Before this season started I had made a decision. I knew that there would be a Tom Baldwin Memorial race of some kind at Riverhead. The decision was that regardless of what the Tour had on the schedule, I would be at that race. I count my lucky stars for making that choice.

I got to the track earlier than normal. From a couple of miles away I could hear a car taking laps. That is not something that was abnormal in the past before muffler rules quieted everything down. Now days that is a little bit of an oddity.

Upon my arrival I noticed the famous Jarzombek right-hand-drive Coupe taking a few laps around the Riverhead oval. The car’s owner, Harold Seaman, was putting it through its’ paces. That old big-block throaty roar was heard for miles around. Former Riverhead Raceway Modified campaigner and Riverhead Town Councilman, Ed Densieski shook the car down for about a dozen laps in the middle of the program. Ed was also at the wheel during the pace laps.

Thirty-one cars showed up for the tribute show. The event was sponsored by Unique Golf, one of the larger sponsors of the previous tribute event I chronicled for you. In addition, CARQUEST put some additional monies into the purse and provided hospitality to their guests and some of the dignitaries. Over forty-five hundred dollars in lap money and additional awards were on the line for the competitors.

Bill Park turned fast time in qualifying with a lap of 11.857. The top-7 redrew and Tony Ferrante, Jr. picked the pole. The son of Tom’s long-time friend and benefactor had to honor of dropping back to leave the pole open for TB.

Tom Baldwin, Jr. drove the #7 Coupe to pace the field. Tommy had a grin a mile wide as he circled the Riverhead oval. Tommy’s son, Tom III, or as we always knew him T-3, enjoyed the pace laps as a passenger in the Coupe. Neither Tom, Jr. nor the Old Man could ever deny that kid. He’s just the next Tom Baldwin and that’s the way it is.

John Fortin turned the third fastest time in qualifying and started the race from the outside pole position. John got the drop on Tony at the start and bolted to the race lead. Fortin led the first sixty laps. That was quite impressive as John hadn’t run a regular show at Riverhead all season.

“Two Lane” Wayne Anderson passed Fortin on lap #61 to take the lead and dashed to the victory. As Wayne exited his racer he pumped his fist in the air and yelled out, “Who’s the Old Man now!?” Anderson earned over two thousand dollars and a guaranteed starting spot in the North vs. South Shootout in November.

Those interested in numerology note that Anderson took the lead on lap 61, (Richie Evans). The first caution flew on lap 7, (Tom Baldwin). The second caution flew with 18 laps complete (the number of the car Tom drove for Butch Miceka).

Steve Halpin, who wished he could have been at the race, was calling in for updates every five minutes. When Bob Finan told Steve that Wayne had won the race, a red Ford truck with ‘Tulane’ marked on the side pulled in the driveway in front of Tom’s old spotter. Steve told me, “I nearly (expletive deleted)!” Wayne had always towed his Modifieds with a red Ford and Tulane was too much like Two Lane than Steve could handle. Anderson had earned the nickname for his ability to make his car appear very wide to other competitors.

Joe Hartmann, Bill Park and Chris Young soldiered on and finished second, third and fourth respectively. John Fortin faded late to a fifth place finish and plans on running in the Tour show this weekend. Mike Andrews finished sixth.

I spoke with Herb Fisher Sunday and the Glenn Tyler team was quite surprised with the bounty bestowed upon their team for finishing 7th. Rich Pallai from CARQUEST put up an additional $250 for the Tom Baldwin Hard Charger award. The weekly winner of this award receives five gallons of Sunoco Race fuel for picking up the most positions in the Modified feature.

Glenn earned the Tom Baldwin Hard Charger award for finishing seventh after starting scratch on the field. According to the Riverhead Raceway website, the Tyler team did something very nice with their earnings. “R.S. “Mike” Corwin of Glenn’s team e-mailed [Bob Finan] alerting me the entire $1,182 they won in the race will go to the Victory Junction Gang Camp in the Memory of Tom Baldwin, Cliff Tyler and John Heather.” As Bob wrote, “Nice touch by Glenn and his family and team who have always been class acts.”

Perhaps the best race I have seen this entire season was the Blunderbust feature at Riverhead Saturday. Tommy “The Wild Child” Walkowiak drove through the field from his seventeenth place starting spot to take down what is apparently his fifth victory of the season. I remember the Wild Child from practice day at Riverhead and I was amazed at how well he worked the traffic on the tight bullring.

After the race I tried to get some folks to relate their favorite Tom Baldwin stories, at least the ones that we could tell. Few wanted to relate many. Here is a sampling.

