There’s always been a connection between North Florida and NASCAR.

LeeRoy Yarbrough called Jacksonville home and won 14 times on the top -rated NASCAR Grand National Circuit.
Speedway Park, also know as Jacksonville Speedway, was a half-mile dirt track at Lenox Avenue and Plymouth Street in what was then called “Southwest” Jacksonville.

The track hosted seven NASCAR Grand National races, won by racing legends like Lee Petty and David Pearson. Wendell Scott won the race there in 1963, and was the first and remains the only only African-American driver to win on NASCAR’s top circuit. Jacksonville Speedway closed in 1973 and a housing development now occupies that spot.

From his shop in St. Augustine, Scott Lagasse, Jr. continues that North Florida speed tradition.

His father, Scott Lagasse, Sr. had been a racecar driver for all of Scott Jr.’s life. He faintly recalled his dad’s success in the Sports Car Club of America Corvette Challenge Series in St. Petersburg in October of 1989.

“I can barely remember that,” Scott says, “But his original Corvette Challenge car was from Jack Wilson Chevrolet. He got wrecked early but came back and won.”

Lagasse Sr. raced 39 times across the NASCAR Cup, Xfinity and Truck series after winning back-to-back SCCA National Championships in the ‘80’s.

“A couple out of Wisconsin bought that Challenge Series Corvette sometime in the ‘90’s,” he explained. “They restored it and got all the ratings. They called us last year and said, ‘It’s time for it to go back to its home’ and sent it to the shop. It sits there now. It’s really cool.”

Scott Jr. knew early on he wanted to race.

“I remember my first motor cross bike for sure. I wasn’t good on two wheels, I was better on four,” he said this week as he prepared to drive the #4 Camaro for JD Motorsports Saturday in NASCAR’s Xfinity Series.

“I got in a car my dad was using to transition from the road track to the oval world. It was a fast car at St. Augustine Speedway. I ran my first race and won. I just had to lean on 30 years of stuff that was going in my ear,” Lagasse said with a laugh of his quick learning curve.

The Lagasse’s are operating out of a huge race shop right on San Marco Avenue in St. Augustine. Just less than 20,000 square feet and sharing that space with “Art’nMotion,” they also have a fabrication shop next door, “Where we do our real gritty, nasty work,” according to Scott.

A competitive nature has always been a part of Lagasse’s personality. A multi-faceted athlete, Scott says driving a racecar feeds that perfectly.

“It’s just a form of competition. The sport has competitive people. There’s the thrill of having to be perfect. It’s a high-speed chess game out there. A tenth of a second matters and all of that happens at 180 miles a hour.”

And it was that competitive part of his personality that ultimately led to a self-diagnosis of a serious medical condition.

“I was on the bike doing two-a-days, working on going to Charlotte to see Jimmy Johnson for his triathlon,” Scott said. “I texted my doctor and I just didn’t feel right. I was having to take days off because of a ‘tightness’ I felt after workouts.”

Lagasse went to see a gastro-intestinal specialist who found cancerous polyps in his colon. He had surgery and was back racing in six weeks. “It was the competitive side of me that forced me to the doctor.”

That’s one of the reason’s he’s is excited about his #4 Camaro this weekend sponsored by locals Micah Linton and Wally Devlin of the Rimrock-Devlin Group.

“There was open (sponsorship) space on the car and they put the Jay Fund on it. That has a really personal connection for me having gone through it.” The Jay Fund is Tom Coughlin’s charity that helps families’ battle childhood cancer.

Throughout his career, Scott has had success on several racing levels, and has had offers to drive full-time on NASCAR’s top circuits. None were fully-funded, top competitive teams, so he chose to race where he thought he had a chance to win.

“Could it have been different,” the 39-year old asked rhetorically. “Probably, but I’m really committed to the road race program we have going on.”

Lagasse has thirteen races on the schedule for his Camaro in the National Trans Am Series this year. Last September, Lagasse won his first Trans Am race and was surprised by his ability to adapt. “I’ve been pretty good on superspeedways but our team is really committed to our road race program.”

An avid cyclist, the Flagler College grad is the spokesperson for the “Alert Today Florida’ a campaign which raises awareness about pedestrian and bicycle safety. On Thursday he organized and rode in the third annual “Champions Ride for Bicycle Safety” from Daytona International Speedway. Jimmy Johnson, Aric Amirola and other NASCAR drivers were among those riding. Professional cyclists George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde along with former drivers Dario Franchitti and Tony Kannan have been part of the ride in the past.

