View NASCAR is not like Stick and Ball sports
NASCAR is NOT like “Stick and Ball” Sports…Thank Goodness!
“A Little Leary”
By Gregg Leary
I know I’ll never drive a golf ball like Tiger Woods or drive a baseball like Barry Bonds or drive the lane like Michael Jordan…but I can DRIVE a car.
I drive a car TO work. Dale Earnhardt Junior drives a car AT work.
I don’t look like an NFL running back…or an NBA center.
I know Mike Tyson would kill me if I got into the ring with him.
But even if I get out of breath waddling to the refrigerator for a beverage during a debris caution…
In my Walter Mitty fantasy I can visualize myself as a race car driver.
I’ve loved cars and racing for as long as I can remember. I got die cast cars in my Christmas stockings and in my plastic Easter eggs.
My grandma took me to local dirt tracks when I was just a kid.
I can still feel the thrill. I was the “weird one” in my family. I didn’t do well in traditional sports. I “rode pine” in basketball and was a “designated out” in baseball. I was the only one who liked racing better than the traditional sports.
Racing IS an amazing sport. Most stick and ball sports like baseball, basketball and football only require ONE ball. Racing, in most cases, requires TWO. As the T-Shirt says…”Racing…No Strikes…All Balls.”
Stick and ball sports only have TWO teams on the field at one time. NASCAR has 43 TEAMS on the same field at the same time. That would be more than the whole LEAGUE in the NBA, NFL, or MLB on the field at once.
Every race is like an All Star Game. The top athletes in racing compete against each other at EVERY event…not just once a year like in the stick and ball All Star Games.
In racing every RACE counts. There are only 36 so each one matters. In Baseball there are 162 games and in the NBA 82…plus the playoffs…so losing a few is no big deal. In stick and ball sports there is ONE winner and ONE loser in every event. In racing there is ONE winner and 42 LOSERS each race.
Racing has the longest season of any major sport…from February through November. With off-season testing it becomes almost year round. No time for “spring training” or “training camp” to get ready for the season. NASCAR’s “Super Bowl,” The Daytona 500 is the FIRST event on the schedule…so you’d better bring your “A” Game at the very start of the season.
Many sports talk about a “level playing field.” NASCAR doesn’t want a “level playing field” in most cases. True, the road courses at Watkins Glen and Infineon are level but the rest of the tracks are ELEVATED…from 6 degrees at Pocono…through 9 degrees at Indy…all the way to 33 degrees at Talladega. Years ago, NASCAR raced at Oakland Stadium that had 60 degrees of banking! So much for “leveling the playing field.”
How about the dimensions of the playing fields? In football and basketball the fields and courts have to be uniform in size. Baseball fields have the same infield dimensions but the outfield fences can vary. In NASCAR the racetracks vary from just over a half mile at Martinsville and Bristol to 2.66 miles at Talladega.
That would be like baseball fields with outfield fences ranging from 200’ to over 1000’. Babe Ruth could hit a pop up homer over the 200 footer but couldn’t reach the 1000 foot fence with help from GALLONS of steroids! Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson fired fastballs at over 100MPH and terrified many batters. NASCAR drivers go twice that fast!
NASCAR driver “Fireball” Roberts got his nickname from throwing fastballs but he DROVE much faster than he pitched.
Football fields would range from 50 yards to 266 yards. Walter Payton might not have been called “Sweetness” if he had to run almost 800 feet from end zone to end zone. Payton’s career rushing total of 16,726 yards is 9 1/2 miles…less than 4 LAPS at Daytona. Bill Elliott’s 212+ MPH qualifying lap at Talladega…was over a football field per SECOND. Maybe that’s why Walter Payton raced cars after he retired from football.
Basketball hoops would range in height from 5’ to 26.6’…try dunking on that LeBron James!
Racing has often been called a Chess game at 200MPH. The pit strategy and calculated moves on the track help the analogy, but I think it’s more like Checkers…as Richard Petty would say, “King Me!”
NASCAR racing is NOT like other sports…thank goodness!