Fun With Neurotic Red Sox Fans

As previously reported right here in this blog, John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, actually did buy half the NASCAR Roush Racing team this winter, and now the partnership is coming to fruition. The target? None other than 2005 Nextel Cup 2nd place finisher Carl Edwards. Carl got a full makeover last week, his car and helmet repainted in Red Sox team colors, complete with a Red Sox logo on the hood and doors and the 9's redone in the font that Ted Williams wore on his jersey. Carl even got to drive his car into Fenway Park and threw out the ceremonial first pitch for Saturday's game vs. the Rangers.

As you might have heard, the Red Sox are doing pretty well this year. Best record in the majors, even. Carl's also having a pretty good year after missing the Chase last year - 7th place, pretty solidly in the running this year, and completely dominating the Busch Series by an astounding 784 points. It's far too tempting to draw comparisons between the two, as if Carl was an avatar for the Red Sox's season. Same ownership, right? Similar situations. As you can guess, this only served to further prove that Red Sox fans' psyches are about as formidable as Glass Joe.

Carl finished 2nd in Saturday's Busch race in Loudon, NH. Not so bad, right? Except for the fact that his car failed post-race inspections, and was fined and docked 25 points. Things seemed bright for Edwards in the Sunday Nextel race as well, racing towards the front of the pack and leading a few laps. Towards the home stretch of the race, Edwards pitted. As his tires were being changed, his car slipped and fell off the jack, taking up valuable time - 47 seconds worth, over twice as long as the average pit stop. He got back on the track a lap down and his day was over, finishing 13th.

Cars rarely fall off the jacks in NASCAR. It's a pretty rare flub for a team to have to go through. To make an analogy, it's almost like a routine grounder dribbling through an infielder's legs. It just doesn't happen very often.

I'm sure the Red Sox will be just fine this year.

Barry Bonds Seeks To Join Sport Where Additives Are Encouraged

In other miscellaneous Red Sox news, NASCAR team owner Jack Roush is in continued negotiations with Red Sox owner John Henry to sell part of the Roush team to Henry's Fenway Sports Group. Roush's team includes NASCAR drivers Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards, and Jamie McMurray. The deal would likely result in marketing and sponsorship opportunities from the largely untapped northeast market, who care about NASCAR generally about as much as most people care about ESPN2's broadcasts of the National Spelling Bee or World Scrabble Championship. Additionally, it may result in one of Roush's cars being painted Red Sox colors, and maybe one of their drivers will don the Wally the Green Monster costume during the race. Who knows. Regardless, it'd be a win-win for both teams, considering NASCAR could have the Red Sox stump for them in the northeast and the Red Sox wouldn't have to revenue-share their NASCAR marketing earnings. Granted, first talk of negotiations between the two surfaced in February of 2005, and the latest article says it "could be a while" before the deal is finalized. So, maybe not.

And that's where I share my dirty secret - despite being from Massachusetts, I actually do enjoy NASCAR quite a bit. In fact, I like nearly anything that can be called sport and contains competition and winners. (Which rules out things like hunting and fishing - murder isn't quite sporting. Now, if the hunters got mauled every so often, that would be a much different story.) NASCAR is especially good as background on those lazy Sunday afternoons where I'm puttering around on the internet and completely wasting the remaining vestiges of my weekend. You don't really have to pay attention, and the times you do there's usually loud crashing sounds or the announcers get all excited. Those tight races and daring passes towards the end are, ok, exciting. I don't have a favorite driver or anything, so I default to my usual "root for the underdogs and newbies" rule. That means I get excited whenever anyone I haven't heard of is in contention, or relative newbies like Biffle, Edwards, and Denny Hamlin are doing good. And I've always had a soft spot for Matt Kenseth because he's a good driver and I feel like his 2003 championship, whose consistency apparently bored everyone into instituting the Chase, was unnecessarily disparaged.

So, if you're looking for sports coverage about sports you don't usually see blogged about, I'm your guy. There's some Super Bowl thing coming up and we'll probably be typing our thoughts on that over the next few days, so I'll probably take the time personally to research more into curling, badminton, and professional pillow fighting. I'll leave you with a little of what NASCAR hopes to bring to New England. Good luck, boys!