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. 

NASCAR Encyclopedia: Steve Addington

Steve Addington is the second person alphabetically to receive a NASCAR card.

Steve Addington
Born: July 4th, 1964
Home: Spartanburg, South Carolina
Cards Produced, according to the Trading Card Database: 9
Cards in my collection: 1
NASCAR crew chief Career: 1993-current. Currently serves as Crew Chief for the #15 Cup team and driver Clint Bowyer. .

2009 Wheels Main Event #51

Steve Addington's first job as a crew chief came with Jason Keller and the #57 Busch team. They scored 10 wins between 1995 and 2003, before Addington joined Joe Gibbs Racing on the Cup series in 2004. Addington would find his greatest success with JGR, winning 16 of his 20 Cup wins as a crew chief with Kyle Busch between 2008 and 2011, including 8 in 2008, which was the league leading number of wins for that season. Addington then paired with Tony Stewart at Stewart-Haas Racing and scored four more wins with Stewart, before having a falling-out with the fiery owner-driver. Addington then moved to HScott Motorsports, a brand new team with rookie Justin Allgaier in 2014, and he remains with the team in 2016, with one-year only driver Clint Bowyer for this season. The HScott team has provided the largest challenge of Addington's career, as it operates on a shoestring budget compared to JGR and SHR, two of the most well-funded teams in NASCAR.

NASCAR Encyclopedia: Billy Abernathy

Welcome to the start of a new series! Before I really begin, an introduction:

I realize this isn't a concept that is entirely new, but, to be fair to me, I had this concept long before I knew what a blog was, not knowing that other people were doing something similar with baseball.

My original concept was to create an album on my website and post a scan of a card of each person in my collection, for both the NBA and NASCAR. and then in the caption write up their stats, but I never finished it for two reasons: I have to pay for my website, and I'm trying to limit the amount of duplication, and I began with my NBA collection and realized I needed to do a lot more scanning before I could really do it properly- when I put it on the backburner I was less than 1/3rd of the way through scanning my NBA collection. I stopped working on it in 2013.

Now, I'm resurrecting that idea but I'm going to improve on it, here on Cardboard History. I'm also going to begin with NASCAR, which would have been the logical choice to begin with as my entire NASCAR collection is scanned, at least the card fronts, but logical choices doesn't always enter my thought process.

I'm going to go alphabetically, except on the occasions where I add someone new to my collection and I've passed their point in the alphabetical order, in which case they will be moved to next in line. By my calculations I am missing only 33 people who have ever gotten a card in a NASCAR set.
For drivers I plan to give career stats up to the time of writing, for car owners, crew chiefs, and other people who have received cards, that's not as easy to come up with that information, so I'll attempt to provide the length of their career.

Eventually I plan to follow with an NBA Encyclopedia, but that won't be for several years as more scanning is required, much more. To be included, each person MUST have a card by themselves, they cannot share it with another person, only appear on a team card, etc. They must have their own card.

And now, let's begin, with the first person alphabetically to receive a NASCAR card, Billy Abernathy!

Billy Abernathy
Born: 2/16/1948
Home: Stony Point, North Carolina
Cards produced, according to the Trading Card Database: 2
Cards in my collection: 1
NASCAR Career: 1963-?

1994 Wheels Team Sets The Bandit's Last Ride Gold #4

Abernathy's only two cards produced were the regular and gold foil parallel of the Harry Gant team set issued by Wheels in 1994. Abernathy was Gant's front tire changer at the time of this card's issue. This is the Gold parallel. I do not know if he is still involved with the sport.