Thursday, February 20, 2020

That thousand words thing

Every race fan loves him or her a photo finish. Right?

Well. Here's a photo finish you're not gonna forget anytime soon.

Yes, that's Ryan Newman, walking out of the hospital holding his girls' hands less than 48 hours after one of the more frightening crashes you're every going to see -- a crash that evoked Dale Earnhardt's 19 years a go because, like Earnhardt's, it happened on the last lap of the Daytona 500, and because there was that same certain gravity to the way everyone was either talking about it or not talking about it.

But there he is, walking out of the joint under his own steam after everyone thought he was paralyzed or half-dead or in some other way seriously messed up.

Listen. Sometimes you raise the camera and grab an image that's miraculous because, had you done it a split second sooner or later, the image would not be nearly as iconic. Think Joe Rosenthal and the flag raising on Iwo Jima, or Neil Leifer and Ali sneering triumphantly over a fallen Sonny Liston.

And other times?

Other times you grab an image that's miraculous simply because of what's in it.

Like Ryan Newman, walking away. In sock feet. Clutching the hands of his children.

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