Lagasse and his wife Kelley have two young children, so will the racing bloodline continue?

“I was watching a race the other night with our 4-year old daughter” Scott said. “And she said ‘This looks like a lot of fun.’ and I said. ‘No, no, no a piano is a lot more fun.’”

From a 21-day stretch known as “SpeedWeeks” the racing at Daytona International Speedway has been condensed down to a few days. NASCAR fans still plan their February vacation around the 500, but the days of comping out in the infield for weeks or parking your multi-million-dollar RV and making new friends around the nightly bonfire are gone. There’s still camping in the infield, and the RV’s are still lined up, but a four-day stretch encompassing the qualifying races on Thursday through the Great American Race on Sunday is about the extent of racing now to kick off the season in Daytona.

“I learned I didn’t have enough race car,” Dale Earnhardt Sr. told me once walking through the garage after a practice 10 days before the 500. “We’ll get it right though. There’s speed out there,” he explained. He and the rest of the NASCAR drivers as well as the truck racers (when that became a thing), the ARCA drivers and the guys in the Busch series spent hours on the track testing and in practice, looking for the right setup.

No more.

Trying to even out the field, NASCAR has limited the amount of time on the track, keeping the big teams from spending time and money to gain an advantage over the field. Most drivers don’t like it.

“We don’t have enough time on the track,” Dale Jr. has said in the past. The two -time Daytona 500 winner is happy to just be driving in 2017, back from missing half of last season with concussion symptoms.

“I’m happy, I’m smiling, I’m back,” he said on media day this week. The newly married driver didn’t rule out a shorter than expected career.

“If I were to win the championship this year, I would consider it,” he said when asked about retirement. That, I’m sure, sent shivers through the NASCAR brass who are presiding over a fragile time in the sport, looking for star power.

Seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson is closer to the end of his career than the beginning. Carl Edwards left the sport abruptly to perhaps pursue a political career and young drivers like Ty Dillon and Chase Elliott are just now finding their footing among the loyal fan base.

Without emerging stars in a personality-driven sport, changes to the race formats are what they hope is the first step toward re-capturing some of the magic.

“We’re doing things to make the sport better on television,” Johnson said this week. “If we can get people to watch on TV, they’ll like it and they’ll want to come see us race live.”

The 500 will have two stops this year, one after 60 and another after 120 laps. Points will be awarded for position in the race and they’ll restart.

“Just enough to let fans go to the bathroom and get a commercial break in,” one driver quipped.

FOX and NBC split the season for broadcasts and are counting on increased ratings and fan engagement on other media platforms to re-energize advertisers. If not, fewer races will be on TV, fewer dollars will be flowing into the sport and they’ll have to adapt. From a regional southeastern sport until the ’90’s, NASCAR races now in non-traditional places like New Hampshire and Las Vegas. If they don’t turn the fan decline around, Rockingham and Darlington will be back with prominent spots on the schedule.

It was about racing.

From the inception of what is now known as NASCAR through the beach driving in Daytona and onto the 2.5 mile tri-oval through the rule changes designed for speed and safety and all the way up to about 2000, driving at Daytona was all about racing. Finding speed was always the key, either by being better than the rules or just bending them a bit.

Walking through the garage area you were just as likely to find the drivers elbows-deep in the engine under the hood as you were seeing them on a slider under the chassis. They knew the car. Most of them helped build them. The car was an extension of who they were. If it didn’t feel right on the track, they’d whip into the garage, jump out of the drivers window, unlatch the hood and grab a wrench.

If you wanted to talk with Richard Petty, he was probably going to be talking to you while using a grease rag to wipe his hands. Cale Yarborough talked about driving that “MC Anderson Valvoline Buick” as if he was piloting a supersonic jet. And in some ways he was. “At 180 you have time to do this,” he told me as he jerked the imaginary steering wheel to the right. “At 200, you’re on it already.” Dale Earnhardt was elusive and almost made a game of disappearing and then all of the sudden being in the car and rolling onto the track. Walking through his garage one afternoon during Speedweeks after practice I found him sitting on the floor, by himself, leaning up against the wall.

“You OK?” I asked

“Yup,” he responded without looking up.

I figured I’d take a chance and sat down next to him. He never gave me a glance.

“Learn anything out there today,” I said after a minute or so of silence.

