John Force had never been east of Arizona. 

The gentleman on the other end of a phone conversation was telling the young John Force how he needed him to load up his race car and drive across the country to New Jersey. In desperation of getting his big break, the youthful Force took the bait; hook, line and sinker. 

The promoter on the other end of the phone line was no bull jive artist; it was the late Vinny Napp, owner and operator of Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ.

Napp needed to replace a legend and Force, though he was rough in every aspect had many of the same qualities as "Jungle" Jim Liberman, who had died the day before in a non-racing accident. Liberman was scheduled to match race at Raceway Park in a couple of weeks. 

Napp knew he could never replace a legend like Liberman, but knew this kid from the west coast had potential if he could ever get a break in his train-wreck of a life. 

"He told me I was going to be his next Jungle Jim," Force said, still shaking his head four decades later.

Napp saw something in Force he couldn't see in himself. 

Force believed himself to be a legitimate racer while Napp saw him as a showman. 

"Napp was one of the greatest promoters and if he was telling me I was going to be the next Jungle Jim, who was I to argue with him?" Force asked. "It took us forever to get there, me and my five-man crew."

They all shared one hotel room.

"I looked at him and asked, 'If I am the next Jungle, why are we all jammed up in the same room?"

Force said it wasn't long after this that Napp put him in his place.

"I lied to you,' he told me," Force recalled. "I had just driven across America and didn't even know half of the roads we took to get there. I spent my last bit of money on a Philadelphia Cheese Streak which wasn't a real one."

Force lost it, and in the midst of his tirade, noticed tears welling in Napps' eyes. 

"No one will ever replace Jungle Jim," Force recalled of the exchange. "Nobody can ever replace him. But you ... you're a good talker. You talk like him; you can work a crowd like him. You do those long burnouts. You can hardly get your engine to start, but when you do, you can put on a show."

Force not only put on a show; he also oiled the track and even caught fire once but when the night ended the future 16-time champion had done what Napp believed he could do - he entertained the masses. He was no Jungle Jim, but close enough to make the fans cheer if only a fraction of what they normally would have. 

Force became a regular in Englishtown, even becoming one of the marquee players in the Crazy Eddie Wednesday Night show.

"That's how it started, one of those breaks along the way for me," Force admitted. "I took a lot from the legends; I learned a lot from each one whether it was learning how to make deals or how to win. I learned that trip the importance of being a showman, and entertainer."

Force admits he'd gotten a taste earlier in his career of what showmanship was supposed to be when he was nothing more than a dreamer watching the drag races through the barbed wire fence at Orange County International Raceway. Promoter Bill Doner, another one of the greats, proclaimed between Jungle Jim and the legendary Chi-Town Hustler Funny Cars, they could generate enough tire smoke from their burnouts to block out the sun.

Maybe the Los Angeles smog helped, but Force couldn't believe his eyes.

"They, sure enough, did it," Force said. "They blocked out the sun."

Force said four decades later; he gets the notion to try and block out the sun. But, even more so, he tries to be the kind of drag racer Liberman was if only to validate Napp's faith in him and also to make Jungle proud.

"I will never stop being a showman," Force said. "There's always a part of me; even if I am in the middle of Corporate America, you can bet there's an inner P.T. Barnum in me screaming to be released."