Friday, July 13, 2018

NASCAR Encyclopedia: Mike Alexander

We come now the first driver to appear in this project.

Mike Alexander
Born: July 31st, 1957
Home: Franklin, Tennessee
Cards produced, according to the Trading Card Database: 6
Cards in my Collection: 5
NASCAR Winston Cup Career: 1980-1990

1991 Maxx Update #85
Mike Alexander is one of many drivers who have been adversely impacted by injury, in his case, it turned out to be career ending. He never ran a full Winston Cup season, although he was supposed to in both 1989 and 1990, injuries robbed him of all but one race in 1989, and the results of the injuries cost him his career after 7 races of 1990; he would never turn another lap in NASCAR. He is very well known in the Nashville area, known for being one of THE drivers to beat on the old Nashville track, in fact, it was his success there that got him noticed and into a Cup car in the first place, making his Cup debut at the track in 1980, at age 22, a rarity at that time to appear in a Cup race that young. His best career Cup finish was 3rd in the 1988 season finale, filling in for another driver whose career ended via injury, Bobby Allison.
Although I have not been able to find any records, he was a multi-time Champion in one of NASCAR's many divisions; while my focus is on the main division- Strictly Stock-Grand National-Winston Cup-Nextel Cup-Sprint Cup- (I usually just call it Cup) NASCAR has dozens of divisions which are almost never covered on cards and can be very hard to find information about...I've spent more than 20 years searching for information and still have large gaps where I have been able to find nothing. His 1989 Maxx card, his first, notes that he was 1983 Winston Touring Series National Champion and 1984 All-American series Champion.

Writer's Note: I wrote this up sometime in 2016, when I was planning to do the NASCAR Encyclopedia person-by-person. I've since decided to restructure it to be more like my NBA Encyclopedia, but instead of discarding or modifying what I had already done, I've chosen to just post it as is. I hope to relaunch the NBA Encyclopedia shortly and post more in the NASCAR Encyclopedia, but I just have not found the time to write any more yet, they are somewhat labor-intensive to create. 

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like both of these encyclopedias are great ideas. Best of luck on this new project of yours.

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    Replies
    1. It's one of my favorite series to create, but it takes a lot of effort to create each post, a few hours each. It's worth it though.

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  2. What is this card worth?

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