Tuesday, June 2, 2009

This Champion Has Been Sanitized For Your Protection

I fell asleep during Sunday's race. Somewhere around the 3/4 mark my brain lost the video feed from Dover. Probably for just a few more minutes I absorbed the commentary from Mike, Larry and Darrell. That was enough to plant a seed for a dream.

In the dream those same guys were calling a race from a dumpy little short track somewhere next to nowhere. Their little press box had chicken wire in place of glass. Only Mike Joy had a microphone. One of those big, old fashioned ones. Larry MacReynolds was red in the face, screaming to be heard above the roar of .... nothing. The race hadn't started yet. And DW sat quietly, selling even-split tickets to fans lined up on the other side of the chicken wire.

Apparently I didn't miss much. I woke up in time to see Jimmie Johnson, in all his gloriously talented dullness, race his way back to the front. If Jimmie had cussed a little in years gone by, if he had been born of poor, working-class Southerners, if only he had something of the apparent arrogance of a Kyle Busch, if only he was half as flashy out of the car as he is in the car, the stock car racing world would take no notice of a certain son of a 7-time champion.

That Jimmie Johnson (and his crew chief and his team and his owner) is talented is obvious. Three times obvious. So he'll keep piling up the wins and stats and no doubt has already earned himself a place in the hall of fame. But 'colourful legend' he will never be.

From my side of the fence stock car racing is pure entertainment. Without a piece of the pie I could not care less about the financial aspects. I want a show. I want personalities. Real personalities. I want my villains. I want my heroes. I want my underdogs. I want my dark horses. I want my also-rans. I want my losers. I want my braggarts.

It isn't Jimmie Johnson's fault. Perhaps he consciously withholds his true self from public view as a means of keeping sane. Not a bad plan considering the scrutiny these fellows live with. But Muhammad Ali he isn't.

Legends are like pearls. They start with a grain of truth. And it's with a grain of salt that you must compare the heroes of yesteryear with the drivers of today. Time has a way of distorting truth. Were the old heroes better than today's lot?

I predict NASCAR is headed for a fall. Just as the stock market will crash and correct itself periodically so to will NASCAR. I pray we're nearing the end of the corporate racing era. Sanitized. Homogenized. It is only fitting that Jimmie Johnson shall represent this time.

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