Not liking Danica Patrick doesn't make me bad feminist FFS

So Danica Patrick won the pole for the Daytona 500 yesterday, and since I’m a woman who likes NASCAR I’m contractually obligated to have an opinion on this…

You don’t have to be a NASCAR aficionado to know who Patrick is, or that she’s a polarizing figure. I go back and forth myself. While my personal brand of feminism has never been the “woman = automatically good and true and right” kind, I really do feel some pressure to be in Patrick’s corner, fan-wise.

I hear the same thing from other female racing fans. It usually comes from people who aren’t NASCAR fans themselves, and the only thing they know about it comes from 10-second blurbs on Sportscenter. Hey, you’re a lady fan! How ‘bout that Danica Patrick? And when the response that person gets is something along the lines of “SHE’S ONLY EVER WON ONE RACE EVER! AND THOSE GODADDY COMMERCIALS SUCK!!!” – the takeaway isn’t that that being a female racing fan, or a feminist in general, involves a great deal more nuance and personal experience than simply lining up behind the latest “first woman to do X.” Instead, we’re just bad women. When we had the chance to practice all that stuff we’ve been saying about how women are just as capable of succeeding in motorsports as men are, we sold out.

Yeah, well. I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either.

Let’s think of Danica Patrick like any other driver. I’ve never been called on to explain why I’m not a huge fan of, say, Greg Biffle, or Jeff Gordon. I once heard someone say that becoming a fan of a particular sports team or athlete is somewhere between buying a car and falling in love. Fans may claim that they like this team or this driver because of their stats, but there’s always something intangible there. Maybe this driver grew up in the same place you’re from, or pulled a move on the track you’d like to think you’d have done yourself. Something makes you identify with that driver on a personal level… or not. You might respect the skills of everyone else on the track, but you still have your driver.

I guess that’s the best way to describe how I feel about Patrick. I respect her, but she’s not my driver.

If the ultimate goal is for a female driver to be thought of simply as a driver, then what I think of Patrick’s pole win is just what I’d think of any other driver’s: while following a line around an empty track is an accomplishment (certainly not something most of us could do), it’s not terribly predictive of how a driver or car will do during the actual race. Let’s see how we do in dirty air with 42 other cars bumping into one another for a few hours.

And please stop telling me how I should feel. (At least the LA Times didn’t write “panties in a bunch.”)

We could be heroes: Drivers as comic book heroes

And we're back! Let's welcome Socratic NASCAR's new contributor Mayor Jimmy, a veteran of way more racing-related blogging than me.

I had this idea back when Jr had the Dark Knight Rises paint scheme, but then he won and I got distracted. If Dale Jr were a comic book hero, he'd have to be Batman, right? I mean, losing his father, having to prove himself to be more than a rich kid, all that? So that got me thinking what other comic book heroes the other drivers would be. But my knowledge of comic book heroes is basically from Hollywood, so I'm sure there are subtleties I'm missing. One thing is certain, though - Tony Stewart IS Wolverine. That can't be up for debate. 

So, which comic book heroes would various drivers be? Okay, Mayor Jimmy - GO:

Mayor Jimmy says:

Tony Stewart/Wolverine

This was Sara's "must have" and actually it's a pretty spot on match.  Bad-boy looks, very quick temper, but one other good comparison Sara didn't even know about.  Wolverine is Canadian and back in the days before he joined the X-men (but before he was Weapon X) he rolled with Canada's Department H which deployed a Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight.  They pop up on the radar every once in a while.  So does Wolverine's Weapon X days.  Still with me? 

Okay good.  So the reason this translates to Tony so well, is because Tony also started out somewhere other than where he is today: Sprint Cars (by which I mean F1).  That too pops up on the radar once in a while in the form of the Indy 500 usually.  Well, Wolverine gained his primary popularity in X-men lore and Tony has gained his in NASCAR. BAM.