Jerry Moran, Baldwin’s former crew chief related the story of how he wound up working for Tom. Jerry said, “The Old Man invited me up for lunch.” The two ate lunch at a local restaurant and bar. Jerry thought that lunch was the extent and the reason for the visit. Moran continued, “By the time we were done with lunch he was bringing me to look at apartments to rent and by the end of the day I was dismantling an old racing fire truck (at the Baldwin shop). A couple of days later, I was driving home to New Jersey to get my stuff to come up to the Island to work and my head was spinning. How did he get me to do this?”

“You want something else? How about standing on the back of a fire truck and going down Montauk Highway doing eighty! (Miles per hour) It was cool watching Tom get a police escort back to the shop after he took the Modified down to the convenience store to get a coffee too. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t or wouldn’t do…the whole experience was amazing.” Jerry said.

A couple of guys brought up the incident between Tom and Alan Harbach at Pocono. Both of the men had their cars in position to qualify at a race there. “Tommy went to the outside of Alan and what he didn’t know was that Alan’s engine was going bad,” said ‘Racin’ Bobby Mason. Alan’s car just stopped and Baldwin drove over Harbach’s right side tires, flipping the 7ny high in the air landing outside of the fence.

The accident is well documented with photographs showing Baldwin’s car flipping at an altitude that should have required a pilot’s license. Vinny ‘the Prince’ Petrosini said, “I was driving a tow truck that day at Pocono with Billy Barnes. We were the first ones to get to him. That was something.”

Wayne Anderson’s favorite story was one where he was able to fend off his cross-town rival. Wayne said, “I picked the pole for the New Egypt 200. We went ten laps and lost the power steering. My pit guys told me “they’re paying lap money!” I can’t hold Tommy back; he’s got arms like my legs. It went down to the wire and we won.”

Anderson related, “Tom grew up with my brother in laws and my wife. He introduced me to my wife. We had fun, we aggravated each other every once in a while, other than that we had a good time.”

One of my favorite stories about Tom and Wayne came at a banquet. I don’t remember whether it was an Islip Speedway or Riverhead Raceway banquet but it was at La Grange Inn. Bob Finan announced that the next award was for the most spectacular crash in the Modified division. Baldwin leaped to his feet and pointed at Anderson saying, “This is your fault!” Finan then announced Tom Baldwin as the recipient. Tommy took the trophy, broke it in half and deposited part of the trophy on Wayne’s table. Baldwin said, “This is at least half yours.”

Jerry Cook was there for the show and he told me, “Tom won a couple of those Sunday races at Martinsville.” The trophy for the Sunday races at Martinsville is a grandfather clock. “They don’t just give those things away and that’s a big deal, he earned those.”

Side notes on the grandfather clocks. Tom was fond of telling people, “If you give me twenty bucks, I’ll show you my clock”. He really liked to do that to some of the younger competitors. By the way, Jerry won five of those clocks and three of them are still in his family’s homes.

Howie Brode misses Tom’s calls. “He used to call me three, four and five times a day, sometimes even more. It was great racing with him last year here (at Riverhead) bumping into each other and laughing about it. I remember driving his hauler up to Riverside Park, letting him sleep during the drive up, racing all night and driving home. That was special”, said Brode. “He was a racer and a business man and he was my hero. I wanted to be just like him and he is still my hero.”

John Denniston remembered, “We were driving back from Connecticut and Jerry was driving. He pulled the rig to the side of the Clearview Expressway. Tom got up an asked what the problem was. Jerry thought that the brakes were locking up.

The brakes were indeed locking up and Tom went underneath the truck to check the lines. Jerry told him to be careful because the hydraulic lines were pressurized. TB snapped back, “These things aren’t pressurized” after which he loosened a fitting and became covered in hydraulic oil.

We eventually pulled up onto the LIE where we could find a wide enough shoulder to scope things out in better light. We got home that night but Tommy blamed the whole thing on Jerry. He said, “Jerry was driving too fast. That’s why the brakes locked up.” That made me laugh so hard.”

As a side note to the above story, it was quite often my fault when something was amiss with the rig. It was always the fault of whoever had driven it besides Tom. When we pulled onto the wide shoulder that night, I had two generators, two nitrogen bottles, a half dozen power tools, about four air hoses, a dozen extension cords and probably enough lights out to illuminate half of Fenway Park. Hey we were in a rolling racecar shop.

The police stopped by to check out what we were doing. I figured they probably would have stayed behind us with their warning lights on to warn people of our presence but one said, “Looks like you’ve got everything under control” and left. I guess they figured they would have a better time at the donut shop.