That’s when he looked right at me and said, “Learned I don’t have enough car to win.”

What do you say to that? So I just sat there. And so did he. I suppose contemplating how to make the car faster. After a short while, he got up and walked away.

“See ‘ya,” I called after him.

“Yup,” he answered without turning back.

You knew who had the best chance to win before the green flag even dropped. Certain cars had money; everybody else was scraping it together for the race.

While NASCAR was the first sport to embrace sponsorship as part of the “game,” the drivers knew how to fit it into the conversation as part of any sentence.

The “STP Pontiac” and the “Wood Brothers Ford” were part of the lexicon of the sport. They knew what kept them driving. And they knew it was their relationship with the fans that kept the attendance high, the merchandise sales going and the payouts increasing. That’s why “the King” would sign autographs ’till the last person was happy. Why Cale called to me across the garage and asked, “Where you been boy?” when I moved from Charleston to Jacksonville and he no longer had a Charleston TV station connection he could watch from his home in the Palmetto State. When NASCAR couldn’t figure out how to keep the crews in line when it came to following the rules, they plucked the guy most known for skirting the regulations to police the rest of the teams. They hired the crew chief who was driving them crazy looking for ways to “get around” the rules.

When their most popular driver died at Daytona on the final lap, NASCAR revamped their whole safety structure, requiring a safer cockpit for the drivers and even changing the cars, trying to move the sport forward.

They’re raised and lowered spoilers, put restrictor plates on the engines and gone through a half dozen “generations” of cars looking for safety and speed but still trying to find that “racing” heritage that made the sport what it is today.

So many fans I know have tired of the pack racing that happens at Daytona. It’s an aerodynamic race now. While drivers used to shift 1,000 times during the 500, now once they’re up to speed, their foot is on the floor all the way around the 2 ½ miles.

The sport is still driven by the personalities of the drivers. They’re all fast, hundredths of a second separating the first from the 43rd qualifier. Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin won the qualifying races, contested at night for the first time on Thursday. Both admitted they have fast cars but said, “Everybody’s fast. Anybody can win. Honest.”

While the spectacle of “The Great American Race” will carry the day as Luke Bryan performs and the Air Force Thunderbirds perform the flyover we can only hope the racing will be as exciting.

It’s kind of a pilgrimage every year, returning to Daytona for the 500. This year was a little different, knowing that it was the 50th running of the race and they’d have plenty of special things line up to celebrate. (Not technically the 50th “anniversary, but the 50th running of the race). And they did have all of the past champions there with fireworks and a special gold and white-checkered pattern to commemorate the occasion.

It’s a spectacle.

I mean a spectacle that makes the Super Bowl look like an amateur. It’s not like any other NASCAR race. Other races have qualifying and maybe a Nationwide race on Saturday but Daytona is a week. Or two, thus the designation of “Speedweeks.” And fans set their calendars to this “celebration.” They take at least a week off, show up in their trailers, RV’s pickups or whatever and plant themselves for the next 10 days.

It used to be that they made everybody leave the track before Thursday and then re-enter for the weekend. That was a huge cluster so they’ve streamlined it and now it becomes it’s own city inside the track. In turns three and four, people set up small tents and camp for the duration. On the east side of the infield there are travel trailers with flags flying and cases of beer in the beds of pickup trucks. Moving west, the trailers give way to million dollar luxury buses, all complete with flat screens but with their own bonfires and outdoor setups.

One fan sets up a Tiki bar every year, complete with a thatched roof and the small paper lanterns. Thursday night when I left, he had at least 500 people as “guests.” (I’m back and forth a few times during the week to cover different events. For the past few years I’ve left via the turn one tunnel and because I drive a foreign car (BMW) I get a lot of strange looks. Honest. If it’s not American made or a truck, it’s out of place. Maybe that’ll change with Toyota making some inroads.)

Luxury busses have made a big change in the infield at Daytona. Since they built the turn one tunnel they can arrive at their leisure instead of at only certain times to cross over the track. You can tell that it’s made a huge difference. Also since Monday was a holiday, most fans stayed Sunday night, making an even more festive atmosphere. (It would have only been crazier if Junior had won.)

It used to take hours to leave the infield because the trucks and buses couldn’t depart until the race was over and they could cross over the track. Now the tunnel allows big rigs to leave when they’re ready.

