There's irony in the death of gods. We lost one of them Sunday.
I just wonder if Dale Earnhardt knew his time had come. I wonder if he knew his burial ground would be Daytona International Speedway, about the only entity that had been able to intimidate The Intimidator in his racing career, or his life.
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| Ultra-competitive Dale Earnhardt dies protecting his team, not his own lead.(AP) | |
Make no mistake: Richard Petty might have been The King, but Earnhardt was a god. He was born to be a race car driver. He ruled Winston Cup with an iron fist over four decades and was a fearless, relentless competitor. He just knew he couldn't be beaten; wouldn't even get so much as a scratch while whipping them boys' tails.
And we knew it, too.
Loved him for it or hated him for it. No compromise. You know all the nicknames, heard all the stories. Bottom line: He was a tough son of a bitch who'd just as soon put a driver into the wall than tinker around with trying to get around him.
How many times had we heard him say it? "That's racing."
You figure that's how he would characterize his own accident Sunday? How many nudges, or near nudges, had he given like the one Sterling Marlin gave him on the fateful last lap? A few hundred? A thousand?
But Dale Earnhardt took it protecting something, and it wasn't the lead. It wasn't his third-place position.
He was protecting Michael Waltrip and his son, Dale.
Earnhardt had raced Sunday like a kid with a new toy; the new aerodynamic and restrictor plate rules gave him a car on a superspeedway that let him do things he hadn't been able to do in a long time. Up in the front of the pack all race long, darting down to the apron time and time again to slingshot his way past a pack.
Vintage Earnhardt. Until ...
I wonder when it hit him. I wonder when he realized what this race was about. Waltrip hadn't won a Winston Cup race in 462 starts. Now the first-year driver on Earnhardt's team had emerged in front, and behind him was Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr.
Earnhardt became the shepherd.
This guy would have run his mama into the wall on Mother's Day if it meant getting a victory -- especially at Daytona, where Earnhardt had just one 500 victory in a career of 34 at the track. And that just coming in 1998.
On this day Earnhardt instead turned into a moving pick at 185-plus mph; a father watching over his son's second-place standing, an owner protecting his driver and longtime peer who had seen victory elude him in every possible way.
It was a "get-out-of-my-way" that Earnhardt authored and perfected. It came too late for anyone to snatch another victory away from Waltrip. The hunt for his sheep was over, but the chilling image of Waltrip making that last turn on his way to victory just as The Shepherd met the wall head-on. ...
Did you see the TV shot of Earnhardt in his car as the national anthem was being sung? His head back, resting with his eyes closed, clear goggles instead of his patented "Man in Black" ones that gave you the impression he was a pissed-off pilot about to take off on a bombing mission.
Do you think he knew what awaited him on the day of his transformation, the last lap of the Daytona 500, the great American race with millions watching?
It was ending with irony befitting a god.