It's a story with all the necessary elements: the hero, the rogue and a twelve year old boy. But it is also a story of penance; a tribute delayed for too many years. It is a doffing of the hat, not to the swaggering Mighty Casey, but to the pitcher-without-a-name who struck him out.
Motocross fans spin this tale well: it is 1974 and something is amiss in 500cc Grand Prix motocross. This championship belongs to Team Suzuki's Roger DeCoster, the Belgian whom every motocross brat wanted to be when he grew up. It was DeCoster we emulated, as we feverishly pedaled our sting-rays. It was DeCoster, on the gas tank, his works Suzuki swallowed in the berm, handlebar dragging in the soil, left leg stretching out to a pointed toe with grace that Nureyev could not have replicated.
The magazines showed us Roger D. and the writers who saw him on a motorcycle did their best to interpret for us. In addition to being the fastest motocross racer in the world, they told us he was fluent in several languages and that he was the prime moving force behind the development of the ultra-trick RN Suzuki’s. They could've told us that he could ride on water, bermshooting waves without getting wet. We would've believed them.
Heikki Mikkola, in stark contrast, was a man more accustomed to the quiet life of his native Finland. He was an auto-mobile mechanic by trade . . . and that was it. That was nearly all of the information we were