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Brainerd International Speedway, Lucas Oil NHRH Championships.

The easy grace of tall-masted ships sailing into Duluth Harbor, and the loud, ground-shaking rumble of enormous race engines offer a stark contrast with each other, but we can be thankful for both here in mid-August, because otherwise we’re in a sports slumber.
The dog days of summer may be upon us. Hot days, lots of humidity, and even cooler nights can’t reduce the feeling that slowing down and inserting a bit of lethargy into our days might be the way to go. When I first heard the term as a kid growing up in Duluth, the idea was that it was hot and miserable for dogs as well as humans, and if you bugged a dog in this weather, you might get snapped at or bitten. Dog days was the perfect term.
Our sports seasons are at a crossroads that seems to play along with that idea.
The Minnesota Twins seemed to play better and more competitive baseball until some fool – oh, it was me! – suggested they had attained a level of respectability by suring upward to pass three or four bottom-feeders in Major League baseball. No sooner had I submitted words to that effect for last week’s Reader column and the Twins went into a serious nose-dive, losing five of their next six games and dropping back behind all but the National League’s Atlanta Braves, before hitting the road for Atlanta.  Yes, Atlanta. The only team with a worse record than the Twins also came to Target Field for an interleague set of games and swept them both, remember?
At about the same time, the Duluth Huskies proved again that they might be a marketing and financial success, but they were an on-field disaster. Interesting enough, the promotion-laden Huskies drew really good crowds, but gave up runs in wholesale quantities. Then they arose to win their home finale, and redoubled their fans’ support by finishing on the road, where they also won their final Northwoods League game. Almost makes you forget they had the worst record in the league.
This is transition time for sports, the mid-August dog days, with NFL football teams trying to get us all psyched by playing meaningless exhibition games – or NOT playing them, in the case of the Green Bay Packers and their ill-fated bad-field cancellation of the Hall of Fame game. From here, it looks as though both the Vikings and the Packers will have strong teams, and very likely will battle each other for divisional honors and, perhaps, a wild-card follow-up.
We are eased through the transition by the Tall Ships coming to port, as well as the daily dosage of Olympic competition from Rio de Janeiro, where we also can try to guess if it’s live, or Memorex.
Mid-August has its other big-time spectacle, of course, and that is the National Hot Rod Association’s annual trek to Brainerd International Raceway for the Lucas Oil championship weekend. If you’ve never attended, it should be a priority, because the entire scene is so similar from year to year, and yet full of surprises in a spectacle-shrouded weekend of qualifying and eliminations that culminates with the three top pro categories eliminating to quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals on Sunday afternoon.
As at every other track on the long schedule, the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes are the heavyweight highlights. But at BIR, we have our own special reason for focusing on the Pro Stocks, which rise from No. 3 to possibly the highlight of the weekend because of our only close-up view of our hometown heroes.
Greg Anderson, from Duluth, and his Summit Racing teammate Jason Line, of Wright, compete at the highest level with the non-supercharged, gas-burning Pro Stocks, and this year has been one of the most incredible seasons in their, or anyone’s, memory.
Line and Anderson proved amazingly dominant at every track. Through the first 15 NHRA nationals, Line and Anderson won all but one of them, and in that one, at Denver’s Mile-High Nationals, Anderson was beaten by Allen Johnson’s hole shot – losing despite a quicker elapsed-time because Johnson beat him off the line – and then Line lost by cutting the starting lights too close against Dave Nobile and losing by the dreaded red-light violation.
In the next race, Line, who has been the series points lead all season, lost in the first round, but Anderson carried on for the Summit Racing team and won the event. That created an interesting scenario last week in Seattle at the Northwest Nationals. Aaron Strong upset Greg Anderson in the first round, and Line reached the semifinals against Nobile but he again red-lighted. That sent Nobile into the final against Strong, but the persistent rain returned to wash out the final round in all the pro categories. So fans at BIR will see the final round in Top Fuel and Funny Car, although the Pro Stock final will be made up at Indianapolis.
In any case, the event assured only the second time in 16 events when the Summit Racing tandem of Anderson and Line failed to win the title. In season points, Line still leads with 1,659 points, with Anderson second at 1,629 – a mere 30-point difference. Butner is thir at 1,149 and Allen Johnson fourth at 993, with Nobile fifth at 918.
In Funny Car, Ron Capps leads with 1,313 points, Courtney Force – daughter of legendary John Force – is second at 1,124, while John Force stands seventh at 970. The Top Fuel point chase is a made scramble, with Antron Brown leading at 1,301, followed by Doug Kalitta 1,201, Steve Torrence 1,177, Brittany Force – John’s other daughter – 1,044, and Tony Schumacher 1,036.
Qualifying on Friday is always a highlight, and sometimes the best time to look for records, with the air-density of our changing Northwoods weather a major factor. More qualifying and the non-pro competition fills Saturday from morning until dark, and then the Sunday eliminations in all classes takes center stage on Sunday.
It’s a 2-hour drive west on Hwy. 210 from the Duluth area, and you can easily take in the Tall Ships Saturday and go down and back on Sunday. If you’ve been there before, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t you’ll never forget the experience.