By GARY SHELTON
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 20, 2001
Could someone explain this to me? One more time, because I seem to be struggling.
A man is dead. A wife has lost a husband. Children have lost a father. And how can anything in the name of sport be worth such a price?
I do not understand. Have patience with me.
Toast the way Dale Earnhardt lived, and I will join you. Mourn the way he died, and I will do that, too. Tell me stories into the night about what rare breeds race car drivers are, about the way speed becomes an addiction, about the way they have chosen to spend their lives defying death, and I will listen.
Then I will ask you again.
Explain it to me again. Please.
What makes men strap themselves into missiles and launch themselves around bloodstained tracks? Why when their bodies have been broken do they ask first how long it will be until they can get behind the wheel again? What allows them to accept, and ignore, the losses of their friends and loved ones? What keeps them from banning their children from the path their footsteps have made?
Does anyone know? In the wake of Earnhardt's death, does anyone understand?
This is what happens. When a legend becomes a victim, the rest of us are left with questions. This was not some rube from the sticks with more horsepower than horse sense. This was not a kid claimed by an unforgiving sport because something was lacking. This was Earnhardt. How are his survivors to rationalize a loss such as this? How are his fans to make sense of it? And most important: How quickly, and how strongly, does NASCAR react?
This is NASCAR's most important hour. If the sport is to thrive, if it is to be worthy of survival in the face of rededicated critics, the answers will come in how it deals with its fourth death in 10 months, with perhaps its greatest tragedy ever.
As an organization, as a sport, NASCAR must see Earnhardt's death as a call for an additional emphasis on driver safety. Now.
NASCAR should be fast, and it should be firm. It should seek softer walls and harder rules. Now. Let the veterans grouse all they want; new safety guidelines should not be optional. This is a matter of life or death. Does anyone doubt that anymore?
Explain it to me. Slowly, if you don't mind. What in the world is NASCAR waiting for?
Let's agree on one thing. The suggestion that his name be used in the name of safety would have driven Earnhardt batty. He not only hated the HANS (the Head and Neck Support system), he didn't even wear a fully enclosed helmet. He detested restrictor plates. Like many veterans, Earnhardt was half test pilot and half tightrope walker. Once others would start with talk of safety equipment, he would grump and roll his eyes, as if you had suggested he fill his car with Styrofoam noodles and encase it in bubble wrap. What's next? A speed limit sign?
That's the way drivers are. They don't slow down for their own failure or for their own success. Heck, if safety is such a priority in your life, why would you climb into a car to begin with?
But people are dying, and it does not seem like overstatement to suggest the life of a sport hangs in the balance. Four drivers have died in 10 months, all from head injuries, and experts agree the HANS would have saved at least some of them. So why do the drivers get an option? Remember, there were football players who resisted face masks, and baseball players who resisted batting helmets, and even hockey goalies who hated masks. So does it surprise anyone that drivers would resist rules that might slow them down?
While you are at it, explain this to me.
How many deaths are acceptable? How many times are we willing to grieve over another death, then rationalize it by shrugging and saying, "That's racing."
There are those who love NASCAR so much they would defend it at all costs. And so their reaction is to find something noble, something fitting, in the way Earnhardt died a half-mile from the finish line at Daytona. Perhaps they are right. To me, however, it seems to trivialize the human loss, and the tears shed over it.
I know what you are saying. This is auto racing, and it is dangerous, and nothing is ever going to change that. Take away all the risks from auto racing and all that remains is, well, traffic. But whatever danger the sport can remove, it should. Whatever fraction of a percentage it can add to a driver's survival, it must.
When the flowers are gone, when the ceremony is finished, that seems to be the proper way to remember Dale Earnhardt.
If you can think of a better one, explain that to me, too.