Weekend That Was: Indy

My boss, Duane Cross, sent out the warning shortly after I took this job in January.

Don't worry about the e-mails. Don't try to answer them all, he insisted. It will only drive you crazy and begin to dominate your life if you try, he said. Or at least he said something to that effect.

I should have listened.

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In fact, I tried to. I said I wouldn't try to answer them all, although I always made the attempt to do so in my previous job as beat writer covering an NFL team for a newspaper that I will not name here for fear of giving them even a shred of positive publicity. (The folks running that place now don't deserve it).

Problem was, in the old job I might get 25 e-mails per week. Maybe 50 if I wrote something that really ticked off the ol' shrinking reader base.

"Hah! Fifty? You might get 50 in an hour on this job. Or 500 in a week," Cross told me.

I laughed. I thought he was joking.

He was not.

If I didn't know that before last week, I know it now. I received more than 500 e-mails in response to the Good Tony / Bad Tony column I wrote about Tony Stewart one week ago. They ran about two to one in favor of calling me an "idiot" or a "moron." The ones that didn't pretty much praised me and called Stewart the same.

As had been my habit, I tried to answer all the e-mails. But they kept coming. I actually stopped counting after about 500 -- but when I would clear 100 out, another 100 seemed to arrive. After a while, I simply couldn't keep up without risking putting my marriage in trouble or forgetting what one or more of my four children looked like.

So for those of you who didn't get a personal response or didn't get what I was trying to say in the first place, get this: I don't harbor a deep personal dislike for Tony Stewart, the terrific driving talent who won his second consecutive Nextel Cup race on Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I simply was pointing out that there is Good Tony and Bad Tony, and that Stewart ought to work harder to let the public see the Good Tony more often.

His winning the last two weeks hasn't changed my opinion on that. In fact, seeing Good Tony in action only reinforces my feeling on the subject. Keep Bad Tony under wraps ... puh-leaze! (Besides, didn't anyone notice that I actually picked him to win the last two weeks?)

At the same time, I realize that Bad Tony is part of Stewart's competitive personality -- part of what makes him the terrific driving talent he is. He can't cut him out of the deal entirely, but maybe he can channel Bad Tony into more innocent endeavors such as uttering a post-race swear word on national television, rather than running into the back of a teammate during a race and then repeatedly not only blaming the teammate but calling him out and then having the audacity to blame the media for the controversy that erupts.

Then there was the column I wrote last week about Ginn Racing merging with Dale Earnhardt Inc. Who would have thought that would have generated almost as many e-mails as the Stewart deal? Actually, it might eventually surpass the Stewart total -- as the Ginn e-mails still seem to be pouring in (this time probably more like three to one in favor of my opinion, however).

Here's the deal on that one, for those folks who again trotted out the creative "idiot" and "moron" monikers: No, I don't have a personal vendetta against Bobby Ginn. Nor do I necessarily think he made a bad business deal -- for himself and a few of his close cronies.

Of course I realize that merging Ginn Racing, which was having trouble finding sponsors for at least two of its cars, with DEI is a win-win situation for Mr. Bobby Ginn. But again, many law-abiding citizens who normally wouldn't call me the things they did in e-mails to my face missed the point of my column.

Ginn laid out a supposedly comprehensive five-year plan last January for Ginn Racing. Veteran drivers Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemechek and developmental driver Ricky Carmichael were among those present for the grand news conference. They all thought they were part of the plan. So did those working closely with them to put the cars they were to drive on the tracks where they were going to run them. (Continued)