Indy on the half-shell

Almost Indy. I suppose that's what you call this.

Lights-Turned-Low Indy. Stow-The-Sequins-And-Full-Orchestra Indy. Library-Volume Indy, the usual animal roar dialed back to more civilized levels.

Not a lot else to make of the Speedway's announcement that the Indianapolis 500 would play out on the half-shell at the end of May, or however else you characterize 135,000 or so souls. That's how many folks they'll let into the place on Memorial Day weekend, making it the largest sporting event since the pandemic netherworld descended some 14 months ago.

As with everything else in Covid America, we'll see how it goes.

Here's what I know: IMS and the Penske folks who run it wouldn't be rolling out this half-capacity plan if they hadn't well thought it through. And just because they've rolled it out doesn't mean it will happen.

Last summer, remember, they rolled out much the same plan, only to scrub the mission when it became apparent COVID-19 wasn't going to let us up easy. So the race went on in August as re-scheduled, but with nothing but echoes and humid summer breezes filling those towering cliffs of grandstand.

I suspect this time they'll pull it off, with the number of vaccinated Americans steadily climbing and the protocols that will remain in place. To be sure, 135,000 thousand people in one place sounds like a lot, but when the place covers the expanse the Speedway covers, it's not really. You can spread 135,000 bodies pretty thin when you're doing it on a site that sprawls across the Indiana flatlands like the Great Plains.

So, yeah. This year, we'll get Indy back. Or at least enough of it.

Because if you can't prepare a newbie for the sheer vastness of the place on race morning, what you really can't prepare him or her for is the sheer mass of humanity that gathers there as the place stirs to life. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the sporting universe; the mutter of all those thousands of voices carrying on thousands of conversations at once washes over you like the soft growl of thunder miles off, or maybe surf breaking on some distant strand. And when those 33 drivers fire the engines and come screaming down to the green in their rows of three ...

Well. The roar that goes up is what makes the start of the Indianapolis 500 one of the two or three most belly-quivering moments in sports.

Once upon a long ago day, those of us who'd covered a 500 or ten used to go down inside turn one for the start, on the strip of grass between the infield crowd and the mammoth cabled catch fence separating us from the track. The veterans knew that's where you went to get the most visceral feel for the start, all those rocket ships flying down into the corner in multi-hued flashes.

They were white and blue and green and red and orange and yellow, those flashes, there one second and gone the next. The sound of their passing was a sort of schoop-schoop-schoop-schoop-schoop -- the sound displaced air makes, because they were outrunning even the scream of their engines. And  we knew they were coming before we saw them, because that unearthly roar came tumbling through the grandstand ahead of them.

All of that was missing last August, and the 500 wasn't quite the 500 as a result. It won't completely be back at the end of May, either, if it happens. But you know what?

If it does happen, this will be one of those times when we'll look at half-full and not also see half-empty. And that will be way more than half-glorious.