Ty Norris Recalls Dale Earnhardt Dangling Him Out Of A 35th-Floor Hotel Window Over A Joke: “Don’t Ever Talk Sh*t About Me”

Don't mess with the Intimidator. This week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. shared an interview from a few years back with Ty Norris on his Dale Jr. Download podcast, and he had plenty of great stories about his friend and former boss, the late, great Dale Earnhardt. Ty was hired in 1996 by Earnhardt to serve as executive vice president of motorsports for Dale Earnhardt Inc., and he played an integral role in helping the team become a real player at NASCAR's top level of competition in 1998. Over eight years, DEI won 65 NASCAR races and 4 championships (from 1996 to 2004). He's gone on to do a ton in the sports world, and is currently a partner with Justin Marks at the new and already successful Trackhouse Racing. One of the most insane stories he told Jr. was about a trip he went on with Dale and some friends to New York City, where they had a huge suite and were busy with press obligations during the day, and went to nice dinners after, then they would go hang out with Dale, and drink a little, in the evenings at the fancy hotel room. I'm sure there was a lot of cutting up and plenty of jokes on the trip, but one Ty made to Dale Sr. struck him the wrong way... "We got to the suite, there was like four bedrooms... and I remember, that's where I met you for the first time, I think you were like 14, 15, 16 years old or whatever... but we were up there hanging out at night, and I made a joke to him. He came back from dinner and his shirt was really tight, and I said 'Man, that button's gonna come flying off of there.' And he goes, 'F you,' you know, he started yelling at me." Yikes... Well, blessing him out verbally wasn't enough, so Dale Sr. and some of their other friends grabbed Ty and hung hum out the 35th FLOOR of their NYC hotel room: "And then he and Grant Lynch grab me, and Hank Jones was there, and they grab me, and we're on the 35th floor and they opened up the window and they hung me out the window. So much so, that I could see the sidewalk. and I was scrambling at first, but then I was like, I mean we were a little juiced up at that point, I was thinking, yeah, just hold on tight. Grant and Dale were strong enough, and I was 170 pounds at the time they hung me out. And I was just like, 'Alright, you guys win, you guys win.' They pull me back in, he said, 'Don't ever talk sh*t about me.' I was like, 'Alright, I'm good.'" Yeah, that's certainly a way to shut someone up. Good thing he'd had a few drinks, otherwise I don't know how he didn't completely freak out (or was still friends with them honestly, I guess I just don't understand men...). Ty went onto tell another wild story from the trip, that happened right after Dale Jr. and his sister had arrived: "So it's the Presidential suite, and all this stuff's going on, you got the Butler, Ishmael around, and here's Dale Jr. asleep on the couch in the middle of the living room in the middle of the day. And Dale came in and just, like, almost threw you off the couch, started yelling at you, and it was the first time I had really spent any time around that father/son relationship, and I didn't really know you that well. I didn't know you at all, really, and I was like, 'Man, that's harsh.'" Jr. laughed, telling him quite plainly: "He was an a**hole." Ty responded: "He was, man, he was so hard on you, and he carried it for a long time... he was so hard on you. That was the first time I saw it, and I just don't know that I could ever be that hard, like that mean to my kids, but you seemed to expect it." Dale explained to his former co-host Mike Davis, saying this is probably what his dad was thinking and why he was so upset: "Oh yeah, he was tough... Dad is probably running wide open, from thing to thing, busy, busy, busy, and he walks in and his son's sleeping on the couch in the middle of the Presidential suite in New York City. And he probably was like, 'If I'm busting my a**, you're not going to be sleeping on this couch all day.'" One thing that's always abundantly clear, like I said at the beginning of this article... you just don't mess with Dale Earnhardt, plain and simple. You can listen to them tell the story below, it's wild: https://youtu.be/uTc9JB-cFNg?t=1081