Reaching into the mailbag, and pulling out the thorns

All this time, we've been duped. Year after year, we keep giving Dale Earnhardt Jr. the NASCAR-sanctioned award as the sport's most popular driver. Yet unbeknownst to most of us, there's been this massive underground movement of support for Robby Gordon, like one of those subterranean cities rumored to exist beneath the sewers of New York. For so long these poor, sun-starved creatures have been down there, just waiting for the right moment to rise up.

• Send David your thoughts

And now they have it, burying yours truly beneath an avalanche of protests, epithets, profanities and personal attacks stemming from Wednesday's column criticizing Gordon's antics during and after last weekend's Busch race in Montreal. They started flooding in moments after the piece was posted, hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of them, and they still haven't stopped. Evidently, the guy is bigger than Dale Jr., bigger than Jeff Gordon, bigger than Juan Manuel Fangio. Judging from the reaction, he ranks on the popularity scale somewhere between Barack Obama and the Pope.

It started simply enough at 9:56 Wednesday morning, with a legitimate and reasonable question over whether cars in NASCAR will ever feature a yellow dashboard light so drivers will know immediately when the caution is out. It quickly denigrated into an unruly fistfight, one full of strange references to the American Revolution, Nazi Germany, the mafia, federal prisons, illegal immigration and Fidel Castro. Yours truly was labeled as a liberal, called a wannabe George Will, and accused of having some strange man-crush on Kevin Harvick, who was mentioned only as the guy who won the race.

Somebody wrote that Robby was the Norma Rae of NASCAR, referring to the Sally Field character who helped unionize textile mills, even though the sport has no union and likely won't anytime soon. Somebody else called him the Tiger Woods of NASCAR road racing, even though his two Cup victories rank him only fifth among active drivers, and well behind nine-time winner Jeff Gordon. Somebody else wondered if the officials on the scene would be investigated like Tim Donaghy, the disgraced NBA ref accused of committing the federal crime of fixing games. Somebody else wrote that he hoped Robby would punch me in the mouth, a move that likely wouldn't help either of our careers.

Many were rude, crude missives offensive to anyone who appreciates a logical argument or good grammar. There were e-mails supporting drivers named Bobby Gorden and Robby Gorgon, e-mails blaming the whole thing on "Hendricks" Motorsports and corporate globalization, e-mails ripping my eyeglasses and hair color, e-mails claiming NASCAR tried to fix it so a Canadian driver could win even though Marcos Ambrose is from Australia. There were e-mails calling yours truly a "NASCAR stooge," a "rule-abiding dork," and castigating me for using too many big words.

It's all added up to quite an entertaining few days. Since there's no possible way to answer all of them, the staff here at NASCAR.COM's mustard-based barbecue bureau has culled them down to a more manageable representative sample, complete with responses, here for your reading pleasure:

From Dave in Virginia: "Did I miss something? If Gordon was running first or second when the caution came out, shouldn't he have restarted in first or second at the green flag? Instead, he was spun after the caution came out and told to restart in 13th? It doesn't matter if he was first or second when the caution came out, because he certainly wasn't 13th."

It surely didn't seem that way. But according to NASCAR, you have to maintain caution speed to keep your place in line, and Gordon wasn't able to recover from the punt from Ambrose quickly enough to regain a position near the front. Don't like the ruling? Totally understandable. So send a postcard to Daytona Beach. If you're looking for consistent week-in, week-out rule interpretation, this isn't your sport. Everything is a judgment call. Precedent doesn't matter. Come to grips with that, and you'll sleep better at night. (Continued)