 

Michael Waltrip/Aquaman

This pick was mostly because Waltrip is a king when it comes to endorsements and plugging sponsors.  Seriously, there's nobody better.  Just as Aquaman is King of the sea.  Remove Michael from his kingdom and put him on a track, he's a fish out of water.  Sure they both have occasional moments where they shine, but otherwise Aquaman is taken as seriously out of water as Michael is outside a commercial.

Dale Jr/Wally West (Flash)

I'm more specific about him being Wally West in that West is actually the third incarnation of The Flash.
 

West actually started out as Kid Flash, the sidekick of Barry Allen, who was Flash since the 50s.  Like recent NASCAR fans with Jr as “Earnhardt,” West is probably who most recent comic fans would know as “The Flash”.  I mean c'mon, all that's missing is Jr to have started his career as “Kid Earnhardt” right?  

I had thought about using Black Panther due to him being someone born into royalty, had his father die early, tried to separate himself from his kingdom to forge his own identity (Black Panther joining the Avengers, Jr leaving DEI), but Black Panther isn't mainstream enough.  Sara suggested Batman due to parental death and trying to shed the rich boy image. Only problem I see in that one is that Jr's dad dying isn't what made him go into racing; he was already doing it.  Also, Bruce Wayne doesn't shy from his spoiled rich image.  He embraces it to make people realizing he's Batman harder.  Think about it, if I told you Paris Hilton was secretly a crime fighter, how hard would you laugh?  Flash however, he's a big name in comics and the flash "family" has been around a while.

 

Jimmie Johnson/Lex Luthor

He's a businessman at the top of his game. He goes into the boardroom and he gets it done.  Johnson gets it done on the track.  Like Luthor closing deals, Johnson wins titles. HOWEVER......  we know there's a hidden story.  We know behind it all, there are backroom deals.  Cheating happens.  Publicly, we can't even implicate him in it.  Lex always finds a way out usually by finding others to take the fall.  We all know who Jimmie has to take the fall.

 

Busch Brothers/Punisher

I wanted to separate them, but honestly, they're both the same thing.  Trouble.  Pure, unapologetic, trouble. They have their missions, they don't care who they cheese off in pursuit of the goal.  Everyone knows they're trouble.  During the Marvel event known as Civil War (which totally sucked –  It was comic book pretentiousness at its highest) Captain America got desperate and recruited the Punisher.  He was also about to make a deal with a couple minor super-villians when Punisher walked in and gunned them down.  Cap knocked Punisher around as Punisher told him “you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”  Same thing goes for all these sponsors who try and act shocked when one of these yahoos opens his mouth and embarrasses them.

...

More drivers/heroes to come. For now, what do you think?

 

Daytona 500 Live Diary

From this year's Daytona 500, originally posted at Side of the Road, aka The Mothership. Read the original here.

The first two hours...

12:03: Both Waltrips are in the booth. What did I do to deserve this? I can’t explain why these two men annoy me so much. They’re both knowledgeable and more insightful then a lot of the guys who do this. But I just can’t stand either of them. Recordings of their voices run in a continuous loop on the loudspeakers in my personal version of hell.

12:04: There’s rain in the forecast, so we need to get a weather report from a weather guy who’s so metro he makes Michael Waltrip look like Bruce Willis. He wants us to know that after this shower there’s a biiiiiig area of “rain-free air.” Please, please keep cutting to him throughout the race.

12:15: Dale Jr. is in the booth! I’m still not sure how I feel about his beard, which made its debut last year. I think I like it. It makes him look older. He seems confident, which is a great sign.

12:21: Ooh, ooh, it’s a commercial for Valvoline NextGen motor oil, which is 50 percent recycled. I just read in the paper this morning that the Roush cars are all going to use it this year. Apparently they used it last year, too, because the commercial’s angle is basically “I DARE you to call me a tree-hugging weenie – watch Carl Edwards win!”