The people watching is unbelievable as you might imagine. But first and foremost the people there are fans. Big time fans. Everybody has a driver allegiance and they display it as loudly and as proudly as they can. It’s really a cult of personality multiplied by at least 43 times. More if you count the folks still tied to Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty. (I’d wear my “3” stuff occasionally but what I’d really like is some throwback Cale Yarborough swag.)

Everywhere you go is packed. Even the pits, where you could get away from the craziness in the past are now packed with people. Some watching the race on the track, some watching the pits and others with their back to the track and watching the race on the 30-foot big screen next to Victory Lane.

The race was somewhat uneventful until the end, and I’m sure that’s how NASCAR likes it. The first caution wasn’t thrown until 81 laps in, and that was for the phantom “debris on the track.” There wasn’t “the big one” that everybody waits for at the super speedways and that’s good. Just some high speed bumping in the final laps as drivers jockeyed for position. The finish showed why you need help at Daytona with Kyle Busch pushing Ryan Newman past Tony Stewart to the checkered flag.

Newman had a fast car all week but Stewart was the man to beat. Had Busch decided he wanted to win instead of pushing his teammate to victory, Stewart would have caught and passed him.

Since they rebuilt Victory Lane, the crowd inside has swelled and swelled each year. There’s a media section for photogs and another for television and a third and fourth for fans and VIP’s. But what’s happened is that the floor of Victory Lane is now packed with family members and other assorted visitors. The entire Thunderbird squad was crammed in there. Not just the pilots who did the flyover but the information officers, mechanics and anybody else in a blue jumpsuit and a T-Birds patch.

They fire off cannons of confetti, this year gold metallic to mark the 50th running, so that’s everywhere. There’s Gatorade everywhere and chaos reigns. It’s pretty well managed by NASCAR who take the winning driver where he needs to be, from Speed Channel to the local media, to the hands and feet in the concrete station and back up on stage for about 50 pictures with different hats on.

I was glad to get a chance to speak to Roger Penske in Victory Lane. After more than 20 years of coming to Daytona, he finally had the winning car. I believe he’s the only car owner to have winners at Daytona and at Indianapolis and he said, “I hadn’t thought of that, but with 14 wins at Indy, we have a ways to go here!”

Penske is a top-shelf guy, and seems like the kind of guy you want to work for. I’ve been around him a few times and he’s always been extremely gracious. I thanked him for that the last time I spoke to him at the announcement that Detroit was getting Super Bowl XL and he laughed. But the guy standing next to him stepped out and introduced himself as the Mayor of Detroit and said, “You’re right, he’s the greatest isn’t he?” So that was a pretty solid endorsement.

Everybody should experience Daytona, if only once.

There’s nothing like it.

I’m a little sad today.

After spending the whole day at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday for the Gatorade Duel 150 qualifying races, I realized my real, visceral passion for NASCAR is gone.

I certainly looked for it.

Thought about it all day.

But I just couldn’t find it.

Even sitting in Victory Lane, twice, seeing Tony Stewart and the Home Depot crew and Jeff Gordon and the Dupont crew celebrate their victories, I just didn’t have it. I walked through the garages. I went to see some fans. I was in the pits looking at the crews work at the cars go by. There is no sensation like standing a the end of pit road going into turn one and have the cars coming at you and going by at over 185 mph. But I just didn’t love it like I used to (sounds like a country song).

So why?

I was always attracted to NASCAR as a sport because of the personalities. The drivers, the crew chiefs, the owners, all self-made men interested in their sport. They were interested in racin’. They liked to drive fast. They wanted to beat the other guys.

Every time.

They weren’t happy with second or fifth or a top ten, they wanted to win and they would do just about anything to get there.

Cale, Richard, Dale, Donnie, Bobby, all of them knew each other, knew their strengths and weaknesses, could speak about each other personally and it was real. It seems rather homogenized now. Very corporate. Victory Lane is orchestrated with the “partners” getting their shots while everybody stands around to watch.

Maybe it’s become routine for Gordon and Stewart but even the “Wooo” from their crews while having their picture taken was muted. Stewart and Gordon’s exit from their cars seemed staged. Their answers were very stock, very carefully crafted. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great drivers and their interviews are full of sound bites we can use for weeks at a time. But there was no excitement to it.

Could NASCAR be losing a part of its core fan base? A quick tour through the infield reveals a lot of expensive RV’s and not a lot of tents and pick up trucks. Fans are more sophisticated, for sure, but NASCAR was built on fans that loved the cars, the drivers, the speed and the track. The smell of burnt rubber and a blown engine. It’s still there in small doses, but the days of the old infield are gone.

