By Scott M. Johnson
Herald Writer
REDMOND – Boys will be boys. And men will be men.
Reggie Tongue falls somewhere in between, depending on the season.
During the fall and winter, he is a starting strong safety on the Seattle Seahawks’ defense, where he takes out his frustration by flattening grown men. Summers are spent in an entirely different form of competition.
Tongue, it turns out, has some pretty sweet toys. Not the kind that 8-year-olds are unwrapping underneath their Christmas trees this morning, either. Tongue’s toys are from a more aristocratic kind of hobby shop, and are the type that even Jeff Gordon might envy.
Officially, they’re called remote control cars, or RC cars. But they’re not the standard Radio Shack models that zip around on the living room carpet. Tongue’s models are gas-powered and can reach speeds of 40 mph.
Tongue, a 28-year-old who describes himself as “a big 12-year-old,” has been collecting them since 1997. He’s gone through six cars already, and currently has three in his collection. At about $1,200 per car – for the top-of-the-line models – it’s not a cheap hobby.
“Be prepared to spend a lot of money,” said Tongue’s fiance, Debra Baldwin. “It’s a great hobby for guys, but it’s very expensive.”
Not that Baldwin has a problem with it. In fact, she doesn’t mind her future husband’s diversion – even if she constantly teases him about it.
“I think it’s cute,” she said. “There are a lot worse things he could be into.”
Perhaps. But the way Tongue treats these cars, it’s bordering on addiction.
During the summers, he races every weekend on an outdoor track at Bear Creek Raceway in Woodinville. He and about 30 other drivers compete in a seven-month-long league that’s complete with NASCAR-like points standings.
“It’s about the whole racing atmosphere, where you get a little adrenaline boost up on the drivers’ stand,” said Mike Phillips, the current standings leader in Tongue’s class at Bear Creek and an employee at the Everett-based shop where Tongue buys his cars.
Because of his career, Tongue only competes through July, and he was in seventh place when he had to go to Seahawks training camp last summer. But that doesn’t mean he’s not dedicated.
Tongue freely admits that one of his biggest worries about signing with the Seahawks was that he might not be able to find a hobby shop where he could continue feeding his passion. Then he stumbled across National RC, a store on Madison and Broadway just northeast of downtown Everett.
Racing RC cars has even become an interstate obsession for Tongue, who originally competed in Kansas City-area leagues when he was playing football for the Chiefs. He annually attends a national race in Las Vegas, where hundreds of like-minded adults take part in heated competition.
“Guys get real sensitive,” Tongue said. “Guys get their feelings hurt sometimes. But it’s all in fun.”
Since buying his first gas-powered car four years ago, Tongue simply fell in love with the competition.
“He looks real calm when he’s out there, but when you look in his eyes, he’s real focused,” Seahawks teammate Floyd Wedderburn said. “It’s crazy. He gets into it.”
Wedderburn is one of a handful of teammates who also take part in RC car collecting. He has four such vehicles, although he doesn’t enjoy the competition as much as Tongue. Wedderburn, a 6-foot-5, 333-pound offensive lineman, accompanied Tongue to one race last summer, and the results weren’t very encouraging.
“He stays on the gas,” Tongue said. “When you turn, you have to slow down, just like a real car. He plows through the turns, jumps over cars.
“It was funny. Nobody wanted to say anything. He’s running over everyone else’s car, and they’re really (ticked) off, but nobody says anything.”
Wedderburn chuckles when he thinks of that experience.
“I took off and I was in first place,” he said. “But when it came time to turn, I went straight over the hill. I just kept going straight. That was probably the last time I put my car on the track.”
While he can joke about it, Tongue takes racing almost as serious as football. He said he spends two to three hours per summer day doing maintenance on the 18-inch-long cars, while he races every Sunday between April and late July. His obsession was so overwhelming that he had RC car parts spread all over the dining room of his old house. When he and Baldwin moved into a new residence, she made a non-negotiable request that Tongue put his collection to the garage.
Wedderburn wasn’t the only teammate Tongue tried to convert. A less successful relationship was forged with fellow defensive back Ike Charlton, who purchased a car kit but quickly returned it when Tongue refused to put it together for him. Now Charlton has a remote-control model boat that doesn’t require the maintenance. Linebacker Anthony Simmons is another convert who also leans on Tongue for advice.
Actually, Tongue isn’t quite the expert he seems. While he can put the kits together, he’s not much for maintenance.
“I’m not that mechanically-inclined. I can’t even change the oil in any of my (life-sized) cars,” Tongue said. “But it’s really not that hard.
“I don’t like to work on them a whole lot. When you’re spoiled like me, you can just go out and buy a new one when it breaks.”
Putting together the cars is not nearly as easy as it seems. The cars are almost exact replicas of life-size models, and are based on scale. For example, Tongue used to collect “tenth scale” models, which are scaled 1/10th from a real car. Now he races “eighth scale” models – or one-eighth the size – because they are faster and feature four-wheel drive.
The cars have almost everything, right down to shocks and transmission. The “gas” is actually a concoction consisting of 20 to 30 percent nitrogen and an oil mixture.
To start the cars, handlers use a small, screwdriver-like device called a glow igniter, which fits into the motor through a hole in the car’s shell. The car sits on a starter box while the controller revs up the engine using a deluxe, hand-held device that registers everything from speed to engine temperature (and even a few things Tongue hasn’t yet deciphered). When released, the car takes off onto a hilly, 25- by 40-yard dirt track similar to a BMX course.
Drivers control the cars from a stand above the track, while marshals are used to clean up crashes and debris as the race goes on.
Tongue said he would recommend the hobby to anyone with the patience to enjoy it. But, like his fiancee, he has a few words of warning.
“They’re not toys,” he said. “They are toys, but you could hurt yourself. Guys have broken their toes driving over them. I’ve burned my fingers. At the races, guys have been hit in the head. These things are coming about 40 mph, and they weigh eight pounds. Imagine an eight-pound dumbbell going 40 and hitting you in the head.
“Just respect them, because they’re toys – but they’re not.”
Whatever they’re called, Tongue can’t get enough of them.
“(Teammate) Marcus Robertson was making fun of me: ‘What are you going to do when you retire?’” Tongue mused last week. “I said, ‘Well, hopefully I’ll have enough money to be able to race.’ He thought I meant racing Porsches or something. I was like, ‘Nah, man, remote control cars.’ He thinks that’s the funniest thing in the world.
“But now he wants one, too. Everyone wants one – then they see how much work goes into it.”
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