Earning Victory at the Daytona 500

20 year old Trevor Bayne, a nobody in the truest sense,  won the Daytona 500 on Sunday. Even mainstream snobs like myself who can name only the Gordons and Jarrets and Earnhardts of Nascar can safely marvel over such a sporting feat.   A win like Bayne's raises such a staggering profusion of how's and why's and who the hell is Trevor Bayne's that it would be unwise to address them all in a single post.
 It seemed like poetry for just a brief moment: 10 years after his father's tragic death on the race course, Dale Jr. was cruising near the head of the pack--even taking the lead at one point. Then, as is apt to happen in auto racing , everthing went to shit.
Michael Waltrip, a driver I know only from the back of my mini-wheats, rammed his front end into the back end of another driver who has never graced the back of any of my delicious cereals (I'm told its called "push-drafting" when done right, and "what the hell is wrong with you?"  when done wrong). It probably came as a surprise to Waltrip that such a minor nudge at 200+ miles per hour could cause a 14 car pile-up and instantaneously turn the Daytona 500 into the greatest filler item in the history of daily news, but that's exactly what it did.
By the time the smoke had cleared and Nascar officials had forcibly removed Mel Gibson's career reboot and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the racetrack, Trevor Bayne was already leading the pack and tittering into his earpiece like a coked-up jackal.
Sources close to Nascar ( high school friends) tell me that race ruining stupidity is Waltrip's trademark. Jordan had his dunk from the free throw line, Babe Ruth had the called shot, and Waltrip can turn a race from boring to clown show in 4 minutes or less.
Normally a wreck is something to celebrate, but leave it to Waltrip to betray even the most hallowed of Nascar traditions. Thanks to him, there's no news to be found on the television or the internet for the second straight week since that jeopardy winning toaster mercilessly clogged the AP wire with scientific drivel. Sports have invaded the news again, and I'm not at all thrilled.
If you should happen to see a baboon on rollerskates rescuing a family of five from a house fire this afternoon, do me a solid and just keep walking. News reporters have caught enough breaks this week, and I'd really like to read about the mass protests in Wisconsin instead.