12:24: It’s time for the always-awkward pre-race concert. Ok, earlier this month, a lot of people whined that Madonna appeared to lip-sync during her Super Bowl halftime show. Of COURSE she did, just like I assume Lenny Kravitz is doing now. Stadium sound systems are universally awful, just because the sound bounces around such a huge area. Also, it’s doubtful that they’re really playing those guitars right now. It’s 60 degrees and raining, and those conditions do not make instruments happy. By the way – Lenny Kravitz? Can we send a copy of this to every uninformed blogger/sports writer/commentator who uses interchangeably “NASCAR fan” and “toothless KKK member who only listen to Hank Williams Jr.”?

12:33: Ooh, ooh! The trailer for “G.I. Joe”! Now, I’d pay money to watch Dwayne Johnson read his grocery list, but you’re throwing in Bruce Willis, too? Yes, ma’am. (I have an idea… can we put Johnson and Willis in the booth instead of the Waltrips? I feel like I would enjoy that a lot more.)

12:35: Now it’s time for Mikey Waltrip’s contribution to the broadcast, a segment reporting on the “silly season,” which refers to all of the off-season shuffling of drivers and crew members. It’s actually a nice piece, aside from a really awful gimmick where they make various drivers pretend they’re at a press conference. Painful. Guys, the Oscars are tonight, and there’s a reason y’all weren’t invited.

(About that – Rick Santorum’s campaign is sponsoring Tony Raines’ car today, and so both David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos asked him about it in interviews earlier this morning. Gregory actually asked Santorum which he’d watch, as if you can only choose one, and as if there are deep cultural and political indicators attached to the choice. Well, I’m watching both, because my political identity isn’t tied to my entertainment choices.)

12:38: Trackside interview with Kyle Busch, and Darrell asks him if he’s okay after crashing earlier in the week. Come to think of it, Waltrip asked Dale Jr. about crashes, too, and he spent some time in his opening going over the week’s various wrecks. Why is he suddenly obsessed with this? I mean, he didn’t just suddenly notice that racing occasionally involves crashes. I’m starting to wonder if Waltrip is laying the groundwork to be the eventual chief spokesperson on NASCAR safety standards or something. Maybe he just bought stock in a seatbelt company.

12:47: Interview with last year’s surprise winner Trevor Bayne, who just turned 21 last week. What a wonderful young man. He’s talking about visiting Kenya in the off-season.

12:49: Time for a talk with Jimmie Johnson. (How is he the only Johnson in this sport anyway?) He’s talking about wanting another 500 win – hey, cheating appears to be good luck, so maybe this is your year – in part because Chad Knaus couldn’t be there for Johnson’s win in 2006. He’s “not in any of the pictures.” Um… Knaus wasn’t there BECAUSE HE WAS SUSPENDED FOR CHEATING. Stop acting like his grandma died or something.

12:52 – Jeff Gordon interview… aaaaand the Waltrips want to talk about crashes. (I’m telling you – stock in a seatbelt company.) His family also went to Africa in the off-season – to Rwanda, where he does some charity work. I’d like to add this to the Lenny Kravitz concert footage in that package we’re getting together for the anti-NASCAR bigots.

12:57: Finalmente! The interview Fox has been hyping for the last hour is here! Danica Patrick is the third woman to start the 500, and so of course Darrell Waltrip asks her about her crash in the Gatorade duel. My thoughts on Patrick – it’s extraordinarily hard to transition from open wheel racing to stock cars. Indy cars are like rockets, whereas driving a stock car is like wrangling a baby elephant. So far, I think Patrick’s going about it the right way, easing into the Sprint Cup series and learning from those around her. I’m preemptively pissed off at all the people who don’t really watch racing that often, who don’t remember how NASCAR chewed up the likes of Dario Franchitti, who’ll say horrible sexist crap if Patrick doesn’t lead all 500 laps.

Patrick’s 10 Super Bowl commercials are “the most by any celebrity.” Each Waltrip calls her a “girl,” which since Darrell just mentioned that she’s about to turn 30, is demonstrably inaccurate.

1:06: talking about Kasey Kahne, now officially a Hendrick driver. Mikey calls him a “kid.” So at least his infantilzation isn’t confined to one gender, which I guess is something.

1:10: Opening ceremony… brb.

