| Samsung/Radio Shack 500: Good Spellers Make Good | | | | Post-It note: a reminder for Johnson to which he |
| Racers | | | | could refer throughout the event, a reminder from |
| Ten minutes before the race in Martinsville last week, | | | | his team, maybe even from his reinstated crew chief |
| I knew my selection of Jimmie Johnson would go for | | | | Chad Knaus. What did the Post-It note read? |
| naught. | | | | "Rythm." |
| It's not that I had a sudden revelation about J.J.'s | | | | Aw. |
| short-track abilities. It's not that I reconsidered the | | | | How embarrassing. While, of course, Knaus (or |
| quality of the Hendrick Motorsports flat-track | | | | someone) simply wanted J.J. to remember to keep |
| program. And it all actually turned out fine, since I'd | | | | cool over the course of a long racing day, to keep |
| also selected eventual race-winner Tony Stewart, as | | | | his own tempo in mind, and drive his own race, he |
| well as a correct head-to-head wager. And yet, ten | | | | committed a nationally televised spelling faux pas. For |
| minutes before the race, I knew I'd done wrong | | | | you see the word is spelled, "Rhythm." Not that big a |
| choosing the polesitting Johnson. | | | | deal to the untrained eye, I grant you, but awkward |
| Why? | | | | nonetheless. And then you have to keep in mind |
| Because as the cry of "gentlemen start your | | | | what intellectuals Larry McReynolds, Darrell Waltrip |
| engines" came up from some corporate grunt in the | | | | and Jeff Hammond are: they are nothing if not |
| hills of Virginia, Fox cut to an in-car view of J.J.'s | | | | sticklers for spelling. At that moment, Johnson was |
| finger pressing the ignition button. The whole | | | | doomed. Fox was simply not going to reward a bad |
| dashboard was laid out, looking like something from a | | | | speller by letting him go to Victory Lane. |
| NASA flight simulator. And on the dash was a single | | | | |