Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

“Supercross is coming to town, which is another way of saying lock up the women and children and bury the family silverware under the rose garden,” he wrote, then pivoted to mention my dad, who was one of the co-promoters: “On second thought, hold the silverware… a guy named Dave Coombs may be by to dig up the rose garden.”

Musick was riffing on the idea that all of the available dirt in the surrounding area would be dug up and trucked into the stadium for a motorcycle race that was going to attract a bunch of leather-jacketed hoodlums. He also described the track as an “awry figure-eight course that looks like it was designed by a drunk in a hurricane, but Coombs, who laid it out, says it’s standard supercross fare.”

Despite the mixed pre-race press, a nice-sized crowd of around 30,000 turned up on Saturday, May 13, 1978, for the race. So did some nasty weather, as a steady drizzle dampened the evening as well as the attendance. Team Yamaha’s Bob “Hurricane” Hannah put on a thrilling charge, chasing down his rival Marty Tripes of Team Honda, only to go off the track. He spun a donut on the wet plastic tarp covering that precious artificial turf and got back into the race behind Tripes. He chased Marty down again to win a last-lap thriller. Here are the full results:

https://vault.racerxonline.com/1978-05-13/250sx/three-rivers-stadium

The next day, a big amateur race was held, despite the ongoing rain, and the big star of the day was young David Bailey, who was riding a Bultaco Pursang in the 250 Expert class. He put on a mud-riding clinic and served notice that one day he would be up there competing with the pros.

The real problem with the event began that Sunday evening, after everyone was gone. The rain kept falling and falling. The teamsters hired to haul the dirt in and back out couldn’t get started on the removal because the driving rain was making a mess of things. So they decided to wait a day for the rain to stop. And then another day. The rain was still falling midweek, and the local sports reporters began to take notice.

“3 Rivers: Sea of Mud” was the front-page headline in the Post-Gazette of a story that questioned the wisdom of bringing all that dirt into an open-air stadium.

“Fearing irreparable damage, Three Rivers Management won’t allow the Steelers to paint their logo on Three Rivers Stadium’s artificial turf, nor will they permit the City League to stage its championship baseball game there,” wrote the Gazette’s David Fink. “The group that runs the stadium, however, did permit 8,000 tons of dirt to be poured and shoveled over the turf for last weekend’s Supercross.

“After almost four days of uninterrupted rain, that dirt has turned to mud, most of which still sits on top of the plastic covering that separates dirt and turf. Where there’s no mud, there are deep pools of dirty water, some of which are located in the dugouts. In the vicinity of second base, a pile of dirt rises 10-15 feet in the air.”

By this point, concern was rising that the mud was not going to be removed in time for the Pirates’ return from their long road trip, as the Pirates were set to host the New York Mets. The local sports reporters were leading the charge, running images of the muddy mess on the field and in the dugouts. What started as a local story soon became a national one, even in those pre-ESPN days, as the idea that a Major League Baseball game might be postponed because of a dirt bike race 10 days earlier made for fun copy. Even the Wall Street Journal picked up on it and sent a reporter to Three Rivers Stadium for a front-page update.

The rain had finally stopped by Thursday afternoon, and that’s when the tractors and trucks really started humming, scooping up as much of the still soggy mud as they could while also waiting for the sloppiest to dry out. A gregarious Pittsburgher named “Dirt” DiNardo as the full-time groundskeeper at Three Rivers Stadium leading the workforce, which was pulling 16-hour days. By this point, my dad was sleeping on an army cot in the Pirates’ training room under the grandstands. So was my mom, Rita, who was out there with a bucket and a scrub brush, helping clean the outfield walls of the stadium that had been roosted by Hannah and friends.

Finally, the dirt was fully removed, the artificial turf was mostly unscathed, and the Pirates were going to get their field back in time for their game with the Mets.

“Joy in Mudville: Bullpen in Ballpark No Longer Is Pigpen” was the headline of the Wall Street Journal’s front-page update on May 23, 1978, a reference to the famous baseball poem Casey at the Bat. The subtitle read, “And the Dugout is Dug Out After Mudders Day Races at Pittsburgh’s Stadium.”

“Three Rivers Stadium became one lake stadium during a solid week of rain that started on May 12,” began Gay Sands Miller’s story on the whole saga. “It wouldn’t have been so bad on the well-drained artificial-turf stadium—except for the 300 truckloads of dirt that had been hauled in and spread over the field for a ‘dirt bike’ motorcycle race. The resulting quagmire caused a period of panic in this baseball-happy town, as fans feared that tonight’s Pittsburgh Pirates ballgame might be postponed because of mud.”

In case you’re wondering, the first Pittsburgh Supercross was a financial success—at first. But all of the delays and overtime hours sunk the profits in no time, and each of the three partners—PACE Motorsports (Allen Becker’s company), Delta Motorsports (Paul Shlegel), and Racer Productions (my parents)—ended up losing about $50,000 each when all was said and done. It took five years to talk Three Rivers Stadium into letting the dirt bikes back into their confines, but only if plywood was put down first, then covered in plastic. That race, held in July, had nice weather and another decent crowd, but not enough to make it profitable for the three partners. (The fact that it rained heavily again during the load-out didn’t help matters.) That was enough for my parents to realize that they should stick with what they knew, which was promoting outdoor motocross and off-road events far outside of the big city.

Finally, 42 years after that last Pittsburgh SX, the series returns to the ‘Burgh. Dad’s gone, but my mother Rita will be there to help welcome supercross back, but she won’t be carrying her bucket and scrub brush this time. She’s just going as a fan.

