Ghosts of NASCAR

 Was reading yesterday about the latest kerfuffle in NASCAR, so I dialed up YouTube to see what the 3 car did that was so terrible Sunday night in Richmond. And, yeah, sure enough, there was the 3 getting a quarter panel into the car in front of it, punting it sideways and clearing the way for the 3 to take the checkers.

Some dirty drivin', that's for sure. And now I understood why NASCAR announced yesterday it was going to let the driver of the 3 car, Austin Dillon, keep his ill-gotten win, but denied him the automatic entry into the playoffs the W would have ordinarily afforded him.

Sorry, son, the NASCAR honchos seemed to say. You wreck Joey Logano on the last lap, then veer over to door-ding Denny Hamlin, that's not the way we do things here in NASCAR. No playoff spot for you!

Except ...

Except the vid I dialed up of the 3 playin' dirty wasn't from Sunday night. 

And it wasn't from Richmond.

And the man wheeling the 3 wasn't Austin Dillon.

No, the man wheeling the 3 was the man who made it famous, Dale Earnhardt, and the clip was from the Bristol night race in 1999. And it wasn't Joey Logano he rooted out of the groove, it was Terry Labonte.

NASCAR hadn't cooked up its playoff system yet -- it hadn't needed to, because its star hadn't yet begun to fade -- so Earnhardt didn't lose his seat at that table. But he also wasn't penalized in any other way. Shoot, he'd pulled the same stunt on the same Terry Labonte four years before during the night race at Bristol, only this time all he did was send Labonte into the fence and then sideways under the checkers with his front end all wadded up.

Limped into victory lane like a man looking to file an insurance claim. Most NASCAR thing ever back when NASCAR was still NASCAR.

And what is it now?

Well, let's just say it's a whole lot slicker.

It's more corporate, certainly, a consequence of the palmy days. It's richer, a consequence of being more corporate. And these days it's a lot younger demographically, and along with that perhaps more impulsive out there on the racetrack.

Which is to say, the boys have a tendency to play rough at times. Like Sunday night at Richmond.

Thing is, the boys have always had a tendency to play rough, which is what made NASCAR a huge deal to begin with. When you trace your roots to runnin' likker through the hills and pineys of the Deep South, you wind up with a sport that was rougher than a cob back at the start. And it didn't get more genteel until they all had to comb their hair, put on a tie and go begging in boardrooms for money.

That's how we got from Back Then to Right Now. It's how we got from NASCAR saying "That's racin', son" when the Intimidator intimidated, to "That's not how we do things in NASCAR" when his latest successor channels the Intimidator's ghost in that same haunted ride.

"'Haunted ride'?" you're saying now. "Aren't you getting a trifle melodramatic, Mr. Blob?"

Yeah, maybe. But my imagination always has had an alarming tendency to slip the leash. Character flaw, I guess.

 And so I can't help thinking the Intimidator was riding shotgun with Austin Dillon the other night. And I can't help seeing him, when NASCAR brought down the hammer yesterday, snickering away somewhere in the celestial void. 

Eyes bright with mischief. Trademark smirk on his mug. Earnhardt being Earnhardt.