I miss Dale.

I’ve always had a pet peeve about rude and spoiled people. It’s spilled over into my professional assessment of the people I cover, and usually colors my opinion about what they’re like. Not they’re accomplishments, or their talent or skill, but what they’re like, how they got where they are and what they’ll be like when their talent and skill erodes and the next big thing takes their place. That’s why the latest tantrums thrown by Tony Stewart and Kenny Rogers particularly frost me.

Stewart thought the woman in front of him coming through the tunnel at Daytona was going too slow, so he reportedly honked his horn at her and flashed his lights. When they emerged from the tunnel, Stewart reportedly swerved around her car, when, according to Stewart, the woman gave him the finger as he went by. Instead of acknowledging his part in this little dust up and moving on, Stewart stopped the car, jumped out and “went to find out what her problem was,” according to the driver of Joe Gibbs’ #20 on the NASCAR circuit.

Rude?

Of course.

Spoiled?

Absolutely, and either stupid or cowardly, depending on whose point of view you have. I can’t help but wonder what Stewart’s reaction would have been if it had been the typical male NASCAR fan driving that car in front of him. First, if Stewart had gotten out of the car, the guy driving would have been out and waiting on him. Second, there wouldn’t have been a lot of words exchanged. Stewart, who’s not a big guy to begin win, would have either been running or on the ground.

Quickly.

There had to be some talk in the infield at Daytona this week about what Stewart’s fate would have been had the situation been different. Stewart’s situation was recounted as a second-hand story. Kenny Rogers’ little tantrum was, as they say in the news business these days, “caught on tape.”

Rogers had missed a start for the Texas Rangers because of a tantrum he’d thrown the week before in the dugout. He smashed a few coolers in the dugout and broke a bone on his right (non-pitching) hand. So when he came out of the clubhouse for warm-ups the next time he was at the ballpark, naturally the cameras from all television stations in Dallas as well at the networks were trained on him. It’s their job. As in the producer told the photographer, “Get some pictures of Rogers when he comes out on the field and we’ll show them on the early news.”

No big deal.

Unless you’re rude, and spoiled, like Rogers.

I’m not sure if he was embarrassed, or there’s something truly wrong with him. But his attack on the photographers at the ballpark was unprovoked and way over the line. I’ve seen guys grab the lens of a camera, but never throw it on the ground, kick it and cuss the photographer. What’s the excuse or reason? Don’t give me this “he has anger issues” argument. What’s Rogers have to be angry about when he gets to the ballpark? And do you think he ever considered that those guys were just doing their job, much like he is when he comes to the ballpark every fifth day?

I couldn’t help but wonder, (again) what Rogers might have done if the photog was somewhere near his size. I can tell you there were more than a few discussions in the sports department about what Rogers’ fate might have been if it had been a couple of the guys I work with. All are hoping for that chance some day.

Bud Selig’s suspension of 20 games was not nearly enough, and the $50,000 fine isn’t much to a guy like Rogers who’s making $3.4 million this year. And it’s not like he’s a young rookie who doesn’t know any better. Rogers will be 41 this year and has had a long and relatively successful and lucrative career. And then they’ve allowed him to be selected to the all-star team? Is there any wonder that people don’t have any passion for the players or the teams any more?

There’s not much sentimentality in sports. Guys retire, they’re celebrated for a day, or possibly have a farewell tour in their last season, and they’re gone. Replaced by the next group, the next generation, the younger, faster, bigger stronger evolution of whatever game is being played. NASCAR might be the least sentimental of all, drivers retire, or die, and the sport keeps plowing along, growing in popularity, garnering new fans and creating a niche for itself as one of the premier sports in America. But even with the celebration going on as Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first Daytona 500 , I’m sure more than one fan had a sentimental thought remembering six years ago when his father drove into victory lane at Daytona for the first time as the 500 champion.

When Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona, a big segment of fans changed their designation from “rabid” to “casual.” He wanted to win and wasn’t interested in second or third or “a good run.” The other drivers knew it, and it made them compete hard against “The Man in Black.” Fans were polarized by Earnhardt, either they loved him or loathed him, even creating the ABE faction among themselves (Anybody But Earnhardt).

