Posted on April 26, 2007

The Tie That Binds

by Ruth Mattern About The Author	Email   Print

Saturday night, with a little luck and a lot of good racing, Jeff Gordon got his 1^st win at Phoenix, and he got it from the pole.  That win tied him with Dale Earnhard’s 76 wins. He even raced like Earnhardt when he tapped Tony Stewart’s bumper with 11 laps to go and got Stewart loose.  Thus allowing him to go to the inside and make the pass for the lead.

After taking the checkered flag, Gordon’s crew told him they had something for him in the pits.  That something turned out to be a black flag with Earnhardt’s famed #3 on it.  The team had been carrying that flag with them since last year when Gordon got his 75th win. Holding the flag out his window, Gordon made a slow victory lap honoring the 7 time Champion. That was a classy move for Gordon to make and the fans in the stands seemingly agreed. Surprisingly, there were very few boos heard from the fans. Gordon seems to get booed a lot lately.  Most Earnhardt fans don’t care much for the # 24 car.

I think the fans understood what Gordon was trying to say by carrying the #3 flag.  He wasn’t saying he is better than or as good as Earnhardt. Earnhardt, though he was a tough competitor of Gordon’s, was also his friend and sometimes business partner.  He gave Gordon a lot of pointers that may have helped Gordon along over the years.  Earnhardt probably saw something in Gordon that we all eventually came to see...He's a great driver.

Is he better than Earnhardt?  Nobody can answer that question.  You can look at the stats all you want to and you still can't answer it.  It is like comparing apples to oranges.  They are alike, so comparisons can be made, but they are also different.

Earnhardt and Gordon came from different backgrounds, different struggles, different mindsets.  They are both awesome in their own right.  And even though their racing paths crossed, they still raced in different eras.  The style wasn't the same. The competition wasn't the same.  The racing wasn't the same.  That's not to say that one was harder than the other.  Just different.

Earnhardt had to work his way into racing. He had to work to get a car.  And he had to work on that car. There was nobody there to give him that helping hand. He had to be away from his family just trying to get his foot in the NASCAR door.  He came from the working class and made it happen.  Earnhardt accomplished his life-long dream, just like so many of us try to do. He had his own style of racing that noone will ever duplicate.  It was hard, trading paint, push or be pushed racing.  If he wanted that win, he reached right out and took it however he could.  He raced at a time when love-taps, bump-and-runs, and bump-drafting were okay moves.  Some drivers didn't like that kind of racing, but it wasn't penalized like it is today.

That's not to say that Gordon hasn't worked for what he has.  He just hasn't had the struggles that Earnhardt did. And I'm not saying he's never struggled. Gordon's worked hard to accomplish his dream too, but he's had the help of his family along the way. And, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with getting a little help.  Ultimately, he is the one that drives the car, and he does an excellent job of it.  Gordon is also capable of reaching out and taking a win if he wants it.  But, it's still like apples and oranges.

Gordon is going to break a lot of records in his career.  But, records were made to be broken. It happens all the time, in every sport.  If that wasn't true, what goals would we strive for?  What would be our motivation to keep on trying and keep on winning? We can't put an asterisk beside everyone's name in the record books because times have changed or the sport has changed. That's what they did to Roger Maris when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record.  Nobody liked the fact that he broke Ruth's record, but Maris did it in 1961 and he died before they took the asterisk away.  His record was eventually broken by Mark McGwire in 1998. There's always going to be someone who comes along and sets a new record, whatever it is.

How you handle it when you break a record is important.  It's how people will remember you.  Gordon handled it with honor.  Like I said, it was a classy move displaying the #3 flag.  Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. approved.  He was one of the first people to go to Victory Lane and show us it was ok. Jr. has shown diplomacy.  I hope the rest of the Jr. Nation will do the same.

Congratulations Jeff! I'm sure there will be many more wins to come and many more records to be broken.

You can contact Ruth at rmattern@nc.rr.com

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