Friday, June 25, 2010

Jimmy Johnson to Denny Hamlin: “All we do is win… Championships!”

I would pay serious money to have just once given Jimmy Johnson the ability to key into Joe Gibbs Racing’s radios at the end of one of the races Denny Hamlin has won recently.


The checkered flag waves as Denny crosses the line, his crew goes crazy, hats fly in the air, and with his window net being unhinged, Denny keys the mic and utters his familiar catch phrase of recent months…

“All we do is win.”

Then you hear the screech of someone else keying in on their frequency.

“Races.” Prods the calm voice of the four time (consecutive no less) Champion, Jimmy Johnson. “All you do is win races, Denny.”


Can someone tell me what we can do to make this happen? I don’t know what the reality is to actually have this occur, but I am guessing NASCAR would levy hefty fines if it ever did. But, oh boy, would it ever make for the stuff of legend.

Of course, we are currently witnessing the events which make up the stuff of tomorrow’s legends. And it’s certainly entertaining, I must admit. But is anyone else getting just a bit tired of the media induced prop-job being performed on Denny Hamlin? It’s not only predictable, it’s repetitively obvious.

I’m not an unabashed Jimmy Johnson fan, but I give credit where credit is due. He and Chad Knaus have had a run in NASCAR’s premiere league that has been unstoppable. But being stopped is exactly what many in the media seem to want, perhaps even demand, in their own way. And the drum beat for it has grown steadily since even before the season started.

The first NASCAR article (aside from those on NASCAR’s own website) I recall seeing in January was in Sports Illustrated. The article was a huge layout about how Denny is coming for Jimmy. The piece was about the Vegas Championship banquet and the after-party thrown by Denny, in which he gave a toast directly to Jimmy to the effect of, “I’m coming for you”. May not be the exact quote, but it's close.

Denny, you do realize he’s been there all along, right?

You don’t have to come after him, you only have yourself to race. Not Jimmy. I don’t recall Jimmy Johnson saying to anyone, “Hey Driver (insert last Champion’s name… who was that again?) I’m coming after you!” He didn’t have to. They raced themselves, they challenged themselves, and they improved for the sake of their own performance.

None of this is to say that Denny’s season has not been remarkable up to this point. It has been. But it’s just those drums echoing in my ears… bang bong bang. They keep pounding those drums about the guy that’s gonna get Jimmy, telling us who it is, telling us how well he has done, how many races he has won. How he won’t be stopped.

Can you hear them? Those media drums echoing? I think I do. I can almost make out the name.. but, but it’s not… it’s not this year’s drums I hear echoing at all. It’s, I think it’s… what’s the name?

Oh yeah, Kyle Bush. That was what we heard last year, right?

Hey Denny, all you do is win... races. Jimmy’s the one with the rings.



-Name withheld. No kitchen pass issued.

No comments:

Post a Comment