008, author David Phillips predicted Moore would have more than two dozen wins (including a victory in next May's Indianapolis 500) and three series championships by then.

A computer-enhanced photo that went with the story depicted Moore in the colors of Target/Chip Ganassi Racing -- open wheel racing's New York Yankees.

In 2008, Greg Moore would have been 33 years old. He would have just been attaining his racing prime.

Walter Payton spent his prime trading paint with NFL defensive backs and linebackers. But when he turned to auto racing following his football career, Payton showed he could cover ground in a Trans-Am Camaro as well.

He retired from driving after a frightening crash at Road America in pastoral Wisconsin but then joined forces with Dale Coyne, another former racer, to form a CART team.

Payton-Coyne Racing has never had the resources to be a consistent contender. But on Sunday, young Michel Jordain Jr., had one of the Payton-Coyne cars out front at the tragic race in Fontana, for four laps. The other team car, driven by journeyman Dennis Vitolo, carried Payton's familiar No. 34.

Payton preferred to keep a low profile at the track. But if you wanted to talk racing, he usually made time for you. Sun motorsports writer Brian Hilderbrand found that out a couple of years ago, when Payton beat a hasty retreat following his speech at a Las Vegas Bowl luncheon.

The eloquent Hall-of-Famer was trying to bail out on the usual line of football questioning when Hilderbrand asked Payton about his racing team. Payton's eyes lit up like one of his drivers leaving the pits on fresh Goodyears. And the Sun got its interview.

Usually, this space is reserved for observations -- many sarcastic and, some, I hope, on the witty side -- on what's happening in sports.

But what has happened in sports during the past week saddens the heart.

Given Payne Stewart's fate last Monday, then Greg Moore on Sunday and Walter Payton on Monday -- not to mention all those poor souls who perished in the Air Egypt crash and then Wilt Chamberlain the week before last -- I'm finding it difficult to be clever or crack wise today.

I hope you will understand.

archive