Shelmerdine or bust!

I'm having a hard time getting revved up for the upcoming NASCAR season; in fact, I don't see myself watching much of anything besides today's Daytona 500, the other plate races, and the Bristol and Richmond races. With Ricky Rudd's quasi-retirement and Dale Jarrett's recent mediocrity (which, incidentally, coincided with my selection of him as "my driver"), there are now fewer and fewer reasons for me to watch what was for awhile my favorite sport. The "Young Gun" (blech) I enjoy watching the most is Carl Edwards, but the sport has become so white-bread, sanitized and boring that it's no longer appointment television for me. The Good Ol' Boys ain't anymore, and they've been supplanted by media-friendly pretty-boy types who typically couldn't carry Richard Petty's helmet. They're like pop music; the edges have been rounded off, and their every word is calculated down to the last by their handlers. It's disgusting.

That being said, the best story of today's Great American Race is undoubtedly that of Kirk Shelmerdine. To come down to Daytona and still make the show in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds - bringing a two-man crew and one car to do battle with teams staffed by dozens, even hundreds of workers and multiple cars - is really what racing is all about. Here's a story about the dream-come-true nature of Shelmerdine's effort this week.

I know he's got a snowball's chance of winning today - I don't know that he's even got the equpiment to run 500 miles - but I'll still be pulling for the #27.

And - as a nice bonus - Scott Riggs missed the race. I don't know what Ray Evernham was thinking when he signed Riggs, who's shown a propensity for driving with his head in his ass. I recall well the Busch Series race a couple of years ago - at Kentucky, I believe - where he ended up sideways in the middle of the track, and in the middle of all of the traffic around him, still gunned the car around and drove off. That forever earned him the title "King of the Shitheads" in my book.