Dear Editor:
I wore black on Monday, both as a tribute and as a sign of mourning.
Although, I only expect sports fans to understand the import of this fact, and only stock-car-racing fans to fully grasp its impact.
On Sunday, at the Super Bowl of stock-car racing, the Daytona 500, we NASCAR fans received a reminder of the grimmest sort that even legends aren’t immortal.
On the last turn of the last lap of the biggest race in NASCAR, possibly the greatest stock-car driver ever lost his life.
I’m writing about Dale Earnhardt, of course, whose black-and-silver paint scheme has become synonymous with hard-core, hard-edged, damn-the-torpedoes racing.
To put this into perspective for those who may not be familiar with the sport, it has been compared to what might have been if Michael Jordan died on the basketball court during Game 7 of the NBA Finals – a great loss of one of the most recognizable figures of a sport just now beginning to break into public consciousness.
Some say the sport may never recover from the loss of such a great symbol. I disagree, but the sport will never be the same either.
For as long as I, and most young NASCAR fans, can remember, the number 3 has been a constant. Win or lose, love it or hate it, the slick-black paint scheme was always there – a presence that earned the nickname “The Intimidator.”
I’ve been an Earnhardt fan since I was in the third grade, which was when I first became aware of the sport. To lose such a great figure isn’t cataclysmic, but it changes everything in and around the sport.
To be sure, stock-car racing has other living legends – Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon and Darrell Waltrip – but none of these have captured the image of NASCAR in the `80s and through the `90s as well as Dale Earnhardt, and they have not died in such a prominent manner.
Where does the sport go from here? I couldn’t say. I’m not clairvoyant. I suspect, though, that new legends will appear. The sport will carry on, as things tend to do.
But for myself, and for a great number of other fans, there will always be a hole in NASCAR’s roster.
Some may wonder why this loss seems so dramatic. So someone I never met died. So what? It happens everyday, right?
That is a well-taken point, but ask any sports fan: there is a camaraderie that exists between sports figures and their fans, and among the fans themselves.
I’ve seen 150,000 people all go dead silent for the space of several seconds, and I’ve felt that tension myself.
We all know the image of a stadium going quiet – eerily quiet – as a game-winning field goal is kicked. There is an emotional attachment there. I would even go so far as to say that NASCAR’s figures tend to draw a higher level of attachment.
Earlier, I used someone else’s example of Michael Jordan. It may go further that that, though.
Even if Jordan had died on the court, the Chicago Bulls would have gone on. With Earnhardt gone, the only person who could ever drive his car would be his namesake son.
However, I wouldn’t want that to happen. I’ve always been afraid that people would expect Earnhardt Jr. to be his father. Now that his father is gone, that feeling probably will heighten. He has to be his own man, though.
Yet, don’t think for a moment that his father wouldn’t want him to continue racing. The elder Earnhardt (don’t call him “Senior” … he hated that) was nothing if not competitive.
Some now say that the elder Earnhardt was protecting (by holding traffic) his son and Michael Waltrip (who was driving a car Earnhardt owned) when he was in the collision that took his life. This may be true.
But I would say, instead, (and I think most Earnhardt fans would expect) that Earnhardt, given a chance, would have raced them, too.
He was just holding position, and hoping for a hole.
It’s easy to be sad. I have followed the career, and the man, for a long time. I cheered from home as he won his first Daytona 500 three years ago.
And I’m assured enough of my manhood to admit that I cried after I’d heard that the wreck at the most recent Daytona 500 took the life of the legend I’d grown to revere.
He wanted to be remembered, first and foremost, as a family man who relished and lived out his boyhood dream.
But, let this be the swan song of a champion: he died doing what he loved, what ran in his veins. How many of us will get to say that?
Ronald Carico

Author