Martin back to full-time? Why not?

By DAVID GREEN

The notion of Mark Martin coming back to full-time Cup racing status has been a topic of considerable discussion lately, with most of the speculation I've heard and read putting Mark in a Hendrick Motorsports car (the No. 5 soon to be vacated by Casey Mears).

There seems to be a lot of animosity on the part of some toward the idea of Martin coming out of semi-retirement. I'm not sure I can figure that out, but everyone has the right to his or her opinion.

I think there's little question that Mark is at the very top of the list of NASCAR's greatest drivers never to win the Grand National/Cup championship title. He's in very, very elite company, make no mistake, alongside greats such as Curtis Turner, Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson, Fred Lorenzen, Davey Allison, Harry Gant, Tim Richmond and Lee Roy Yarbrough.

But all things considered, I rank Martin the best non-champ.

I can almost see him grimacing at the words. Mark has always maintained that he did not need a championship trophy to validate himself as a racer or as a successful person, and I take him at his word. But so much of what professional athletes do is molded by the perception of their fans, it's impossible to ignore the fact that some of the best drivers in the sport never managed to win the title.

The fact that he has come so close so many times (second to Earnhardt in 1990 and '94, second to Gordon in '98, second to Stewart in 2002; third four times, fourth three times, fifth once) is proof that he's worthy. It isn't a matter of being lucky to get close, it's a matter of being unlucky to never close the deal.

If he does go full-time again -- and I hope he does, if that's what he wants to do -- it will be a sort of third time around for Martin, who broke into NASCAR as a youngster back in the early 1980s, but ran afoul of professional and personal problems that set him back and sent him down from the major leagues.

He was down, but not out. And when he returned to NASCAR with Jack Roush in 1988, he was ready to take his place among stock car racing's best. And he was a more content, more self-satisfied person, to boot -- not so much because of racing success, but in a happy coincidence kind of way.

I've enjoyed watching his career, and there are few drivers I've watched for whom I have more respect. Mark is a gentleman and a racer, and that's not an easy pair of attributes to blend.

As for those who reject or resent the idea of him coming back, as I said, to each his own. I can't understand the negativity, but maybe the critics have never had a change of heart or mind about anything. So I won't debate the matter, other than to say I'm looking forward to it -- and to leaving the debate about best non-champ driver to fans of those other guys I listed.