June 8, 2001

Richard Petty says that “NASCAR needs to get on with life after Dale Earnhardt, but the media won’t let the story go.” He further says, “I hate to say it in a hard-hearted way, but the sun keeps coming up and the sun keeps going down.....NASCAR has not been diminished by Earnhardt’s absence.”

The last thing I want to do is criticize someone for the way he mourns. If Richard wants the media to move on and stop bugging him about Adam, and how he’s dealing with his grandson’s death, that’s one thing. This, however, is quite another.

NASCAR hasn’t been diminished? How can anyone make that statement without glimpsing into some sort of parallel universe to know what it is that we’ve missed out on? Who survived the Spring race at Bristol this year that otherwise might not have?

What spectacular finish did we miss?

If Dale had died six years earlier, we never would have seen Terry Labonte’s smoking car pull into victory lane after crashing across the finish line. The phrase “rattled cage” would be meaningless to us. If his life had been a mere three years (and three hours) shorter, we wouldn’t have witnessed the depth of fellowship and respect that an entire sport can have for one man’s realization of his dream.

NASCAR has likely lost the only man that will ever challenge Richard’s throne. That’s not diminished? We’ve also lost what would likely have been the longest streak of continuous starts when Dale broke Terry’s record. We’ve lost the only professional athlete (because we all know that golfing isn’t a real sport) over 50 that’s at the top of his game and playing competitively with men half his age.

Certainly much of Richard’s viewpoint must be based upon his revisited feelings at losing his own father and then his grandson, in such a short (and recent) time. Surely each weekly tribute brings old pain back to the surface as millions of fans seem to be participating in what might shape up to be a year-long wake. It’s like the procession passing by the casket at a funeral, only it’s ten million people long, and it stretches from state to state.

Granted, Richard was speaking primarily about the media, and not the fans, but what does the media write about if not what the fans are most thinking about? How can anyone deny that the fans are not yet done mourning, when we can see 150,000 people standing with three fingers in the air week after week? Giant murals and trailers are filled with signatures of fans. Should the media ignore that? Should the ever-evolving story about the belt controversy be ignored?

Perhaps the trip back to Daytona will serve as one final tribute. Perhaps it will last all year. Maybe it will last forever, with each February reminding us all over again what we’ve lost. I wonder how long it might last. People are, after all, still talking about Marilyn Monroe.

When we finally give it up... when we admit that we have lost him, we lose part of our identity, and that is quite a price to pay. Millions of fans the world over have identified themselves as “Earnhardt fans”. Who are they now? What common bond unites them without the foundation on which their unity was born?

Yes, we are still race fans. Some old, some new. Some that remember Dale with a cowboy hat, and some that only knew him after he’d truly taken charge of NASCAR. So many things divide us these days, but in the one man, there was unity. Some cheered, some jeered, but even so, there was a common ground that reached beyond socio-economic classes. The rich and the poor, the North and the South, the young and the old, united every Sunday.

Without Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR most certainly IS diminished.

You can contact Carol at.. Insider Racing News