Issue Date: August 17, 2003

In this article: The tale of two speed demons

NASCAR vs. baseball

Last year, our national pastime took on the NBA. Before that, it wrestled with, well, professional wrestling. This year? Barry Zito hurls 'em against Dale Earnhardt Jr.

By Dennis McCafferty

At a NASCAR track, fans stir a hornet's nest-sized buzz whenever a top driver or celeb is even rumored to be on hand. So imagine the excitement when not one, but two, major sports figures plop down among the fans in the stands at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., on a recent race weekend. They are no less than the two hottest young guns of their respective sports: baseball's Barry Zito, 25, and NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr., 28.

Zito, of the Oakland Athletics, is the reigning American League Cy Young winner, said to possess the most wicked curveball among lefties since the great Sandy Koufax. Earnhardt is backing up his megastar wattage with his best year ever, landing in contention for the Winston Cup championship. Both men are as well known for their free-spiritedness away from their sports -- Zito with a yen for surfing, scented candles and songwriting/performing, and Earnhardt with his reputation as a driver for the MTV generation. For the first time, the two athletes meet and discuss their sports as American institutions in a revealing discussion for USA WEEKEND Magazine: NASCAR vs. baseball.

In contrast to past sporting debates in these pages -- remember The Rock advising New York Mets star Mike Piazza in a June 2000 cover story to "rock bottom" pitchers who serve up the beanball? -- the conversation between Zito and Earnhardt is downright civil. The guys get along quite well, and they part company with a hug. Like many young Americans, they bond over a mutual favorite group. "You dig Ben Folds Five, too?" Earnhardt asks Zito. Zito sure does. And both men are told about a concert from the mid-1990s in which a very young Ben Folds Five and a new artist named Jewel opened for legendary rocker Neil Young. "Wow!" Zito says. "That must have been a great show." It was. And, as far as shows go, rarely do baseball fans or NASCAR die-hards walk away disappointed when these two guys take the stage.

Here's what they had to say about wrecking cars on the PlayStation screen, the role of patriotism in sports, and the possibilities of parenthood.

Dale, did you play baseball as a kid?

Earnhardt: Not really. But my sister played T-ball when she was young, so I'd go to her games all the time. I was kind of short for my age, and baseball wasn't my thing. But I love the game. My dad was a big Braves fan, and he'd always be talking to the players. He'd meet with them or go hunting with them. That's how I got into watching the World Series. My sponsor, Budweiser, has a big association with baseball, and I run a car with the baseball All-Star logo on it twice a year and go to the All-Star Game. I get in a little batting practice in the morning and otherwise just poke around. It's fun as hell.

What about you, Barry? Did you ever get into racing?

Zito: I grew up in San Diego, so I was more into surfing. But from when I was 12, I started playing in a bunch of baseball tournaments in Indiana, year after year, and that's when I got into racing. Compared to California, the Midwest is filled with racing. People there were teaching me about the drivers, and in 1998, I went out and bought my first NASCAR video game for my PlayStation.

Really? Which drivers did you like to be?

Zito: Usually the Labonte brothers. I kept switching between those two. You just wanted to be a rambling dude, you know? Take out the car and watch all the graphics while you're smashing it up.

Since then, NASCAR has emerged as the country's hottest sport. It could lay claim to being the national pastime. But traditionalists award that crown to baseball. Gentlemen, start your debating engines: Which is the more authentic American sport?

Zito: You mean I have to be a lawyer now? [Laughs.] In our case, baseball doesn't get the attendance NASCAR does. In Oakland, we'll get 12,000 to 15,000. But we're not going to get 100,000 like NASCAR. That's unbelievable. But, yes, we feel like we're the American sport. It's been around so long, since the 1800s. It's always been associated with this country. Now, in these times of tension, we provide a little escape for people. We take pride in that: Come out to the ballpark and don't worry about this crazy stuff for three hours.

Earnhardt: Our biggest battle right now is trying to spread our sport throughout the country. Stock-car racing came out of the Southeast. California is still an untapped market for us. We haven't frequented the West enough to claim ourselves as the American sport just yet. But we're definitely a challenger. The thing that separates us from the stick-and-ball sport is automobiles. The history and heritage of automobiles, what that means to middle-class America and the blue-collar worker -- that's what separates us.

A couple of years back, you told us that to expand your sport's appeal and possibly overtake baseball as America's pastime, you'd like to see NASCAR go toward divisional competition, like baseball. So instead of seeing Dale Jr. race Tony Stewart every week, it would be only a few times a year, just as Roger Clemens and A-Rod face off a few times a year. How would that work?