Dale Sr.’s presence is still felt at every NASCAR track, with his memorabilia for sale and the number “3” still popular among the buying public. No where is his presence bigger though than at Daytona. As the track’s winningest driver, Earnhardt looms over the field every time they take the track. So his son feels it as well. The pressure to continue his father’s legacy has been enormous. But right now, he’s succeeding in doing it.

It took Dale Sr. twenty tries to win the Daytona 500; Dale Jr. did it on his fifth attempt. Junior said earlier in the week, “A lot of guys have great careers and never win the Daytona 500 or the points championship. I hope I’m not one of them.”

Running with the best equipment and a solid race team, Earnhardt always has a good car at the super speedways. But he knows what to do with them. He gets to the front and figures out how to stay there.

On a day that the “Great American Race” live up to its billing as perhaps the greatest spectacle in American sports, Dale Jr. provided the finishing touch fans were looking for. He’s become NASCAR’s most popular driver, and is backing it up by getting to victory lane. Winning a championship is next on his “to do” list.

Opening testing to the news media and the public in January gives NASCAR a head start on publicity for the new season, but it really kicks off ten days before the Daytona 500, a 10-day “Speedweek.” The drivers gather on Thursday for the Bud Shootout draw, a goosed up media event that determines the starting grid for that weekend’s race. They used to run this race on Sunday afternoon when it was called the Busch Clash, but now it’s at night, better to take advantage of the higher television viewing, and give Fox a chance to figure out how they’re going to cover the big race. The Thursday event is also a sort of “media day” for the 500, with the drivers consenting to interviews after the draw. It’s a far cry from years past when drivers chased down the media in the garage area, seeking publicity for their sponsors and owners. Now, Thursday is the time to get the questions in, because the top guys disappear virtually until race day.

You can feel things get revved up at the track. The haulers arrive, the sound changes as more cares are cranked up, tested, and get on the track. The numbers increase, whether it’s fans, media, sponsors or NASCAR officials. The place is buzzing by Saturday of the Bud Shootout, campers have arrived, tents are pitched and the beer is flowing. I’ve covered NASCAR for 25 years, but the last ten years have seen the sport explode. The hard-core fan has always been there, setting their calendar around the Daytona 500. Vacations are planned, money is saved, and hopefully, designated drivers are assigned. International Speedway Corporation owns and runs the track in Daytona (as well as several others) and allows people in and out of the track based on the events scheduled. You can buy a day pass, a multi-day for the infield, or in some cases, a weekend pass to experience the race environment with about 100,000 of your closest friends. If they’re not when you get there, they will be by the time you leave. The sight of the infield as you emerge from the tunnel beginning on Thursday of race week is at first stunning, and in part mystifying. Where’d all these people come from and what are they doing here? Jaws drop as the tube tops start to come off, the flags flap in the breeze and the pile of beer cans turns into first a hill, then a mountain. There are some fans that make artwork out of their discarded cans, a testament to their stamina and creativity.

I was standing in the parking lot once, surveying the line of vehicles preparing for entry to the infield through the tunnel. They weren’t opening the gates for another eight hours, but the cars and trucks were already lined up. “Hey, Sam,” one of the drivers called out. “Check this thing out,” he shouted as a follow up. His pickup was outfitted with a welded ironwork platform on the back with the bed full of beer. “Twenty-two cases,” he said with pride. “But we’ll have to restock in a few days.” “That thing’s too tall,” I naively said, noting the height restriction to pass through Daytona’s tunnel. “Naw, seben, leben, tree-quarter,” was the immediate reply. It took a few times of hearing that phrase repeated to translate it to seven feet, eleven and three-quarter inches. “The man says ‘too tall’ I tell him, ‘put a stick on it’,” my new friend’s way of inviting a measurement. Anything over eight feet has to wait for the gate to open to cross over the track. That’s wasted infield time, and nobody wants that. “I still think it’s too tall,” I said after surveying the height. The driver leaned toward me, glanced over both shoulders and whispered, “We lit the are out the tares,” and chuckled at the thought. I laughed as well, and gladly accepted the offer of an adult beverage. I’ll drink with anybody with that kind of ingenuity.

The fix is not in.

The talk about Dale Jr.’s win and Cal’s home run being pre-planned is silly. I guess next you’re going to tell me that the rest of the guys in the Tour de France are laying back so Lance Armstrong can win. Soon, people are going to go through past sports feats and figure out what looks fishy. Are you thinking about Jackie Smith’s dropped pass as some part of a great plot to keep the Steelers winning? Bill Buckner’s miss a conspiracy to keep the Red Sox from winning the World Series?