Aw, Matt Kenseth’s daughter had her hands over her ears. Not a reflection on the national anthem sung by the guy from Train, which was wonderful. It’s just that it’s REALLY loud down there. Also, it continues to freak me out a little that camerapeople are swarming around the drivers and their families during the invocation and anthem. They can’t exactly shoot from far away. That camera is within four feet or so from Driver X, his wife and his minor child. There’s no way, absolutely none, that I could handle that. I would kick someone.

1:16 Metro Weather Guy is back!!! There’s a rain-free area south of Daytona, but still a lot of moisture headed our way. Now comes the time when the Fox broadcast people have vamp to fill the air time. Hilarity ensues. In this case, “hilarity” means “some of the most excruciating stuff you’ve ever seen on live TV in your life.”

1:26: Interview with reigning champ Tony Stewart – why wasn’t this part of the regularly scheduled pre-race program? I love Stewart. He’s so grumpy, and he very clearly has a limit to how much he’ll put up with Fox Sports’ goofy pre-arranged “improvisation.” But it does prompt another good discussion of how last season ended, which was Hollywood epic. Seriously, will not ever be topped.

1:30: Brad Keselowski still looks 12, bless his heart.

1:38: Now the Waltrips are singing. Way to ruin a really fun interview with A.J. Allmendinger, who – alas – got married in the off-season, and not to me. Sigh. One less cute man who’s willing to sing in public.

1:42: Mike Joy says “the ceiling has lifted off to the southwest.” I would’ve preferred hearing that from Metro Weather Guy, but whatev.

1:50: Hmmm… the Richard Petty “King’s Speech” segment is pretty awesome. Great idea, and well executed. Except that “The King’s Speech” was the big Oscar winner a year ago, so the timing is odd. (And there’s also the fact that Fox Sports just took an historic speech that inspired a nation to defend itself in war and turned it into a promo for a sporting event, which is… something.)

The last three hours, or, NyQuil and an interminable waste of time:

2:11: I think I’ve seen Kevin Harvick one time, one of those “walking through pit road” shots. Why aren’t they talking to him? Oh, because Darrell Waltrip needs to talk about Twitter instead.

2:13: Kasey Kahne is still on the market, ladies. If I were at all into Kasey Kahne I’d be really excited right now. Ooh, he’s showing off his knee surgery scar. Man, the track cannot dry fast enough.

2:16: OK, here’s a legit issue with a Waltrip. Mikey still owns a team, one with a driver (Clint Bowyer) in this race. Why is Mikey in the booth, again?

2:30: Still raining in Florida. I’m doing laundry. Here’s something I’m a little concerned about – I’m still fighting off a cold, and I need to take another dose of NyQuil. But the last time I took cold medicine and fell asleep on the couch, I woke up an hour into an MSNBC special on Jeffrey Dahmer… which was weird.

Regan Smith also got married in the off-season. So, stuff race car drivers do: Tweet, get married, go to Africa.

2:35: Martin Truex Jr. is here! He and Mikey shot some new NAPA commercials in the off-season (what fresh hell is this?) – ah, but did he get married or go to Africa?

2:37: FINALLY talking with Kevin Harvick, who shut down his Nationwide team last year so he and his wife could focus on having a baby. (Congrats!) He also got to meet Cesar Milan, and is now trying to pick a beanie weenie-related fight with Trevor Bayne. I can’t really explain it any better than that. That really was the interview.

2:47: Still raining, so Fox Sports decides to put us out of our misery and re-air the last 25 laps of the Bud Shootout, thank goodness.

…

4:31: Well, I’m awake again. I vaguely recall hearing something about light gray skies over toward Orlando, and the jet dryers are on the track. Fox Sports is now going with the Daytona 500’s top 10 greatest moments, which I think is a good idea. You know, I really don’t understand this. If you’re in the business of broadcasting a sporting event that’s routinely impacted by weather, how do you not have contingency plans in place? It’s WEATHER. You can see it coming days ahead of time. How hard is it to build into your broadcast plan what you’re going to do if you have to fill a four-hour rain delay? Whether it’s a recap of the season so far, a rebroadcast of another race or some other special, surely they can have something in the can.