Earnhardt: It would be hard to do, but with the attendance level rising and the money coming into the sport now, NASCAR has to reinvent itself. You have to be mindful of opportunities. With a new sponsor like Nextel coming in, it's going to revamp everything. The way it is now is almost overkill in a way, with the Cup series being as long as it is. Splitting it up would be pretty cool and different. It would make it a novelty to see certain competitions. With baseball, it's one team vs. another, not everybody going up against each other at the same time. That makes it fun.

You both present your cases well. The American public, ultimately, will decide. But with either sport, patriotism often is a unifying element. Are you guys seeing that?

Zito: Definitely. I've been doing something for armed-services personnel through ESPN. I'd e-mail a sergeant across the sea. That was really cool. The program is called "Jocks and GIs." Various athletes would e-mail folks over there and get to know what they're going through. Our team ended up in Texas, and I'd complain about how hot it was. But this guy would be like, "You want to know hot? I'll tell you about hot. Hot is when it's 130 degrees in the middle of Kuwait and we're digging bunkers in the sand and we just have to stand around there for two weeks.'' I was, like, "Wow, man. I'm sorry, dude. I didn't mean to be a little girl and start complaining." We really lose our perspective on what's going on, until we hear these stories.

Earnhardt: We're always getting armed-services people and bringing them to the track. With just the sheer size of our attendance, you'll see much greater enthusiasm when they play the national anthem. You'll hear a "USA! USA!" chant in the stands, now more than ever.

Both of you guys are helping expand your sports' reach by appealing to younger fans, especially with your musical interests. How does that help?

Zito: We get cracked down on pretty hard when it comes to player strikes and things like that. I want people to realize we're regular dudes and show them we have interests off the field.

What will your next musical project be?

Zito: I've been writing a lot of stuff during the season. I plan on cutting a CD a couple of years down the road. Just acoustic, singer-songwriter kind of jazzy stuff.

Sure doesn't sound like your kind of music, Dale, given your MTV appearances.

Earnhardt: Well, that's gotten a bit carried away. It was a lot of fun toying with that MTV stuff for a while. Everyone was getting a kick out of it. But it's kind of run its course. I've had a lot of comparisons to my father, and that was one of the reasons I was so open with everybody. But you learn some lessons about that. I never at any time tried to promote the MTV thing, but it caught people so off guard that it got huge. It was really just a common interest I had with my friends. A lot of drivers coming into the sport have these kinds of interests. So I'm buckling down now, getting serious about winning a championship. That's my big thing now. For three years, I was never taken seriously. But I'm different now.

Zito: Yeah, they really blow you up with this persona. I played that card when I got to the big leagues. People wanted to know about me, and that was cool. I had a lot of interests, like music, outside of baseball. But eventually I was like, "I'm a baseball player, and I want to play."

So you're both focused on moving forward with the next stage of life. That's just part of growing up professionally. But there's a personal element to that, too, which Dale has spoken about lately. Where are the two of you on the marriage-and-fatherhood thing now?

Earnhardt: The older you get, the more you start to appreciate what you see around you, like parents and their good marriages. My sister has a little girl, and you start to see how important that is in people's lives and how it's going to be important to you. I want a son who can watch me drive race cars someday. That's the ultimate reward for everything you try to accomplish in your life, trying to raise someone around what you do. But not to pressure him into doing it, too. That's the hard part.

Your father didn't pressure you.

Earnhardt: No, he didn't, but it was probably still difficult for him not to.

Zito: In my case, there are so many things I want to accomplish before I put my heart and soul into raising a family. Right now, it takes a lot to have a girlfriend. I'm going to wait awhile.

We're sure the right woman will be ready when the time comes. But now that we've brought it up, what is the difference between female fans of NASCAR and the ones in baseball -- especially the kind who want to meet an athlete?

Earnhardt: It's a little more refined in baseball, because it's been around so long. We don't play "home games," so we don't have a home "clan" of women fans. In NASCAR, we have a few that just drive in one week at one track, then another the next.

Zito: In our case, the girls all know where the baseball players go every night, so they're all there waiting for them. It gets kind of freaky. You get all of these girls hanging out in hotel bars and they know who you are, but then they still have the nerve to ask, "What do you do?" They're acting like they don't know, even though they came there to meet you! It just happened last night, actually. A lot of times, I tell them, "I'm an electrician. We're traveling and have a conference in town ..."

Dale, have you ever tried that line?

Earnhardt: No. [Laughs.] I haven't had to do that just yet.

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Photograph by Peter Gregoire for USA WEEKEND