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Leave them wanting more?

By DAVID GREEN

I've searched and searched, but cannot find any reference to the origin of the show business axiom "always leave them wanting more." I believe it comes from Vaudeville days.

Whatever its origin, it certainly represents an anachronism nowadays. I wonder, really, how many people who may read this have, in fact, heard it (or, for that matter, know what "Vaudeville" is). About the only application of the concept of "restraint" that is used in contemporary society is that people restrain themselves from being restrained. Sports is a particularly apropos example.

The latest example: National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell wants to expand the NFL regular-season schedule from 16 to as many as 18 games. There is no possible motivation other than to exploit the opportunity to make more money. The plan is to get rid of some exhibition games, which generate less revenue, and replace them with "real" games.

In auto racing, Formula One -- which in recent years has added venues in Malaysia, China and the Middle East -- is wrestling with overtures from new-money (not only new, but very large money) folks in such diverse locations as Russia and India. The schedule, which had stabilized in the 1990s at about 16 races per year, is pushing 20 now. Some historic tracks have been dropped, and more are likely to get the axe.

And then there's the current NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule which keeps teams on the track 38 times over a 41-week span.

Sports, and racing in particular, are about excess -- about stretching one's limits, expanding one's capabilities, measuring those things in competition. These activities have become popular, in cultures from the ancient Greeks to modern times, because this competition can be highly entertaining and enjoyable.

So maybe there's a disconnect between sports and the notion of "always leave them wanting more." Maybe there's a chronological disconnect, as even show business no longer seems to subscribe to that policy (if, in fact, it ever truly did).

Then again, maybe lack of restraint explains the doldrums NASCAR was beginning to experience even before the slide toward our present economic condition began. And it might represent a red flag (or at least a cautionary yellow one) for F1 and the NFL.

Sure, NASCAR and F1 can schedule more races. Sure, track owners can build more grandstands and new owners can build more tracks. Sure, the NFL can schedule more games.

The question is, should they?

Nobody perceives the NFL or F1 to be in any "slump" the way NASCAR appears to be. Which begs the question -- does that mean "yes, add more games," or does it mean "no, don't mess with something that's clearly not broken"?

A once-popular country song affirmed that, according to the singer, "I ain't never had too much fun." At the opposite extreme, some say the universe itself is finite. So is there such a thing as "too much"?

As regards human existence, my own philosophy is that yes, there is. More is not always (perhaps not even often) better. In support of my attitude, I offer the seven deadly sins -- the second of which is gluttony. I don't believe that applies solely to the intake into the body of food.

Quite often, things that happen quickly -- rash decisions, automobile accidents, 24-hour engagements -- are bad. As technology expands, it also mandates a faster pace of life. The logical extrapolation is that we're going to make more bad decisions.

But they won't always be based on the pace of life. They will be based on other sins -- greed, envy, pride.

"Leave them wanting more"?

Nowadays, about the only thing I want "more" of is peace and quiet and serenity.

Popularity contest

By DAVID GREEN

I'll be rooting for Mark Martin today. No offense to the other drivers, but I hope Mark wins today.

Why? Well, for one thing, he's one of the older guys and I admit a little partiality toward the greybeards. For another, in my own experience, he's a very nice guy. As much as anybody I've ever interviewed, he gives you his attention and provides thoughtful answers instead of cliches. As important as either of those traits, he's a straight-up, fair racecar driver. He's as clean as they come. In every respect besides Cup championships, he's proved Leo Durocher wrong. Nice guys can be winners.

I'd like to pose a question to anybody who might be reading this on race morning -- not just who are you rooting for, but why? What is it that attracts you to this driver?

The late Alan Kulwicki once pondered that it might be something as frivolous or whimsical as the car number or the color of paint, or a chance encounter at an autograph session, or any number of things that make a fan pick out a favorite driver. Sometimes it's a connection with a locale or a region -- many people in western Kentucky are St. Louis Cardinals fans, while in the rest of the state, they're more likely to root for the Cincinnati Reds.