5:09: Cancelled for the first time ever. This sucks. The 500 will run tomorrow at noon, when I’ll be at work, naturally.

Wow, before I could even finish typing that sentence, the Fox Sports crew was signed off and out of there. Isn’t that nice. You expect viewers to sit around for five hours watching your pained interviews with drivers who’d probably rather be taking a nap and listening to Darrell Waltrip tell the same stories over and over about his 500 win, but once NASCAR calls the race, man you guys disappear faster than fried pickles at Tony Stewart’s house.

Meanwhile, there’s straight up nothing on TV on Sunday afternoons in February. I’m pretty much tied to my couch at this point trying not to run a fever, and it’s either “Cops” or that show where David Tutera buys people extravagant weddings up until the Oscars start at 8:30. Yeah, I’m in a pretty crabby mood right now.

Socratic NASCAR, part II: NASCAR is mad, y'all

Another one from the old blog, Side of the Road, who does not like being called "the old blog" and would prefer "The Mothership." Read the original here.

Just because I enjoyed the first part so much...

(...and, again, apologies for being so slow. Adjustment to new job is kicking my a**.)

But it turns out that NASCAR has given this story a few days' more legs by fining Kyle Busch $50,000 for wrecking Ron Hornaday Jr. last Friday, after parking Busch for the Saturday Nationwide and Sunday Cup races. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled...but on an intellectual level I understand that there's stuff I should work out.

You were super-happy to hear that Kyle Busch couldn't compete Saturday or Sunday. You gloated, and you know it.
Yep. Guilty. It's about time NASCAR stopped treating this punk like the Lovable Scamp Who Gosh Darn It Just Wants to Drive Racecars (trademark pending)! and started treating him like they would anyone else who blatantly wrecked another driver. Wasn't Busch on probation once already this year? It's not like Jeff Burton or Elliott Sadler went out there and crashed someone.

But the fact that it was Kyle Busch HAS to be affecting your reaction at least a little, right?
I think that's fair. I can't tell a lie - after days of parsing by how many spaces Dale Jr. would have to finish ahead of Busch in order to move up in the standings, learning that Busch would essentially be scoreless in one race was a "pinch me, I'm dreaming" moment. It helped that Kurt Busch also finished the perfect number of places behind Dale Jr., so my driver ended up gaining not just one spot in the points, but two. I freely admit that I'm not objective when it comes to either my favorite or least favorite drivers. Who is? If this had been Harvick or Stewart being parked, I'd have been pissed.

Parking him for the whole weekend, and then a fine on top of it? C'mon, that's extreme.
I disagree. Again, this is not a driver with a clean record. Busch has been stacking straws on the back of this camel for a long time, on and off the track. And we can't forget that the motorsports world doesn't operate in a vacuum. Two-time Indy 500 champ Dan Wheldon died in an in-race crash two weeks ago. Sunday, while Busch was not getting ready for a race at Texas, Motocross racer Jim McNeil died in an exhibition outside. People die in this sport. Wrecks will happen, but intentionally crashing someone head-on into a wall at full speed can't be tolerated. Ever.

Yeah, but would NASCAR have penalized Busch to this extent if he'd been higher than 7th in points?
That I can't answer... but I'll bet the powers-that-be are glad that they don't have to answer it either. It's one thing to say, yes, we absolutely treat every driver the same... and another to know that your subjectively applied penalty surely cost someone a championship (and potentially sponsors and/or a ride). But race fans argue all the time about how debris cautions or penalties cost their drivers. Football fans gripe about holding and PI calls; baseball fans gripe about strikes; basketball fans call foul on fouls. A little subjectivity is what makes sports interesting.

...Are you still gloating?
Yes.

NASCAR is for rebels, but only men need apply

Another post from Side of the Road, this one from last July. Read the original here.

