In “Breaking Away,” front-runner in many lineups of inspirational and sports movies, an Indiana teen, just months younger than the late Kevin Ward, idolizes a team of Italian bicyclists. Training hard, he gets to compete with them and proves himself their equal.
That is, until one of them hurls a tire pump through his sprockets, knocking him out of the race.
The more Base Paths replayed Ward’s death at Canandaigua Motor Speedway, the more he meshed it with “Breaking Away,” plus the John Grisham baseball novel “Calico Joe” and spring training’s “inter-species games.”
A little over a week ago, NASCAR superstar Tony Stewart bumped Ward out of a race at Canandaigua. Ward foolheartedly ran onto the track to shake his fist during a yellow-flag caution lap. Stewart’s car struck him, during a minor skid, many claim.
Most of the commentary, including Paula Thompson’s sensitive view in this space last week, boiled it down to seven words: “Ward should have stayed in his car.”
Says Southern Tier driver and historian Ford Easton, whose new book “Stock Car Racing in the ‘50s” is flying off the shelves at Indy-500 speed: “We all learned early on not to exit your car on track unless on fire or strong possibility of fire and then only if advised it was safe to exit. The kid did break the cardinal rule that most of us know better than to do even if upset. Not Stewart’s fault.”
Base Paths, whose checkered resume includes a gig as dirt-track announcer, sees it differently. What was a NASCAR points leader doing racing for tire money on an unfamiliar track with inexperienced drivers? Metaphorically, why was a major-league all-star playing hardball at Single-A?
At least the lad in “Breaking Away” suffered no more than a skinned knee and shattered illusions. Not so in “Calico Joe,” where an aging pitcher with an attitude that would make Maglie look like Mister Rogers, beans a rising rookie into insensibility. Baseball spring training often pairs major-leaguers with collegians – Yanks vs. Army, Red Sox vs. Boston College. These are celebrations of the game and the code is not even unspoken: No knockdowns, no takeouts.
If Stewart and his ilk want to “race down” to tracks a mere hitch above Ransomville (where Ward set some records), they should come as mentors and role models, forwarding the short fuses to Watkins Glen under separate cover. Kevin Ward’s death was an unintended, but inevitable, consequence.
Yes, Ward, a kid, should have stayed in his car.
But Stewart, if he couldn’t behave like an adult, should have stayed off the track.
Base Paths’ colleague Thompson plaintively concludes that he “will have this incident hanging over his head and his heart for the rest of his life.”
That’s nowhere near long enough.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
Leave a Reply