We Race on Sand, but Will Racing Last as Long as the Ocean?
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It’s
hard to look at this computer screen right now, because when I look over the
top of it, I see two large windows looking out to the Atlantic Ocean, and I say
to myself, “Look, you numbskull (there’s a hopelessly dated word), how could
you possibly be staring at a computer screen when you have such an incredible alternative
view – a view that you only get to see once or maybe twice a year?”
Even on a dreary, gray
day, it’s still the ocean, still beautiful
I
have no good defense for doing what I’m doing, except that the view inspired a
thought that I’ve decided to write down:
Going
to the beach has endured in the technology era when many other traditional
recreational pastimes haven’t. It’s timeless. How could racing achieve a
measure of that timelessness, and why hasn’t it?
Yeah,
maybe that’s a really dumb thought. After all, the ocean is God’s creation,
part of the nature of things, and racing is a man-made thing that’s constantly
changing. Talk about apples to oranges.
Still,
racing is human athletic competition, and that’s been going on since Og challenged Grok to see which could throw a rock farther.
Some forms of competition have withstood the test of time, too. Track and field
events – with a tweak here and there – have been going on for thousands of
years; they were established enough that the Greeks created the Olympic Games
nearly 2,800 years ago. Horse racing has existed since about half an hour after
humans first learned to ride, and games involving hitting something with a
stick or throwing it at a target likely go back even farther.
Racing,
on the other hand, grew from a technology that’s less than 150 years old, and
that technology continues to change, creating a challenge for continuity that
running or javelin throwing don’t have.
Maybe
horse racing would be the best comparison. Humans have been riding horses for
about 5,000 years, so sports were bound to crop up around that close
connection. Then came a major change, the automobile, and horses went from
being essential to transportation, agriculture, warfare and lots of other
things to just being part of our leisure lives. The sport of horse racing, I
would argue, survived only because it had become so identified with gambling
(it was an easy sport to place a bet on). Polo became a rare, niche sport, and
jousting disappeared save for exhibitions.
Could
racing’s fate be like one of those?
“Strike
Two” against racing could just be how much nearly everything changes sooner or
later. For every track and field event that still exists, probably several have
disappeared (like pankration, a Greek Olympic boxing-wrestling hybrid – the UFC
of its time), and while football remains very popular (as does rugby), countless
other “move-the-ball” events disappeared. At one point, churches competed
against one another in a mob-like version of football that involved moving a
greased ball across the village toward each other’s church.
Here’s
another depressing thought: racing grew in an era when greenhouse gas pollution
wasn’t the issue it has become, and noise was more tolerated as well. Could
racing become socially unacceptable? Many of the “extinct” sports involved
animals, which never benefitted from the experience. (The sport in which a
sling was used to see who could toss a fox the farthest isn’t even the worst of
the ones I read about.) That kind of thing just isn’t allowed, anymore.
If
all of this makes the current NASCAR situation seem like the least of our
problems – to whatever extent you think it is a problem – that’s kind of my
point. I’ve written often about the death of the car culture but looking at
this broader context makes that seem just the tip of the iceberg.
So
is there any hope?
Well,
for those of us already trudging through geezerdom or
within sight of it, the comfort is that nothing drastic is likely to happen
until we’re having a heavenly cold one with an idol of our youth and asking
about that Saturday night he went from fifth to first in the last two laps.
For
younger fans, though, things will have to change, and our role will be to
accept or accommodate those changes in the interest of the long view.
Specifically:
internal combustion engines likely have to go, along with the noise they
create. Some of the action might even have to become “virtual.”
That’s
not comforting to me, but if somebody can create vehicular racing that meets
the needs and the norms of generations to come, then at least there might be a
future for the sport . . . and what those who are no longer around think of it
won’t matter.
Baseball
doesn’t have an exceptionally long history, but it’s been played in a form we’d
recognize for at least 150 years. That doesn’t mean that a fan from 1870 would
attend a 2020 game and come away raving about it, though. That fan likely would
bemoan the ball having gotten smaller and the pitcher no longer pitching
underhand, or a batter no longer being called “out” if a fielder catches the
batted ball on one hop . . . and the fan of the old days likely would go
ballistic over players wearing gloves.
But
the game survives and seems to be thriving. I hope the same set of
circumstances can be developed for racing to keep it going another century or
more . . . even if it never catches up with the ocean and beach.
Frank’s
Loose Lug Nuts
Writer
and Eastern Museum of Motor Racing Librarian Stephen Bubb
wrote recently in Area Auto Racing News of talking with a racing writer who
bemoaned the distance that has grown between drivers and media over the years.
“Back in the day,” the writer said, those covering the race had to run down
drivers individually to get quotes about the event, or possibly sit in on press
conferences.
Today,
those media members seldom see the drivers and get quotes printed out by a
team’s public relations representative.
At
one point, the number of people covering races all but necessitated this
practice, but today it just makes the drivers seem as canned as their quotes,
and I still maintain that loss of personality has really hurt the sport.
Back
in the day, we knew which drivers were funny, which were temperamental, which
were shy, which struggled with the King’s English, and so on. Today they’re all
just smiling faces.
Does
that make you want to see them race?