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.

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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.

From Lane, whereabouts unknown: "I think your article stinks. What you should have written was how wrong NASCAR was. Oh, wait, you're not allowed to go against the guys that pay your salary."

Where did we rip Ted Turner? As it clearly states at the bottom of each page, this site is run not by NASCAR, but by Turner Sports Interactive. Our parent company is the same one that owns CNN. That's right -- after work, Anderson Cooper and I kick back and try to get to the bottom of a carton of Schlitz.

Muting complaints

Robby Gordon's post-race actions ruined any complaints he had with NASCAR's rulings, writes David Caraviello.

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From Dean, in a secret location: "There is one item I think needs clarification in your opinion. When Robby passed Kevin Harvick in Sonoma in 2003, it was a perfectly legal move. NASCAR did not freeze the field at that time. I'm pretty sure Robby is not the only driver who had done that prior to NASCAR's rule change."

Maybe, but other drivers were infuriated when Gordon passed Harvick under yellow en route to winning the 2003 event at Infineon. "What he did, especially to his teammate, was absolutely ridiculous," Jeff Gordon said then. To that point, NASCAR had allowed drivers to operate under a "gentlemen's agreement" that forbade racing back to the line after a caution. That race, and the furor that followed, was the first step toward scoring loops, freezing the field, and the situation Gordon found himself in Saturday.

From Tim in Tennessee: "Why didn't NASCAR red-flag the race and sort out the lineup?"

It would have seemed like the logical thing to do, wouldn't it? But according to a statement NASCAR released after the race, Gordon technically wasn't in violation of NASCAR's order to drop to 13th until after he passed the start / finish line on the restart. Yet the sanctioning body had to know that Gordon was seeking revenge on Ambrose. That they were unwilling or unable to prevent it makes them equally culpable for the result in some eyes.

Asked Jim: "If you were in Robby's place, what would you have done? Arbitration works as well as ESPN's air turbulence animation."

Absolutely correct. The minute NASCAR officials ordered him back to 13th, his race was cooked. But rather than staging his one-man, on-track revolution, Gordon should have finished the race and lashed out at NASCAR in the media afterward. He should have demanded answers as to why Ambrose was allowed to spin him under yellow, and why he was placed so far back in the field. Trust me, writers would have eaten that up. And then the story would have been about NASCAR's scoring system, and not Gordon's antics. And oh yeah, he probably would have been able to race the next day at Pocono, and saved himself $35,000.

From John in Indiana: "Did Robby Gordon refuse to talk to you at one time? Steal your lunch money? Boy, he must have done you bad."

Please, John. This is big-boy auto racing. Anybody who's thin-skinned when it comes to criticism -- whether it be a competitor, columnist, public relations rep or series official -- isn't going to last very long. What reporter doesn't like Robby Gordon? He's talkative, opinionated, colorful, often controversial and usually accessible, unless he's strapped into an off-road car somewhere in the Mexican desert. His independent streak may have cost him some rides in the past, but it also makes him stand out in a garage full of drivers who all seem a little too similar.

But that doesn't mean you approve of everything he does. There's a big difference between disliking the person and disliking the action, something that in this case too many people have failed to understand. Plenty of people, fans as well as writers, have hammered Gordon for his antics last Saturday. But this is a sport where everybody travels and works together for 10 months out of the year. The easy way to make your life miserable is to hold a grudge.

From another John, this one in South Carolina: "Gordon broke the cardinal rule of NASCAR, the only rule of NASCAR: Don't not do what we tell you. Mutiny is a capital offense in NASCAR. That's it. That's all there is. It's irrelevant [completely] whether or not Gordon was wronged by NASCAR. It became irrelevant the millisecond that Gordon put his nose under Ambrose's rear and moved him after being black-flagged."

Finally, someone who gets it. This whole argument isn't about when the caution came out or who got spun under yellow or who should have been in the lead, all factors that have turned the Montreal event into the motorsports version of the JFK assassination. (Was there a second yellow flag on the grassy knoll?) It's about how Gordon's gripe, however legitimate, was completely overshadowed the instant he took matters into his own hands. It's about recognizing that whether it's one driver trying to make a stand in Canada or a group of them three decades ago at Talladega, NASCAR holds absolute power. In these kinds of situations, they have an undefeated record.

Try as he might, Robby Gordon wasn't going to change that. Thinking he could was his biggest mistake. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to shut my e-mail account down for about a week.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.