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Making Peace With Kyle Busch
May 15, 2008
Lisa Fowler - SCR
I have decided, after much soul searching, that I need to figure out a way to accept, if not love,
Kyle Busch. Seeing that he just turned 23 years old and most of today's drivers feel like they can race  competitively until at least age 40, he will most likely be racing long after I am around to criticize him.
I recently read the article that Marty Smith wrote about Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the ESPN the Magazine
and I started to wonder if anyone has tried to sit down with Kyle for this type of one-on-one interview. It seems that
we see only the sound bites from the pre-race and post-race, which always show such raw emotion.
Even the most loved and respected of drivers like Mark Martin, Dale Jarrett, even Dale Earnhardt Jr., have had moments,
in the heat of battle, where they have said things that I'm sure they would take back if they could.
I would like to hear from both Kyle and his brother Kurt, about their family, their childhoods,
their dreams and future plans. I would like to know about their mother and father, other siblings. How did they
do in school? Was one the good kid and the other the troublemaker?
I expect we have all been guilty of judging
someone based on a first impression or something that we may have heard about them. Once we got to know them, our opinion
was changed and we saw that we could have missed out on a great relationship had we never been willing to give them a second
chance.
I have been one of Kyle's harshest critics and I don't expect to
ever cheer him on to a win. Of course, I was the same way with Dale Earnhardt Sr., Rusty Wallace and Jeff Gordon at one
time. I never really became a Dale Earnhardt Sr. fan. I still throw things at the TV when I get upset at something
that Rusty says during a broadcast. For years, when someone gave me a collectable item related to Jeff Gordon, I would
hide it away in the closet.
I think that my feelings about Dale Earnhardt
Sr. are now based on many things that I never knew  about him until after his death. I chose to view him as the bad guy and he chose to let that part of himself be seen more
often than the good guy part.
I never paid much attention to Rusty Wallace
on the track. Sure he won some races and a championship but he just never stood out in my mind. Now with his work on
TV, I pay more attention to him and I still don't have much for him one way or the other.
Jeff Gordon is the one that I never in a million years would have imagined myself ever having any affection for. Something
changed sometime last season and now I actually find myself pulling for him. I don't know if it is the fact that
he became a father or the fact that he has those few gray hairs showing or what but I totally accept him now and really like
him.
I wonder if we could get a closer look at Kyle and find something in him that we can like or at least something
that would help us to get over our hatred. Funny thing is I don't even know why I worry about it. If his reaction
to the negative attention is sincere, then he certainly seems to have no problem with our feeling the way we do about him.
Okay, forget everything I just said. We need someone to hate just as much as we need our heroes. Kyle,
please don't change.
Questions, Comments:
Email Lisa
The views and opinions in this article are that of the writer(s) and not
necessarily that of SCR
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2006 StockCar Review.
