Note: If this seems too long just read the last line in Part.
To all this I say: Keep on cheating! We need a sport where the results
are often completely
unfair. Where regulations are meant to be flouted. Where wussy
rule-followers finish last.
Yes, baseball nostalgists remember Gaylord Perry's Vaseline pitches and
various pine
tar/corked bat incidents. But generally, the George Will in each of us
flares his indignant
nostrils at the very thought of cheating in baseball. And that's as it
should be. You're
right to be outraged when the Indians steal signs from the Red Sox with
a centerfield
camera. And not just because it's those offensive-logo-wearing goons vs.
scrappy, everyday
heroes like my Sox. It's because cheating clashes with baseball's core
values:
sportsmanship, hustle, fair play. Same in football, where they even use
instant replays to
make damn sure everything's fair. Cheating is frowned on in nearly every
sport, and amen to
that.
But cheating fits right in with NASCAR's core values. In a sport where
they're literally
running out of places for sponsor names (no more room on the car or
driver, few naming
rights left to sell); where the major corporate involvement comes from
oil and tobacco;
where Confederate flags dot the grandstands; where burning fuel, leaking
brake fluid, and
littered beer cans and Winston butts congeal in an odious, environmental
dystopia ... In a
sport like this, doesn't playing unfair just seem like the right thing
to do?
Baseball is America as we'd like to be. NASCAR is America as we really
are. In its own way,
it's beautiful. I wouldn't change a thing.
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