As I’m sitting here waiting for the Pepsi 400 to start (rain delay) I was reminded of this book review from the NY Times a couple weeks back:
''Sunday Money'' is, for my money, the first (and maybe only) book that nonfans or casual fans or just the mildly curious should crack in order to understand the ''noise and speed and glory and death'' that is Nascar. (Staten Islanders, take note.) In 2002, inspired by the outpouring of grief that greeted the death of Dale Earnhardt Sr. at Daytona one year earlier, MacGregor, a writer for Sports Illustrated, and his wife, the photographer Olya Evanitsky, bought a motor home and drove 47,649 miles in search of Nascar's grease-stained soul. They followed the 36-week racing circuit from Daytona to Bristol to Talladega to Indianapolis to Phoenix and to every paved oval in between, exploring the raucous infields and hivelike garages while sizing up the fans, drivers, owners and crewmen alike. MacGregor is neither fan nor antifan -- he views Nascar through the semi-jaundiced, media-savvy lens of a New York writer, though without undue snark -- but he's never dispassionate about what he calls, unequivocally, America's new national pastime. As for that other national pastime, the one with gloves and bats and balls? That one, he writes, has ''crawled up under the house to die.''Baseball? Is that 19th century game still around? Huh.
1 comment:
A guy with a NASCAR book to sell calls NASCAR the new national pastime, and you bite. Shrewd!
Poor, poor, dying baseball and its rising 2005 attendance (ticket-buyers apparently want to catch one last look, while they still can). You might have noticed the reaction to the wheezing relic's championship team last year. You won't get that coast-to-coast response to any racing championship or event, not ever, not even if the ghost of Earnhardt manifests himself, wins Indy while driving the Flying Dutchman (#3), kicks a goal, and strips down to his sports bra to celebrate.
As a Massachusetts native, you tell me. Which team inspires more devotion, discussion, and attention: the Red Sox, or the Patriots?
The recent Congressional steroid hearings subpoenaed all the major sports. Did you hear about anything other than baseball? Why would the public care about Mark McGwire so much, while simultaneously not giving the slightest crap whether or not NFL statistics were "clean"? Gosh, and I thought weekly gambling.... excuse me, "football," was supposed to be the #1 sport in America's heart.
What, I wonder, compels you to repeat the same false charge every 6-12 months that baseball is again on its last legs? Were you molested by the San Diego Chicken? No matter; you keep floating this necrofantasy of yours, and I'll keep knocking it down. Here's the latest set of contrary facts, in what seems destined to be a never-ending series shipped your way:
Spurs 7-game nailbiter: 8.2 avg. rating, 15 share
Red Sox 4-game sweep: 15.8 avg. rating, 25 share
NBA Game 7: 11.9 rating, 22 share
MLB Game 4: 18.2 rating, 28 share
And congratulations to the 2004-05 NBA champions, the Something Something Whoevers. You might remember the National Basketball Association. As you happily noted at the time, they were the unstoppable sports league that buried baseball in the 1990s.
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