BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. — The recent passing of big-block modified icon Bob McCreadie at age 74 hit us hard, as he was a few years younger than us and we’d known him from his early days wheeling the Price Brothers asphalt modified at Fulton Speedway, long before the track was covered with dirt.
“Legendary” is an overworked term in race reporting but Bob truly was that. He came from poverty, deriving his nickname “Barefoot Bob” from running around his Watertown, N.Y., neighborhood all summer without shoes. He was a self-made man.
On a visit to his shop to do a magazine story on his winning DIRT/Asphalt modified, he took us next door to where he grew up and pointed out the driveway where he worked on his race cars in the early years. The new shop, built with money from a Super DIRT Week win on one of his least favorite tracks, the Syracuse mile, showed how far he’d come.
The “Barefoot Bob” nickname was reinforced early in his career when, in the interest of keeping it light, he built a car so narrow his boots didn’t fit on the pedals and he had to shed one of them to race.
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