Kyle Busch won the Jeff Byrd 500 Presented by Food City NASCAR Sprint Cup race today at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was an excellent outing from start to finish, featuring numerous lead battles and very few stretches when there wasn’t racing action all over the track. In the end, Busch held off Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson for the victory, his second of the weekend and fifth straight (Busch won the truck, Nationwide and Cup race on the same weekend at Bristol last August) on the notoriously difficult short track.
For his efforts, Busch was greeted with a resounding Bronx cheer, Tennessee style.
Which leads to thinking about Warren Zevon.
It's highly doubtful Kyle Busch has the foggiest idea who Zevon was, unless somewhere along the line he’s heard “Werewolves of London” on an oldies station. Actually, not many people these days know who Warren Zevon was. A brief introduction is in order.
Zevon came to public attention in 1978 with the release of his second album Excitable Boy. It was a quirky outing, musically rooted in the southern California “Mellow Mafia” vibe personified by the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne albeit with a strong piano-based rock’n'roll vibe. Lyrically, however, the album was anything but a peaceful easy feeling. Zevon was in love with bizarre imagery and ofttimes jarring wordplay, lacing such throughout his songs whether they were rockers or ballads. It was an approach that won him a fanatically loyal cult following, yet to the public at large despite his unquestioned gift for gorgeous melodies he was decidedly hit and miss when it came to having hits. Mostly, miss.
In a moment of bitter irony, the man who early in his career penned a tune titled “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” enjoyed his greatest commercial success when in 2002, suffering from mesothelioma which would claim his life the following year, he recorded his final album The Wind on which the closing track was “Keep Me In Your Heart.” It’s a plaintive tune, stripped of all the oddities which had kept him from general public acceptance throughout his career, in which Zevon makes his quiet case to be remembered. At the end, he had finally learned how to do something that has escaped him throughout his career: get out of his own way.
Which leads to thinking about Kyle Busch.
It’s not that Busch is a hack behind the wheel. He is a superb driver, already laying solid claim to being one of the best ever in NASCAR. We know this. He knows this. We are reminded on an average of every 13.7 seconds by the motorsports media of this. And yet Busch is far, far more reviled than revered. It’s not even the we’re-sick-of-you-winning-all-the-time vibe that permeates the dislike among many in NASCAR Nation for Jimmie Johnson and, albeit to a lesser extent now that he’s no longer the dominant force he once was, Jeff Gordon. NASCAR fans hate Kyle Busch with a passion.
Why?
Simply put, Busch has never been able to get out of his own way. Far more often than not he has been graceless and classless in both victory and defeat. Busch can pile up wins like no one else in the NASCAR equivalent of a regular season, yet routinely self-destructs by taking foolish chances when the pressure is on. His greatest challenger isn’t Johnson or Edwards or anyone else presently driving. It’s his own shortcomings. And he has never defeated these. Not once.
Drivers can transform their image by transforming themselves over time. Darrell Waltrip was once the driver everyone loved to hate. By the end of his career he was a huge fan favorite. In theory Busch can do the same. However, no amount of media love can accomplish this for him. Were this the case, given how often his praises have been sung he’d be beloved right now. He's not. The choice as to whether this remains the case is his.
Busch’s legacy is being laid down in every race. If he’s comfortable with being the brat in Victory Lane, so it shall be, and no amount of being told otherwise will change the NASCAR fan base’s mind. For now, he is very much NASCAR’s Warren Zevon, a genius more than willing to sacrifice public acceptance for the sake of doing things his way and his way alone.
Which leaves him very much alone.
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