Sometimes it's just because of a driver's iconic status. It always seemed a little un-American to root against Richard Petty; even if you were a David Pearson fan, the two of them set such a great example of sportsmanship that, if Pearson had to lose, you would rather it be to Petty than just about anybody else.

My favorites are easy enough to explain:

Pearson and car owners Bud Moore and Cotton Owens, because they were all from Spartanburg, S.C., my dad's hometown and my home for 17 years.

Bobby, Donnie and later Davey Allison, because Donnie won the first stock car race I ever saw in person.

Mark Martin, for reasons already addressed.

There are many more. I tend to root "for" as opposed to "against" (with a few exceptions). I'm not one who would belong to one of those "Anybody But (fill lin the blank)" groups.

My feelings can be altered; regarding the favorites I already mentioned, my first impressions of all seven were confirmed when I got the chance to meet and talk to them. On occasion, though, some characters slipped a notch or two in my estimation for one reason or another.

In one instance, a driver went from favorite to non-favorite and back to favorite again. I took an interest in the young (about my age, actually) Dale Earnhardt when he came on the scene because I remembered his dad, then found myself alienated in the late 1980s when it seemed to me that he carried "ruthless" and "aggressive" too deeply into "dirty" territory, then warmed up to him again later in his career when he seemed to polish his act.

There aren't too many lingering connections between my generation of drivers and the present crop, so I tend to pay close attention to the Martins, the Labontes, the Elliotts nowadays. I can relate to Jeff Gordon because I watched with such interest and admiration his rivalry with the great Earnhardt.

In fact, if Mark Martin doesn't win today, I'll be rooting for Gordon to break his long winless streak.

Victories paramount in F1

By DAVID GREEN

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Everybody complains about racing championship points systems, but nobody does anything about it. Not until now, anyway.

Starting this season, the Formula One driving championship will be determined by who wins the most races. The global grand prix series will retain its former points formula and will use it to determine second, third and so forth. The usual points system will be used as a tie-breaker, and the constructors title will also retain the old system.

Had the new system been in effect last year, Felipe Massa -- with six victories -- would have been the champion, not Lewis Hamilton, who won five races and secured the title with a last-race, last-lap, last-turn pass that gave him just enough points to beat Massa, the winner of the season-finale Brazilian Grand Prix, by a single marker.

It's a radical departure from racing tradition, which in just about every form has always awarded points and let the championship title shake out. Some systems reward winning more than others, but in virtually every form, it has been not only possible, but quite likely, that the driver who won the most races might not finish first in points.

I think I'm in favor of this idea, but I can't help but have reservations -- for example, regarding last year's duel between Massa and Hamilton. I think traditional systems make more sense when there's a closely contested fight among multiple race winners.

On the other hand, it seems silly when a driver wins an unusually high number of races but does not claim the championship. The best example in modern times, to me, is 1985, when Bill Elliott won 10 times but lost the Winston Cup title to three-time winner Darrell Waltrip.

I think I'd prefer a system that more generously rewards winners -- something along the lines of 100 points to win, 60 points for second, 40 for third, 30 for fourth, 20 for fifth, 15 for sixth, 10 for seventh, 5 for eighth, 4 for every other driver finishing on the lead lap, 3 for drivers finishing one lap down, 2 for drivers finishing two laps down and 1 point for drivers finishing no more than three laps down.

Such a system, I think, would be more dramatic in the event of two or more drivers with a similar number of victories -- and less of a radical departure from tradition.

Of course, I don't run any of these circuses. But I can dream.

In harm's way

By DAVID GREEN

Everybody knows poor Jimmy Watts by now. Most of us probably agree that chasing that errant tire out into the infield grass between Atlanta Motor Speedway's pit road and front straightaway was a bad idea.

Some of us are old enough to remember when pit road was part of the front straightaway at major speedways such as Indianapolis and Darlington. We also remember the crowd of photographers, journalists and others who crowded into the grassy area inside Daytona's trioval at the start of the inaugural Daytona 500.

