Live from the Seneca Lodge Bar

Our respect for Bootie Barker is well documented within this blog. Just when we thought we couldn't like him even more, he steps up to the plate and smashes yet another verbal homer into the upper-deck:

http://blog.scenedaily.com/index.php/2006/06/08/booties-on-the-money/

Rare is the prerace press release (and I can attest to this after sampling what seems like hundreds each week in helping to compile our Team Notes section in the magazine), that offers a quote containing candid criticism. With glee, though, I read this offering today from “Bootie” Barker, crew chief for the No. 66 Cup team and driver Jeff Green.
“Some of the drivers are complaining weenies,” Barker said. “These races need to be long. They should be tough on the equipment, the crews and the drivers. We’re supposed to be the best and toughest crews and drivers in this type of motorsports, so those complainers just need to suck it up and deal with it.”
Barker, you see, took issue with those that favor shortening the 500-mile tests at Pocono Raceway. And you know what? He’s right in doing so.
You can say a lot of things about the tricky triangle as it relates to the quality of racing there. Even tell me it shouldn’t have two coveted Cup dates in the span of one-and-a-half months (less than that actually) and you’ll get no argument.
Reducing the length of a race there, though, and for all the reasons Barker mentioned is wrong. And Bootie, in this case, is right.

AMEN! And people wonder why Bootie has become a media darling what with his "Bootie Call" segments on Speed News, his humor and engineering brain at-the-ready on the NASCAR Performance show (which would've died a slow, miserable death without his presence) and now a weekly article called Urban Myths on NASCAR.com

Keep it coming Bootie, we can't get enough of you!!