Did you ever notice the young, usually very pretty women standing in Victory Lane behind the winning driver, smiling and trying not to get sprayed with beer? Of course you did. That’s why they’re there.

There are three Miss Sprint Cups* each year, apparently. Now there’s an opening for one of them, since this week Paige Duke, a 24-year-old veterinary technician from South Carolina, was fired after pictures she’d taken for an old boyfriend surfaced online. This violated her contract's morality clause.

I have to say… I think this is kind of BS. When she was 18 years old, a young woman took pictures to send privately to someone she trusted. First of all, how awful is it that the pictures had been circulating online this whole time? That ex-bf is scum. Second, what on earth do her actions – again, taken in private – SIX YEARS AGO have to do with her ability to represent NASCAR today?

Sure, let’s all hop up on our high horses and sniff about how she shouldn’t have taken the pictures in the first place. I say again – she was 18. It isn’t her fault the pictures got out. (Once again I have to give thanks for the fact that I went through my reckless late teens/early 20s phase before YouTube and camera phones.)

Why fire her? Is it me, or is NASCAR a hell-raisin’, beer-swiggin’ “boys have at it” culture when it wants to be, and a conservative family sport when it suits it? Back to that asterisk up in the second paragraph… I once interviewed a woman whose family had been involved in NASCAR promotions from the beginning (her father was on the original board), and one of the things she told me was that our local track ditched its Miss Bowman Gray promotion decades ago because it just didn’t present the image they wanted.

But NASCAR’s title sponsor still uses young, attractive women to promote the sport at the track and at other events. Ok, they’re wearing firesuits and not bikinis, but what the hell ever. You’re still using a woman’s sexuality to promote a sport that has nothing to do with that sexuality. But when one of those women appears to have had an actual, not fantasy, sex life SIX YEARS AGO, the Sprint folks kick her to the curb.

NASCAR and the sponsors that support it want it both ways. Drivers can get caught speeding on a public road many times over the legal limit. At the track, they can use illegal parts, beat each other up and get their wrists slapped. But one woman with an extremely peripheral role in making the sport happen gets embarrassed by an a-hole ex, through no fault of her own, and she loses her job?

Unless her morality clause covered everything she’d ever done in her entire life, including for several years before her employment, I hope Paige Duke sues the hell out of Sprint.

By the way… a “morality clause” from the entertainment empire that pretends it was founded by people who violated federal laws? I say again… BS.

Socratic NASCAR

This post was originally published on Side of the Road on June 7, 2011, which is also my birthday so I have no idea why I was blogging about Kyle fracking Busch. It's very special because its concept and title led to me starting this blog. Read the original post here.

I have started this post about five different times. Each time, I start out trying to be even-handed, fair and detached… and after a few hundred words I find myself typing some variation of, “If I had $150,000, I’d punch Kyle Busch in the face, too.”

Let’s have a Socratic dialogue (multi-logue?) between the many warring factions of my conscience:

Obviously, Richard Childress was wrong to put Kyle Busch in a headlock and punch him repeatedly following last weekend’s truck race. Physical violence is wrong.
Well, yeah. And that’s why NASCAR was right to fine Childress $150,000. For one, Childress is an owner and Busch a driver. They aren’t peers in this case.

Ah, power differential. Discussion of relative privilege in the garage. Fun!
Sort of. This is one of the reasons that, as much as I can’t stand Kyle Busch, I’m not in the “Let’s all high-five Richard Childress” camp. Do we really want to set a precedent that it’s okay (at least in fans’ eyes) for an owner to beat up another team’s driver? Sure, this time it was the driver a lot of fans despise and the owner a lot of fans respect, but what about next time?

Hey, now. Kyle Busch isn’t exactly “underprivileged.”
True. It seems, judging by various accounts, that what pushed Childress over the edge was what he saw as Busch’s mistreatment of Joey Coulter. It was Coulter’s eighth start in the Trucks Series –

Exactly! Kyle Busch has been driving full-time in the Cup Series for years, and he picks on an inexperienced kid.
Don’t interrupt.

