Nascar's 190 MPH Beanball

[stevewaclo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14Pierce.html

[stevewaclo]

Oops!! One of my cats jumped on the keyboard :mad:.

Here's an article for our Nascar fan(s?) from the NY Times by historian Daniel Pierce at the University of North Carolina. Short verson: pro sports have an unwritten code of social behavior...baseball has it's beanball and in Nascar you get bounced off the Armco:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14Pierce.html

[sperry]

As much as I understand the theory behind an-eye-for-an-eye self regulation and the baseball analogy, racing is not baseball.

Intentionally throwing at a batter is something calmly planned and executed, and not all that dangerous to the batter, and certainly not dangerous to the crowd. Red haze can and will kill people, perhaps even fans, in racing.

NASCAR allowing, perhaps even encouraging, this sort of action on track to boost their ratings at the expense of safety is despicable at best, and criminal at worst. They're going to love the lawsuit they'll have to settle when a fan is injured because NASCAR wants higher ratings.

[BillH]

Nascar is Pro Wrestling - T.S.

[Cody]

Holy crap. I can't believe that safety is being thrown out the window like that. I agree with Scott. Racing and baseball are apples and oranges when it comes to safety.

For example, when I was snowboarding Saturday, a skier came up from behind me and tried to pass me when I was in line. I wouldn't have cared but he was skiing all over the top of my snowboard and for some unknown reason had stupidly chose the wrong side of the lane so he couldn't get by (I was all the way to one side). I pushed him to the ground and said, "WTF is your problem A**hole? Get the f*ck off of my board!"

However, if the guy had cut me off on the freeway, there's no way I would have rammed him off the road and got into a fist fight on the side of the freeway. That's insane.

[Kevin M]

I think the idea is that drivers are less likely to make stupid or risky moves when they know that the other driver is going to put them into the wall for it later, and Nascar is going to look the other way. I'm a lot more afraid of on-track retaliation than I am of Nascar fines if I'm an up-and-coming driver.

[sperry]

But that's not NASCAR's logic at all. They're doing it specifically for ratings. No matter how you cut it, NASCAR is going to be liable the instant a fan is injured by debris because they have made a public statement that the drivers are going to be allowed to drive roughly.

I might agree with you if this had been something that NASCAR had told the drivers privately. Then it would be something along the lines of "we don't think fines are working, so we're going to give you more leeway in regulating yourselves". But that's not what they're doing. They're making a PR stunt out of it.

[Cody]

http://coolrain44.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/deathrace2000.jpg

Make sure you read the tagline.

[AlexR]

they were just off by 10 years, not bad :P

I Agree with Scott that as soon as a fan gets injured Nascar will be found liable.

IMO the fans realizing that there will be more crashing are taking their lives into their own hands when entering the grand stands and should not be allowed to sue anyone, but this is the USA were instead of personal responsibility we have the responsibility to nanny. :(