Sidebar: The Actual 1978 Newspaper Columms

Beware! Supercross Comes to Town

By Phil Musick, Sports Editor

Supercross is coming to town, which is another way of saying lock up the women and children and bury the family silverware under the rose garden. On second thought, hold the silverware… a guy named Dave Coombs may be by to dig up the rose garden.

For the uninitiated, Supercross is motorcycle racing for the sadomasochistic. It’s run over a man-made. $30,000 track replete with jumps at 60 miles per hour, 90-degree turns, U-turns, sand pits, a couple of hundred tons of loose surface dirt, and a couple of thousand ways to wind up in the nearest emergency room.

The awry figure eight course looks like it was designed by a drunk in a hurricane but Coombs, who laid it out, says it’s standard Supercross fare. Which means that riders will often be airborne for 90 feet and which, since they’re going to dump 40 million pounds of dirt on the floor of Three Rivers, tells you something about Dave Coombs.

Supercross. Eighty guys straddling 250 cc motorcycles and charging after $21,000 in prize money, along with the outside chance of being able to drink a post-race beer. Up and down and around at 60 to 80 miles per hour. Up and over everything that gets in the way. Sir Isaac Newton’s most popular theory receiving the ultimate challenge. And, as they say in the press releases, “spills, chills and thrills.” And the off-greenstick fracture.

“It’s the Christians and the Romans,” Dave Coombs was grinning yesterday, prior to a press conference called to announce the May 13 coming of the blessed event to a large gathering which consisted of five newsmen and a hundred or so promotional types who drank enough Bloody Marys to float a barge.

A good, old West Virginia boy who was a professional rider in motocross-which is what they call Supercross when it isn’t held in a large stadium- Coombs is the major demo of the May event.

In his more carefree days, Coombs rode and played bass guitar for groups called the Fabians and the Bonnevilles and Elderberry Jack in swell joints like the Last Resort in Morgantown and the Jolly Roger in Wheeling. In time, he realized motocross was an idea whose time had arrived and he built a track in Mount Morris, which is why southern Greene County occasionally disappears under a cloud of smoke and noise.

That Supercross has arrived cannot be argued. At least not with Walter Golby, who manages Three Rivers Stadium and is known to purr at the sound of jingling cash registers. Aware that Supercross had drawn 32,000 in Seattle and 44,000 at Anaheim, he went to the Silverdome in Detroit last week. Some 64,000 other people went with him for the two-night show.

“They come off those jumps 20 feet in the air, but they come down with perfect control,” enthuses Golby.

There is something less than perfect control involved in building a Supercross track at Three Rivers. Golby will have four days in which to do it, aided, ironically, by a Three Rivers groundskeeper named Dirt DeNardo.

He’s going to dump 20,000 tons of dirt on a vacant lot on the North Side between General Robinson Street and River Road and then move it to the stadium. “You can imagine what it’ll look like,” he says. Yeah. Pike’s Peak.

The dirt will come from the Oakmont area-the town may sink into the bordering Allegheny river- and will be trucked in at night to what will surely become known as “Golby’s Pile.”

“The bad feature is having to move it twice,” admits Golby, unworried as to what the dirt might do to the Three Rivers surface, even if he wouldn’t let the Steelers paint their club insignia on it last fall.

If you had a 90-foot snake that ate billy goats, doubtless it would draw a crowd and as an attraction, Supercross is apparently in the same class.

The pros, who operate on a regular tour, will be riding the night of May 13 and the following morning, some 1,365 amateurs will take over the stadium in an attempt to survive Coombs’ track. Among them will be vice president Walter Mondale’s 20-year olf son, Teddy.

After Supercross leaves town on its way to the New Orleans Superdome and the Los Angeles Coliseum, Golby will have the 40 million pounds of dirt taken outside the stadium and tramped down in nearby areas. It will be sewn with grass and will remain part of the Three Rivers scene…until Dave Coombs comes around next year to dig it up again.

Supercross is expected to make it big. There may even be survivors.

3 Rivers: Sea of Mud

By David Fink

Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Fearing irreparable damage, Three Rivers management won’t allow the Steelers to paint their logo on Three Rivers Stadium’s artificial surface, nor will they permit the City League to stage its championship baseball game there.

The group that runs the stadium, however, did permit 8,000 tons of dirt to be poured and shoveled over the turf for last weekend’s Supercross.

After almost four days of uninterrupted rain, that dirt has turned to mud, most of which still sits on top of the plastic covering that separated dirt and turf.

Where there’s no mud, there are deep pools of dirty water, some of which are located in the dugouts. In the vicinity of second base, a pile of dirt rises 10-15 feet into the air.

In the outfield area, bulldozers relocated the mud, which is then dumped into a never-ending stream of trucks. The trucks, their wheels caked in mud while even more mud spills over the edges, cause another problem. The stadium’s outer drive is clean, but the inner drives and close-in parking lots are mud or dirt-covered, necessitating employment of a four-man crew that does nothing but wash driveways and parking areas.

Originally, the mess was due to be cleaned up by yesterday afternoon. Now late today or early tomorrow seems a more feasible target. Only then will anybody be able to ascertain the extent of the damage, if, indeed, there is any.

In the meantime, the only thing disgruntled tenants or would-be tenants can say to TRM is, of course, “here’s mud in your eye.”

Watch the following video on the history of Pittsburgh SX.