Come on.

The sports world is full of cynics, people who aren’t going to believe that great feats can be performed. That sacrifices will be made for the team, and that good things can happen through hard work. Why won’t they believe that? Because they’re not willing to do those things themselves. They’re afraid, afraid of failure and “what people might say.”

That’s when cowards become cynics.

As Teddy Roosevelt said, “they are among those who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much, for they live in that gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.” They’ve never been in the arena.

How many owners and sponsors in NASCAR do you think would approve of a race being fixed for one car?

Exactly zero.

Take the drivers out of it, the crew chiefs, and the fact that NASCAR has a shady reputation about the outcome of some races. There’s too much money at stake these days. What would Miller think about letting the Bud car win?

I don’t think there was any great conspiracy to let Lil’ E win. I do think he had the best car, and drivers weren’t willing to gang up on him or go through any great blocking scheme to keep him from going to the front. Somebody could have put him into the wall, but they didn’t at 180 mph.

The idea that Chan Ho Park grooved a pitch for Cal Ripken at the All Star game is really silly. The night before, they were throwing nice little meatballs over the plate, trying to let players hit home runs in the Home Run Derby. Some went 25 pitches without hitting one over the fence. And if Park was grooving one, why did he throw it at 92 mph?

Those two events are the very reason we watch sports. The essence of what keeps our interest from season to season, from sport to sport. Good things can happen in sports.

Let the cynics howl.

Then tell them to get back on the couch.

Eventually, we’ll know why Richard Petty decided this week to speak out regarding the Dale Earnhardt situation, but for now, it makes no sense at all. Petty chastised NASCAR fans for holding on to Earnhardt’s memory, saying it’s time to move on.

“He didn’t win that many races,” the man they call The King said, “and he wasn’t that dominant of a driver.” Petty won 200 races during his career as a driver, Earnhardt 76.

Dominant? Win or not, every person at a NASCAR race was aware of Earnhardt’s position. Half were happy when he went to the front, the other half booed. Dominant in terms of winning every week, perhaps not, but in terms of fan interest and his overall effect on a race, there was nobody like him in racing since, well, Richard Petty.

Hmmm.

The King’s comments seem like sour grapes when put in the context of Petty, the driver, vs. Earnhardt, the driver. Petty was universally loved, but nobody was passionate about him or his racing. He was one of the boys, the one with the best equipment, the one with a chance to win every week. You knew Richard would be a factor, but you also knew he was just racing the Allisons, Yarborough, Pearson and Parsons. A few teams were capable of winning, the rest were just there to fill out the field. It wasn’t a free-for-all, big money proposition every time he took the track.

Dale, on the other hand, drove the passion for the sport to a higher level by the sheer force of his personality. People liked Richard because he won, because he was identifiable and because he was easy going. People liked Dale for the opposite of all that. He won, and did it with an aggressive style. He was identifiable, but only when he wanted to be. He was anything but easy going, creating a competitive tension in every situation.

Petty is trying to protect NASCAR in some way, deflecting the criticism the sport’s governing body is taking regarding their handling of the whole Earnhardt situation. It’s very weird though because it’s completely out of character for Richard. Every time I’ve talked to him, even in private, he’s never been anything but gracious and complimentary.

What happened? It almost seems as if somebody else wrote his comments. The words, the grammar, even the way the sentences are put together seem very un-Petty like.

They’re in a word, petty.

Richard hasn’t denied the comments, so I guess he stands by them.

There are pretty much four things you can walk into any bar in America, especially in the South and get a fight started by commenting on them. You don’t say bad things about a man’s mother, his religion, Elvis, or Dale Earnhardt. Maybe Richard was just looking for a fight.

For me, and awful lot of people I know, I’m holding onto Dale’s memory. I’m gauging other drivers against him. Their ability, their will to win, their kindness, their passion for being the best. Petty used to be the measuring stick, his 200 wins un-attainable in the regulated world of modern day NASCAR. Earnhardt is now the benchmark. Perhaps Petty and NASCAR don’t like that.

Sorry, they’ll just have to get used to it.

As the two cars he owned flashed past the checkered flag in the 43rd Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt’s life had already ended. Racing inches apart in a pack of cars in turn 4, Earnhardt’s Chevy was touched by Sterling Marlin, dropped down to the bottom of the track then shot up into the outside retaining wall at about 180 mph, hitting it head on.