Those old days were plenty dangerous. It's a wonder we never had a major catastrophe before they started clearing that trioval area, and there were more than a few tragedies on curbside pit roads, including a triple fatality at Darlington in 1960.

I offer no advice to NASCAR on how it is handling the matter of Watts' status as a pit crew member. However, I think they might have handled the incident a little differently as it affected the race.

It's part of the game if one car or a handful of cars benefit or become victims of a serendipitous caution flag that waves for a competition incident. That's racin'.

However, when there's an artificial cause for the yellow -- such as Watts' ill-advised decision -- I think the impact on the race should be mitigated.

Freeze the running order; let cars that were going to pit in the next few laps go ahead and do so. Give back the lap lost by drivers who pitted under green just before the incident. Restart the race with the cars that were in contention lined up in similar positions to where they were before the sequence of events during which the race was interrupted.

Sure, that would require judgments to be made by race officials. They should be capable. I don't usually have many good things to say about basketball officials, but the crew working the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game in the Big 12 tournament Thursday sure got it right when the timekeeper screwed up. They used common sense and declared the game over, after a very brief check of video replays.

For the record, I think Kurt Busch would've won anyway. He had a great car and a great day. This is about making sure that a deserving driver is not unfairly penalized by actions necessitated by something that is outside the bounds of normal racing action. I believe some were victimized at Atlanta.

It's not that big a deal. It happens very infrequently. Besides Watts' bad decision, I can remember only a few incidents -- the time at Pocono when the drunk fan ran across the track in front of the oncoming cars of Kyle Petty and Davey Allison, or the time when, during an ASA event in Anderson, Ind., an idiot roared onto the track in his Corvette just past the halfway mark of a 400-lap race.

I still think it deserves consideration as part of race policy.

'New and improved' is half right

By DAVID GREEN

Every time the NASCAR circuit visits Atlanta or Darlington, visions of the two facilities as they used to be are prominent in my memory. I'll stop short of saying that the remaking of those two classic tracks was monumentally stupid; I'll just say that's my opinion of the projects.

Atlanta isn't a bad racetrack now. It has produced some excellent, competitive events since it was made over in -- what was it, 1996? '97? But neither was it a bad racetrack before then, when it also produced some excellent, competitive events -- on a wonderful 1.5-mile symmetrical oval with long, sweeping turns, perfect transition to and from the banking from the short straightaways and multiple grooves.

Engineers would probably dispute this, but the old Atlanta track seemed to have a bowl shape to its corners -- progressive banking, before that term was in vogue. I don't know. Scientific analysis might have debunked that theory. But the track sure seemed to race that way.

Tracing its roots to 1960, it was one of the core group of superspeedways that, a decade later, joined Darlington. Another of that elite group was Charlotte Motor Speedway, with its unique configuration -- a variation on the trioval shape introduced in 1959 by Daytona, with a flat frontstretch with double-dogleg turns.

Charlotte is no longer Charlotte; it's Lowe's Motor Speedway. It's also no longer unique. It has clones in Texas and Atlanta.

As for Darlington, the original southern superspeedway had a character and flavor that no other NASCAR track -- not even Martinsville -- could match. It's still special to me, just because of the heritage and my own memories of the old days.

But as for the races nowadays, most of the feeling is gone. Ever since the track was flip-flopped, even though the egg-shaped oval itself is largely unchanged, the sensation -- for me, anyway -- is as if it's a completely new track.

Supposedly, the reason for the flop (pun intended) was that there was inadqeuate room between the track and the highway that runs parallel to it on the north side to expand the main grandstand. There's actually more space there than there is between Georgetown Road and the frontstretch of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and that has proved to be no problem at all in Indiana.

In my opinion, Darlington's management missed a chance to build up, as an alternative to sprawling backward, in a multi-tiered grandstand that would have provided a perfect evolutionary stage -- from the open grandstand of the 1950s, to the covered stands that appeared in the '60s and lasted until shortly before the flop, to an Indy-like double-decker.

Imagine what the view would have been like from that upper deck!

If you never visited the tracks in their older editions, you probably can't relate to my sentiments. You don't know what you missed.