Teams

Homerun Heroes

Garage Headquarters: Novato, CA

Driver: Brian Kelly

Mechanics: Danny Campbell, Ryan Fetters

Nuts and Bolts:

How confident are the HomerunHeroes*? Confident enough that the group’s Southern California teammate Danny Campbell bought his plane ticket to San Francisco before the crew had even submitted their application to enter the Red Bull Soapbox Race. “Danny, Ryan Fetters, and I went to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo together,” says 25-year-old Brian Kelly, the team’s driver. “In-between hosting blow-out block parties, we did a lot of collaborative design and fabrication projects, including a competition-quality, diamond-plate foosball table, an indestructible coffee table, and a motorized, three-wheel go-cart.” Today, Brian is a contractor (and serious lacrosse player), and Danny and Ryan are architects.

They’ll need all of their professional skills to construct their soapbox racer: a six-foot baseball. “We wanted to present a memorable San Francisco icon,” explains Brian. “We couldn’t have done this without Barry Bonds and Marc Ecko.” Brian is of course referring to the homerun king, and to the fashion designer who purchased the baseball from Bonds’s record-breaking 756th dinger. Ecko conducted an online poll that determined he should donate the ball to the National Baseball Hall of Fame only after branding it with an asterisk to symbolize the suspicion that Bonds set his mark with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. Brian confides, “We have a related plan for winning the People’s Choice Award that involves money and false promises of a better life.”