Year later, same old Kahne

ENUMCLAW — They jump the fence and knock on the motor-home door, and there stands Kasey Kahne, drinking beer and watching Georgia Tech beat Kansas in the NCAA tournament.

They want autographs and handshakes and pictures, a piece of Kasey Kahne, same as everybody else. So the brightest baby-face in all of NASCAR — soon to be rookie of the year, already one of People magazine's 50 most eligible bachelors — opens the door and lets these fans who aren't supposed to be there come inside.

"Wanna beer?" he asks them.

Kahne had just finished racing in the Food City 500 at the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.

This is the Kasey Kahne that they remember here, the everyman from Enumclaw.

Find your way to Griffin Street and hang a left. Drive past the cow pasture with the "GO KASEY!" sign hanging from the mailbox. Past the Yella Beak Saloon where half of Enumclaw gathers to watch Kahne race. Past the Buds and Blooms store with the "Good luck Kasey" sign out front.

And there it is, the epicenter of all things Kasey Kahne, tucked into a small room in the back of the Mark Topping Dodge dealership.

There are Kasey Kahne pajama pants and Kasey Kahne hats and T-shirts. There is his actual No. 9 Dodge car bathed in red paint and a multitude of advertisements, which won the "best vehicle entry" in the annual Enumclaw Christmas Parade last year.

There are tattered uniforms and framed newspaper articles and pictures from fans, mostly female, hanging from the walls. In homage to Kahne's dust-up with Tony Stewart last year, one fan sent a picture of a Coke machine with Stewart's likeness on it, a No. 9 bumper sticker covering his face.

The shop itself illustrates just how much has changed for Kahne in the past year. The friends and family who gathered in the shop this week to spin stories illustrate the one thing that remains the same.

Kasey Kahne himself.

"That's the coolest thing about him," says J.J. Arnett, a friend of Kahne's since fourth-grade basketball. "He's the exact same guy. This whole thing has been surreal, but the only thing I can think of that's changed is his blackjack bets. We used to play about $5 or $10. Now, he's playing $200 or $250."

That's one of several things they'll tell you about Kasey Kahne — that he never loses at blackjack. That he's shy. That he sticks three-pointer after three-pointer on the basketball court. That he always blushes when they tease him about the People spread — Enumclaw's finest lying down, chest hair sprouting out.

Tammy Kahne remembers watching her son through the kitchen window on the 50-acre farm they used to own along the White River. For hours and hours, he would spin around the one-eighth-mile dirt oval.

"How boring," she thought to herself, not knowing then that he spent those hours figuring out a way to beat his brother the next time they raced.

He was competitive like that — in shuffleboard, basketball, video games, you name it — bouncing off the flower pots just to try to get outside. Taking his 1972 Dodge flatbed out in the snow, hitting corners so fast Arnett swore they were headed for the guardrail, then catching the corner at the last possible second. Taking the family snowmobiles to the mountains and racing until 5 a.m. under a full moon.

"I would just watch him interact with people," Tammy Kahne says, "and think, 'Wow, he puts on a show, and he doesn't know he's putting on a show.' He has this way about him. I always tried to figure out how and why."

Eventually, she gave up trying. How and why took a backseat to what was happening. And what was happening was Kasey Kahne becoming famous.

It wasn't supposed to happen this quickly. Kahne was taking the place of legendary Bill Elliott in the No. 9 car. Then came one of the best starts by a rookie in NASCAR's 55-year history, the youngest rookie of the year, at 24, since 1993.

A year ago at the Daytona 500, Kahne's souvenir trailer sold $6,000 worth of merchandise. This weekend, as he kicks off his sophomore campaign, it's expected to snag more than $100,000.

Getting Kahne on the telephone these days is a three-week process. His team at Evernham Motorsports says he gets more requests than every NASCAR driver save two — Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"Even when I'm at the racetrack, I don't get to spend much time with him," Tammy Kahne says. "Not too long ago, I told Kasey that it feels like I have to stand in line. He goes, 'Mom, it's not that bad.' As a mom, it is that bad."

Problem is, everybody wants a piece of Kasey Kahne. He recently finished third — behind Gordon and Earnhardt Jr. — in a poll of NASCAR's sexiest drivers. He gets 30 pieces of fan mail a day, many with pictures and cellphone numbers of young women, and five times as many autograph requests, including some in restaurant bathrooms.

There are 1,784 Kasey Kahne items up for bid on e-Bay. There are at least three fan message boards dedicated to him, including one with 47 different topics about their heartthrob posted, quite appropriately, on Valentine's Day.

A sample post: "I think I'm in love with Kasey Kahne. I think he is the most beautiful creature that has ever graced my eyes. Ahhhhh ... my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Who would have thought that I, Kristin, would fall in love with a boy and become a NASCAR fan in the same day."

Or this: "I am old enough to be your grandma, 51, but I am still a FAN who LOVES the autographs and those cute SMILES!!!!"

All this for a driver who has yet to win a Nextel Cup race. Kahne did notch 13 top-five finishes last year, finish second five times and win four poles.

"I have really good luck when playing blackjack," he says by phone from Daytona. "I need a little more luck on the racetrack."

Asked how different his life is now, Kahne pauses. Everything is different. And nothing is, if that makes any sense.

"It can be, um, overwhelming," he says. "Life isn't the same anymore. But I'm still the same. I still do the same stuff. I'm still the same guy."

Even though Elliott called Kahne "an exception to the rule" this week, his people at Evernham Motorsports wonder if all of this is happening too quickly.

"We might be throwing the star thing at him a little fast," Ray Evernham told reporters in Daytona. "He's still got a ways to go."

Friends and family choose to disagree, refusing to believe that fame has changed him. They say that growing up on a farm has grounded Kahne, and they point to a trip to the Bahamas last year as proof.

Kahne admits to tiring during last season's final last two months. He needed a break.

\And because Arnett and another close friend, Ben Craighead, had each recently been married, Kahne chartered a private jet for 16 of his closest friends and family from Enumclaw.

They stayed at the Atlantis Resort. Kahne put them up in separate rooms and gave them meal cards worth $200 a day. They played blackjack — he won, of course — and sat on the beach drinking tropical rum from coconuts with little umbrellas.

"Best week of our lives," Craighead says. "I can tell you that. It was unbelievable."

Kahne has that kind of effect on people. Last year, he filmed a safe-driving commercial with Trooper Lance Ramsay of the Washington State Patrol. Ramsay flew to North Carolina, Kahne's current state of residence, to film the spot, calling it "the most all-time high of my entire life."

Other drivers gave Ramsay funny looks when he wore his uniform in the pits.

Rusty Wallace stopped him and asked him what he was doing there, being so far away from home and all.

"And I told him, 'In Washington state, we take care of our boys,' " Ramsay says, laughing.

And the brightest baby-face in all of NASCAR, in turn, makes sure he takes care of them. All of them. Even in the bathroom or the motor-home lot.

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com