Sorry.
As I was saying, Busch slammed Coulter’s truck after the race was over – I know you want to say something, but hold on – so, I think in Childress’ view he was defending someone who didn’t have the clout to defend himself. Just like the kid who finally whales on the schoolyard bully who’s been picking on the first-graders, he’s going to have to do his time in the principal’s office.

Can I talk now?
Go ahead.

Busch is supposedly on probation for that incident at Darlington where he ran Kevin Harvick’s car into the wall, also after the race. Why isn’t bumping Coulter his last strike?
Um, is my name Mike Helton? How do I know? My guess would be that Busch’s actions took place on the track, and therefore fall under the “boys, have at it” exemption. You may think Busch was being overly aggressive, or you may think that he was exercising the privileges that come with experience, as other drivers have done since this sport began. But NASCAR is clearly trying to move back to a time when drivers governed the on-track society and enforced mutually developed group norms.

I’m sorry, what?
Sorry. I wrote my undergrad thesis analyzing NASCAR fans as a subculture, and I’m still fascinated by how people form group identities, how they decide what’s “normal” within the group and how they handle “deviant” behavior –

Alrighty then…
Anyway, I guess my takeaway is that I’m glad Busch got his ass beat, while not being seriously injured. Apparently nothing else was getting through to him, so maybe this will. Pretty much every driver goes through a cocky punk stage, and Busch is has too much talent to keep making me hate him so much.

Say something nice about Kyle Busch.

Ok, I can handle this one. Yes, Busch is now the guy who got beat up by someone’s grandpa. But if he’d hit Childress back, well that definitely would’ve violated his probation, not to mention permanently black-flagged him for all but the most unrepentantly douchey fans. If that was a deliberate decision, it was a good one. I also like that he’s let NASCAR handle this without any public whining.

Worth the wait

This post was originally published at Side of the Road on June 17, 2012. Read the original here.

This is my nephew Alex and I checking out the best race car in the history of the world (hyperbole alert) at Charlotte Motor Speedway in March. We were there for the Vietnam Veterans Homecoming, which was held in the infield.

Alex and I discovered racing at the same time. He's actually kind of the reason I started watching NASCAR. Just over 10 years ago, I was babysitting Alex one Sunday afternoon. Even as a baby, he was obsessed with Hot Wheels cars and pretty much anything with a motor. I was looking for something to do, and even though my family had never really followed NASCAR, I did grow up in North Carolina, after all. I'd gleaned that races happened on Sundays. Newsweek had also recently run a profile of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and I'll admit I was kind of curious. (Which probably makes me the one person brought to the sport by Newsweek.)

That was the April race at Talladega, which Dale Jr. won. Maybe if he hadn't, I'd never have watched another race again, I don't know. But I identified with this guy who wasn't that much older than me, who grew up not that far from me, and I was hooked.

Alex, too. This is the one thing he and I share that neither of us shares with anyone else in the family. It sucks that today, when our driver won for the first time in four years (almost to the day), Alex was up in the mountains at church camp. When Dale Jr. took the checkered flag, the first thing I did was to text his other aunt, who's volunteering at the same camp this week, to ask her to find him and tell him what happened. I couldn't bear him not finding out for another week.

It's hard to explain to people who aren't sports fans why some of us do care about the outcome of a game so much. From the outside, it can look so frivolous when there are starving children in the world. Being a sports fan is an outlet, a form of entertainment, sure. But it's also a way to connect with people, some of whom you wouldn't even have occasion to speak to in any other setting. I may not remember who finished second in that Talladega race 10 years ago, or even how Dale Jr. did the next week. What I remember is watching that first race with my nephew.

Hopefully he won't miss the next one, because it won't be another four years. Dale Jr. and his team have worked so hard to get themselves back into contention, and I know they'll be back in Victory Lane soon. And I love how appreciative Dale Jr. has been of the fans who've stuck with him - 30 percent of all NASCAR fans, reportedly.

I know of two in North Carolina who are thrilled tonight, and who can't wait for the next one.