The Infielder's View of Indy

3:30 a.m. stumbling through a filed somewhere behind the back straightaway when my stomach begins to implode. No sleep for 48 hours: none anticipated anytime soon. Tacos and unchilled Budweisers' swimming in midair. This is The Race.

New York has more professional sports than boroughs. Boston has Larry Bird. Carl Yastrzemski and the Marathon. Los Angeles has Magic Johnson and Steve Garvey; Alabama has The Tide, and Indianapolis has The Race. Each year on the Sunday before Memorial Day, an estimated 375,000 people gather for "The Greatest Single-Day Sporting Event In The World," the Indy 500. Officially the race doesn't have a name. it is the only event held at the Indianapolis Motor Speed-way each year, and the tickets say simply, "500 mile race." But to a large segment of the American auto-racing world and any proud Hoosier, it doesn't need a name. It is simply. The Race.

For the 100,000 people who watch from inside the track, the fun starts as early as two days before the green flag. The grounds officially open at 5 a.m. on race day, and to get a choice spot near the fence on one of the turns, people begin arriving the Thursday or Friday before.

Locals rent out their front yards for as much as $10 a day as park-and-party space. Spots go quickly. Liquor stores and Kentucky Fried Chicken stay open 24 hours a day, and people sit on lawn chairs, drunk, staring at the traffic streaming into town. On 30th St., across from one of the four gates leading into the raceway infield, you can walk the length of each block on the tops of mobile homes.

The hustlers park on the two main roads just past the track, hawking hats and T-Shirts, cotton candy, corn dogs, tacos, pizza and Coke, belt buckles, water pistols, megaphones, toy cars, checkered flags, souvenir plates and shot glasses, necklaces, feathers, earrings and pennants. Almost everyone takes a piece of the race home with them.

For most of the infielders, it is this mass gathering of people, machines, dripping oil, burning rubber, alcohol and rising fumes that draws them to Indy. The race itself is but one interesting diversion during The Event, The Party. Others return year after year to sit in the same seats and keep careful score as the cars flash by, but they are of a totally different breed. People who sit in the stands wear imitation Penske racing team windbreakers and "Five for Foyt" buttons. Infielders wear "God rides a Harley" T-shirts and buttons which plead, "Show Us Your Tits!"

"Show Us Your Tits"--it is the rallying cry of the masses. The libido of the great unwashed bursting forth in all its drunken glory. It is the them of the infield. Mass-produced buttons, bumper stickers and shirts proclaim the four magic words, and hundreds carry homemade signs and drive had-painted vans which reiterate the them. From atop the vans and portable scaffolding, flushed faces call out hoarsely to all who pass below. "Show us your tits!" Most ignore the demands, but every so often a woman will clamber up onto a van and perform an awkward striptease to the cheers and jeers of the crowd below. One entrepreneur paid for her admission several times by collecting donations in the front of her scoop-neck T-shirt.

The infield is for men. Black-leathered motorcycle riders, general hell raisers and frat boys down for a look at the fun all stake out their separate claim Turn One is the "Snake Pit," the motorcycle mecca, Harley Heaven. The bikers get drunk, get crazy, get naked, get sick, and get beat up for the amusement of corporate executives sitting in the luxury $30.000 boxes across the track. Turns Two and Three are slightly less populated but boast a steady level of determined merrymaking.

Turn Four attracts the most serious race-watchers and a high proportion of loner crazies.

A Marine on leave almost ruined this year's race when he threw a government-issue smoke grenade over the fence with only eight laps to go. It billowed thick green smoke across the track and obscured the vision of the drivers cruising past at 190 miles per hour. Fortunately, the canister fell four feet short of the track and didn't cause a yellow caution flag, which probably would have changed the race's outcome.

Under normal conditions, the race itself is extraordinarily exciting to watch. The seats and the infield fence are close to the track, and on the turns you can see almost a quarter of the course. The public address system keeps up a faster commentary than any ABC announcer. On television, the cars seem to glide through the turns, accelerating smoothly into the straightaways. But the roaring machines actually skid through each turn and make sickening little sideways hops towards the wall No one was injured in this year's race, but it's easy to see how Gordon Smylie's car lost traction in a turn during qualifying. Medics used four separate ambulances to pick up the pieces.

An hour after the finish, still in the infield. One of the guess passes out on top of the car Exhausted, sunburned, hungry, wondering about what it had been like to be sober. The guy on the roof looks even worse than everyone else. The car is too crowded, so instead of leading him inside, we take some rope from the trunk and tie him to the top. With all the traffic, we weren't moving very fast, and he didn't wake up for about 200 feet, 20 minutes later.