Dale who?

The Rant D’Jour is a very early one from 2005. Its what I did to fill the beast of a five day a week radio show. It’s not great, not bad. Short. Semi-sweet. It’ll do for a Sunday.

I must admit that I am not much of a milk drinker. I had a boss once who made reference to â€œMotherâ€™s milkâ€…More

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Blog Post for Sunday 2/13/11 – 17 degrees at 7:19 AM – Big fluffy snowflakes drifting down lazily from the sky. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

I promise not to write too much about motorsports here. But I do make my living from it and last night was the start of the long (longest in any professional sport – we will be following cars on track until the week before Thanksgiving) NASCAR season.

Last night was one of these “Exhibition” type deals that sports promoters love, fans are so-so about and in general is just a novelty. The Bud Shootout is a non-points race so it doesn’t count towards the championship.

But the prize money for first place is one million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Even to a NASCAR driver.

And…it is the first race of the season. So there is that.

Daytona is a crap shoot in the best of years. It’s fast, stupid fast. It was just repaved. I am thrilled no one has said that it’s as smooth as a baby’s bottom but Tony Stewart said you could “drink a cup of coffee” while driving on at 200 MPH.

Cars are going 203 and faster. Almost 20 MPH faster than before. It’s fast, stupid fast.

And wrecks happen in the blink of any eye. A bunch of eyes last night.

Including the eyes of the guy I root for, Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was punted out of the race into the wall and from there into the garage well before they were spraying the eventual winner, Kurt Busch, with Budweiser in Victory Lane.

Signs point to Dale Jr. having a good year.

He has a new crew chief, seems energized and has had some fast laps on the high-banks of Daytona International Speedway.

But it would have been a better start, and I would in a better mood today, if he had at least finished. Not what we used to call “an also ran.”

For crying out loud, even Derrike Cope finished. Dead last, a lap down but he was running at the end.