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Friday, April 20
The beat goes on for the racing world
By Ray Melick
Scripps Howard News Service
ATHENS, Ga. -- Odd, but driving east away from Birmingham, heading
down I-20 toward Atlanta and, ultimately, Athens, Ga., I couldn't help
but get the feeling I was heading in the wrong direction, like a
salmon swimming down stream during spawning season or the kid trying
to fight his way up a down escalator.
The traffic was all going the other way. At a truck stop for fuel
and food, the RVs with tags from far-off states were all pointed west.
Inside, accents reflecting voices from the Carolinas, Virginia, and
places further north where you can't get good sweet tea were buying
snacks and drinks and picking through the caps and T-shirts on the
sale racks.
|  | | Fans flocked to Bowling Green, Ky to listen to stories about Dale Earnhardt during Dale Earnhardt Day at the National Corvette Museum. |
The Talladega pilgrimage was in full flow. Even here, in Athens,
for the NCAA gymnastics championships, the conversation of Talladega
came up as gymnasts and coaches talked about seeing NASCAR fans on the
move, heading up the interstates from Florida and down from Carolina.
Only this year, the pilgrimage has taken on that of a memorial to
the late Dale Earnhardt, who died in February during the
season-opening race at Daytona. It seemed like everyone had memorials
to No. 3 somewhere on their vehicles, from window decals to bumper
stickers to antenna flags to hand-painted signs.
The death of Earnhardt has been inescapable this year. There have
been tributes at every track, battles over autopsy pictures, debates
over track safety, arguments over whether the sport will survive the
loss of the man known as "The Intimidator."
One commentator went so far as to make the statement, "I have no
idea how NASCAR will ever rebound from his loss."
Earnhardt's death was ludicrously compared to the deaths of John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Princess Diana, even Elvis. To an
outsider, you'd think stock car racing didn't exist until Earnhardt
got behind the wheel, and might end without him there to glare
menacingly at the world through those dark, wrap-around sunglasses.
But of course it did exist before him, and of course it will go on,
just as the sport went on after the deaths of Davey Allison, Neil
Bonnett, Kyle Petty, and a roll call of late heroes that, in my own
memory, goes back to Fireball Roberts.
It goes on without Bobby Allison behind the wheel, without Cale
Yarbrough, without Richard Petty (arguably the greatest of them all),
without the true legend of southern stock car racing, Junior Johnson.
Baseball went on without Babe Ruth, football without Vince
Lombardi. Basketball survived the retiring of Bill Russell, the end of
the magical era of Magic and Bird, and will undoubtedly, one day, find
someone to fill the void left by Michael Jordan.
That is not to belittle the passing of one of racing's greats, any
more than it is to suggest that because their sport survived, even
thrived, without them, the memory of Ruth, Lombardi, and Russell is in
any way diminished.
These are, after all, just people. Really, what did Earnhardt fans
know about the man other than the fact that he drove fast, he drove
hard, and when he finished a race, his car could be counted on to be
shaded in the colors scraped off the sides of the competition because,
in his own words, "Rubbin' is racin'?"
In 22 full seasons, Earnhardt was never voted the most popular
driver on the circuit. He was respected, even feared and hated. But
there was a time when to be an Earnhardt fan was akin to being for the
Japanese in World War II.
But then, that's racing. Somewhere along the way, Earnhardt made
the transition from the man racing fans loved to hate to become the
man racing fans loved -- and still, they knew nothing more about him
than his ability to do what most of us take for granted every day:
drive a car. Time will pass. Earnhardt will go into the lore of NASCAR
history, to join the other legends that have made the sport what it is
today.
It won't be long before those hundreds of thousands of fans will
flow down the interstates from all over the country, heading toward
Talladega, sporting the colors and numbers of their newest favorite
driver, of the latest track hero.
And one day, one of the new heroes will be driving a No. 3 car and
there will be those who won't make the connection, who will hear the
name Dale Earnhardt and ask "Who?"
But the fact that the fans will continue to come, and cars will
continue to race, and new drivers will continue to be cheered and
jeered, is the ultimate tribute to Earnhardt, and all those drivers
who have come and gone before.
Ray Melick writes for the Birmingham Post-Herald in Alabama.  Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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