And now, real racing

Today I will go someplace where they have TVs and beer and food that isn't good for me, and ask the bartender to tune in NBC Sports. The IndyCar season kicks off this afternoon down in St. Petersburg, and I don't care if I'm the only one in the joint watching. Their loss, if you ask me.

Of course, you won't. Of course, you're saying "You will be the only one watching, because nobody cares about IndyCar but you."

I acknowledge this. I acknowledge that the only time most people in America think about IndyCar is in May, when what is still the largest single-day sporting event in the world, the Indianapolis 500, goes off on Memorial Day weekend. The rest of the summer, it's pretty much radio silence from most of America.

I don't care. It's the best racing series we have in this country. And I'll still watch it.

The Blob has endlessly and repeatedly dissected why IndyCar has largely vanished off the American sporting map, and so we won't rehash it all here. Suffice it to say some of the vanishing has occurred because sports and entertainment options on TV are practically infinite now in the age of live streaming, and some of it has occurred because IndyCar has been remarkably inept at marketing its product.

That's a shame, because there are engaging personalities and astounding talents out there to market, and IndyCar has barely scratched the surface in marketing them. You saw Helio Castroneves and James Hinchcliffe on "Dancing With the Stars," and that was about the extent of the reach-out to the general viewing public in America. And yet there are Josef Newgarden and Graham Rahal and Simon Pagenaud and Tony Kanaan and Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi and any number of others, and an exciting and engaging new crop of young drivers just now emerging.

One of them, Robert Wickens, was going to be a mega-star until that horrific crash at Pocono last August left him with a severe spinal cord injury. He's at St. Pete today, in a wheelchair. He's made remarkable progress, and he says he won't quit until he's back in the car, but the jury is still deeply out on when or if that will happen. In the meantime, IndyCar is without one more bright light.

And yet, I will still watch. I grew up watching it, grew up going to the Speedway as a kid back in the 1960s and '70s, the golden age of open-wheel racing in America. There's simply nothing like watching a couple of guys running inches apart at 220 mph for lap after lap without running into each other the way they all seem to (much more slowly) in NASCAR. So I'm hooked for life.

Drop the green. Let's do this.