a little more about the "rumble in san antonio"
As Wayne was recounting his recollections of this incident, it brought back a lot of memories. As he said I and several other PRO people were very involved in getting the Formula 350 class started and writing the rules so as to level the playing field as much as possible. Because the Yamato 80 was basically a stock motor, the committee charged with writing the rules for the class wanted to try to assure that it stayed that way and fulfilled it's premise as a starter class in the PRO division by having rules that would eliminate or at least strongly discourage cheating in the class, such as a claiming rule for the motor, and limiting the participation of a driver to five years and then they had to go on to another class. Because the rest of the PRO divisiion was a "run what you brung" bore and stroke division, we knew there were a lot of "unfair advantages" that could be had if the PRO mentality were applied to modifications on the Model 80. A few modifications that had already become common knowledge and were hard for inspectors to pickup because the motor was new to them were slightly shortening the megaphone in the tower housing and blocking the water "pee hole" that expelled water into the tower housing on to the pipe.
The first time most of us from other parts of the country had seen the young man mentioned by Wayne, was at the race in San Antonio. He was really flying in Formula 350 and won most if not all the heats he participated in by a large margin, being several MPH faster than the rest of the competitors. When this happened again and again, a protest was filed by two competitors in the class, requesting the inspector look closely at his engine to be sure it was legal, as it is almost impossible to come out of nowhere as this young man did and absolutely dominate and run away with the class. The protest was filed along with a protest fee, and when the inspector tried to inspect the engine, it was nowhere to be found. It was finally located locked up in a trailer belonging to Hal Tolford, who in addition to being the person who I remember bringing the young man to the race along with his mother and perhaps a younger brother, (long time ago and my CRS is bad today about some finer details of the situation) was somewhat a mentor to him as far as boat racing was concerned, and I believe was on the PRO Commission if not at that exact time, before and/or afterward. In short, he knew the rules, or should have.
I really didn't remember Harry ZAK being the inspector,but that is very probable as he served in that capacity many times at races Baldy was responsible for promoting. Short and to the point, the inspector was denied access to the motor until at least the next day by it being locked up in Tolford's trailer and not being made available for inspection when a protest had been filed. The young mans mother was VERY upset, accusing all involved of picking on her son. Many tried to explain to her that this (the inspection process) was something that a competitor could legally call for with the filing of a protest and putting up the protest fee, but she did not want to listen. Her son was being persecuted and that was that. Add all that uproar to the previously mention fact that the motor was not presented for inspection until the next day and it left a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouths.
I was not privy to the commission discussion process as to reinstating the young man, and I would be the first to agree he was probably the most innocent party of the whole affair. He was badly served by adults who should have known better, and especially a elected official of the PRO division/commission, Hal Tolford. I did not understand at the time and do not now, how someone in that type of position can deny inspection of an engine that a protest has been filed on until the next day, without some type of penalty. If such a penalty was assesed I never heard about it. Those decisions IMHO made a mockery out of the PRO Division rule book. and if it was done because of a "good old boy, one of us" mentality, then shame on the rest of the commission at that time, and I don't blame Baldy one bit for being incensed about it.
Agree of disagree with him, like him or not, (and I did) one thing you could be assured of when you attended a race he promoted, it would be run by the book.
As to what precipitated the actual argument between he and Pete, I wasn't privy to that, but I did get in on the result and was one of the persons that had hold of him trying to get him away from Pete. There were a lot of hard feelings about that incident, including trying to have Baldy thrown out of APBA, but luckily cooler heads prevailed, including Mel Kirts, PRO VP at the time, and he got the antagonists together at the next annual meeting and got cooler heads to prevail.
I knew Baldy pretty well and was a great fan of his. You always knew where you stood with him, there was no BS. If he didn't agree with you about something, he would tell you so in no uncertain terms, but I never saw him hold a grudge. He was not happy with me or the others that broke up the fight, but that is another story for another time.