Who are those guys, really?

By DAVID GREEN

To start with, let me state that I don't know either Carl Edwards or Kyle Busch personally. I got off the Cup Series rollercoaster before either of them arrived. All I know about them is kind of like Tom Cruise's line in "Days of Thunder" revealing what the Cole Trickle character knew about stock car racing: "I've seen them on ESPN." And Fox, and Speed, and TNT, et cetera.

So, for all of us who don't hang out with Carl and Kyle on a semi-regular basis, image is all we have to go on. I have to admit, I'm a little confused by the negative reaction to Carl Edwards' image as a nice guy. For all we know, that's really who he is -- a nice guy.

OK, we know Leo Durocher wouldn't have like that (if you don't get that reference, look it up) and we know why. But why do so many others believe that Edwards' persona is a fake?

Sure, he has faults. One of them is a temper that can be just as volatile as Tony Stewart's. (Leo would have loved Stewart, and would have used him as an example to support the Durocher theory of sports success.)

Remember the Busch Series race at Michigan in 2006 when Edwards came steaming out of the pits after a tangle with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and gave Junior the mechanical equivalent of a sucker punch? Cousin Carl got a $20,000 fine and six-race probation for that one.

Remember last year at Martinsville, when Edwards had problems with his Fenway Roush teammate Matt Kenseth?

As far as I'm concerned, those and other well-publicized incidents merely demonstrate that Edwards is imperfect, not that he's posing as a nice guy and is really, underneath that Nomex and that big grin, an evil person. Until I see concrete evidence to the contrary, I'm not going to accept the "Eddie Haskell" characterization of Edwards.

Conversely, it seems pretty obvious that Kyle Busch's image is that of an arrogant punk, regardless of what he really may be. He makes me think of something my grandmother used to say: "I'd like to buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth."

Kyle may have a nice side to him. He doesn't show it very often, at least not as reported by the media.

The only NASCAR legend I can think of who truly evokes a comparison with Busch is Darrell Waltrip. Over the years, the driver Cale Yarborough nicknamed "Jaws" mellowed a good bit. I'm not sure that DW's present-day image of down-home country boy is completely genuine, but he's come a long way.

As for Edwards and his supposed "image" of good guy, I recall another driver who had a big, 32-tooth smile and an "aw shucks" attitude most of the time. I've spent a few hours around him, and as far as I can tell, that's no image. It's who he really is.

In his time, he was more likely to be compared to Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry than to Eddie Haskell. He had his flaws, too, and his share of run-ins on and off the track with other drivers (one of them a civilian who was driving too slowly in the left lane of Interstate 85 one evening and got bump-drafted for his sin).

I wonder what today's hard-bitten fans would think of a contemporary Richard Petty. Have things gotten so bad that we don't even want a nice person driving a racecar?

One thing that is clear to anybody who's paying attention -- both Carl and Kyle can flat-out drive.

It's almost as if we don't even care about that too much anymore.