Dan Jivanelli related, “We were up in Oswego and we had trouble in practice with our motor. We were all over that thing and couldn’t figure it out. Tom was racing up there and he stopped practicing.” Tom stopped to help his fellow Long Islander. “He was crawling under the car in his firesuit and he found the problem.” The problem had been a fuel line. “There are a lot of people who never knew the real Tom Baldwin.”

Jaws told me of a story where he had stopped at the first McDonald’s on I-95 coming home after a mid-week race at Thompson. There were very few people on line but the registers were broken and the people in there were trying to add everything up by hand. It was obvious that this was going to take a while.

Out of nowhere, Tom Baldwin is behind me ranting about how the officials had screwed him. At first I thought he was talking to himself until I realized he was talking to me! I listened for a while and left.” Jaws figured he could find a McDonald’s open down the road where the registers worked. “The next day I wondered whether Tom was still at that McDonald’s ranting about the officials.”

Jackie Ziegler offered, “I never saw Tom in such a good mood until that day. He practiced the car, said it was perfect and parked it. He never did that. He was at total peace. He didn’t even get out of the car when he got done with time trials.” That was the night of August 18th last year, the night we lost our friend.

It was great to see Tammy Baldwin and she forwarded some thoughts of Tom in an email that I have paraphrased. When Tommy, Jr. and Tammy were growing up, they were not allowed to walk out of the house, much less go anywhere, without being properly dressed. “Dad thought that wearing sweat suits or anything like that was a sign of laziness.

Dad made us drink milk with dinner, no exceptions. It made us strong. We had to be home EVERY night at 6:00 PM for dinner, no exceptions because that’s when he came home from the shop. That was the only family time during the week we got”. Tom had to go back at 7:30 PM to work on the racecar.

“Dad would not to let anyone tell us we couldn’t do anything. He drilled into our minds that we can do anything we put our minds to. Recently I was speaking with (Tommy, Jr.’s Wife) Beth about my brother. Beth said, ‘He is absolutely fearless!’ Recently my boyfriend Ryan said to my mother (of Tammy), ‘She’s the bravest girl I’ve ever met.’” It’s that kind of regimen and determination that Tom instilled in them that has made Tammy and Tommy, Jr. as courageous and successful as they have become.

Steve Halpin told me his favorite story was the one he told as the toast at the Golf outing. I told him that I would save that for another day. Steve said, “Ooohhh the golf story. I gotta tell ya this one Dub. We went golfing (at a Long Island course that shall remain nameless) and the starter there (they have starters at golf courses?) was wearing a Tony Stewart hat. Tommy asked him, “What do you think of the #9 car?” The starter replied, “Those Dodges they can’t run.”

When the starter was made aware of whose presence he was in, the tune changed. Several times during the course of their game, the starter came by to see how things were going. Tommy said, “Do me a favor, could you go over to the clubhouse and get me a couple of White Russians? Make sure there’s plenty of ice in them and get the biggest glasses you can find.” The obedient soul came back with Tom’s request promptly.

If you have a favorite Tom Baldwin story send it to me. I’ll try to put another batch together at another time.

I missed the race at Seekonk and thus I missed Eric Beers’s trip to victory lane. Eric said the wins were coming and he didn’t disappoint. Amie and CTGoldy did a great job on the live updates although it appears that I haven’t lost the opportunity to continue that endeavor.

Sad News directly from the Riverhead Raceway website:
“On a down note we received a phone call Monday morning from David Walters telling us Keith Comiskey passed away early Sunday morning. Oddly enough Keith had just driven to a fine 4th place finish in the Waterford Speedbowl SK Modified feature for Dr. Paul, former car owner for George Brown and Roger Maynor. Keith decided to skip a post race meal, as he was not feeling well and when the team returned to the hotel they could not wake Keith. A 911 call was made but Keith passed away after efforts to revive him. Keith had driven the Guelfi’s Wheel Alignment NASCAR Modified on Long Island and he’ll be at the Sandles Funeral Home, 98 Carleton Avenue in Islip Terrace Tuesday and Wednesday from 2:00 to 5:00 and again from 7:00 to 9:30 pm according to Newsday.”

Keith was a family man and a really great guy. I had the opportunity to pit next to the Comiskey’s for a couple of years when he raced an old Boehler Car at Riverhead. I got a chance to talk with Keith for a few hours on a return trip from Connecticut on the Orient Point ferry about a month ago. Farewell old friend.

The Comiskey family would like to strongly suggest that in lieu of flowers, donations might be made in memory of Keith to the Victory Junction Gang Camp.

By Mail:
Victory Junction Gang Camp
4500 Adam’s Way
Randleman, NC 27317

By phone:
Contact Merrie Beth Krauth
(336) 495-2037

Or email:
Merrie Beth Krauth
mkrauth@victoryjunction.org