Had anything else happened, another car touched him on the way up, Kenny Schrader hit him earlier, anything, and Dale Earnhardt might be alive. But Earnhardt’s neck took the brunt of the impact and he died instantly. When Schrader looked into the 3 car in the infield and immediately called for emergency personnel, you knew it was really bad. And when NASCAR officials and others associated with the track were mum about his condition, we feared the worst.

But when the announcement came, just before seven o’clock, there was a real sense of disbelief.

Earnhardt? Dead? Impossible!

He’s the guy who always walks away! He’s the Intimidator! But it is true and perhaps NASCAR’s greatest driver and certainly their biggest star is now gone.

The only thing that overshadows his death is his life itself. His career is nearly unmatched. Seven Winston Cup titles, 76 NASCAR victories, 34 wins at Daytona in all kinds of races, two-time American Driver of the Year. By any measure, his career stats put him among the best ever. But it was his style, his attitude that separated Earnhardt from the field, and fans loved him, or hated him for it.

As he sat in his car prior to this year’s Bud Shootout at Daytona, a reporter asked Earnhardt if he had a strategy for the race. “Get to the front,” he said slyly with a smile. “And then,” the reporter continued. “Stay there,” Earnhardt replied. That was it in a nutshell. Get to the front and stay there. Don’t be content with second if you can be first or even tenth if you can be ninth. Earnhardt brought an attitude to the track that he was going to win. Period. Anything else is less than acceptable. His fans loved it. They knew he’d do just about anything to be the winner, even bend the rules a little bit. If it meant shoving somebody out of the way, or putting them in the wall, he’d do it. Yet, Earnhardt was never accused of being a dirty driver, just aggressive. He was considered one of the safest drivers during his best years in the early ‘90’s. His style polarized the fans. There were those for Earnhardt, and then the A.B.E’s. Anybody But Earnhardt.

People “connected” with Earnhardt. He was a son of the South, and made no excuses for it. He made NASCAR fans proud to be NASCAR fans. You couldn’t go five feet at a race and not see something with the famous “3” on it.

It would be hard to overstate the loss NASCAR has suffered with Earnhardt’s death. The most famous driver, still at the top of his game, gone. Killed on the biggest stage in the sport at the beginning of what NASCAR had hoped to be their biggest year ever. For all the talk about restrictor plates, aerodynamic packages, new sponsors and the new television contract, there is no getting around the risk inherent in the sport. We’re just reminded of that too often.

The safety of the drivers, the safety of the fans and the competitive nature of the racing are NASCAR’s biggest concerns. Finding the right balance between the three is a delicate juggling act. Yes, the Daytona 500 was as competitive as ever, but at what price? Were the drivers involved in the wreck on lap 174 just lucky to walk away? One accident, nineteen cars.

Last year’s three NASCAR deaths and now Earnhardt’s have all been attributed to trauma to the base of the driver’s skull. Would wearing the HANS device, designed to keep the head in place during an accident, have saved those drivers? His voice cracking, the trauma surgeon at Daytona speculated he didn’t think so yesterday at the track.

Dale’s death will make NASCAR take an even closer look at driver safety, especially on the high-speed, super speedways.

When a NASCAR driver is killed, the sport usually takes care of itself. It’s a part of the game, they tell themselves. Because the popularity is so personality driven, the fans take it hard. Drivers spend hours with the sponsors, fans and media to fulfill one of the primary functions of NASCAR itself: promote the product. Even though there are “teams” in NASCAR, the only faces recognizable are the ones behind the wheel. Earnhardt’s was the most recognizable face. He was the face of NASCAR.

As a reporter, I covered Earnhardt’s entire career. From his first appearance in 1979 to his final race at Daytona. I liked Dale. I was even an Earnhardt fan. He could be short with the media, but usually only after a failure in a race that didn’t make sense to him. His approach to the sport appealed to me. He was meticulous in his preparation and interested in one thing: winning. After his victory at Daytona in 1998 I have never seen a competitor that happy. No post-game locker room celebrations at the Super Bowl or the World Series matched the mixture of joy, relief and accomplishment Earnhardt displayed that evening. Like most fans, I checked on Dale’s position at every race. At Daytona I noted who’s leading and: Where’s Dale? He was my favorite driver. And one of my favorite people in all of sports.

And I’ll miss him.