Earnhardt to retire at end of season
Regardless of the playing field, regardless of the stature of the champion, it is the last act of a career in professional sports that is most difficult to master. How does an athlete know when to quit? How does the star recognize that dreaded sweet spot, just before the joy is lost and before time and age, in their inexorable way, start chipping away at a legacy?
With Tuesday's announcement that he will retire at season's end, NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr., 42, got it right, executing the tricky final turn of a high-risk career.
"It's really simple: I wanted the opportunity to go out on my own terms," Earnhardt said, alluding to the third diagnosed concussion of his racing career — one that cost him the second half of the 2016 season.
As he grappled with his months-long recovery, Earnhardt told reporters, he confronted the possibility that his racing career could end "without me so much as getting a vote at the table." And during that time, he said he came to understand what was truly important: the love and support of his longtime girlfriend, now his wife; the support of his teammates, family and friends; and the opportunity to recover to the point that he could regain "some semblance of say-so" about his career's end.
His decision made, Earnhardt will bow out after 18 seasons in stock-car racing's elite ranks. Excluding what success is in store in the 28 races that remain on the 2017 Cup schedule, his career record will stand at 26 wins, including two Daytona 500 victories, but no NASCAR championship.
If there was a loser in Tuesday's announcement, it was NASCAR.
Earnhardt is the sport's third star to retire in the past two years, following four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon in 2015 and three-time champion Tony Stewart last season.
Meantime, TV ratings and race-day attendance are on a decade-long slide. The erosion started when NASCAR's third-generation owners abandoned many of the sport's traditional Southern short tracks in favor of gleaming superspeedways built in major markets such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. They opened corporate offices in Hollywood and New York. And they learned, too late, that they'd alienated their core fan base.
Even before Tuesday's announcement, former Charlotte Motor Speedway President H.A. Humpy Wheeler had been scanning the current crop of drivers, looking for the next generation's star.
"I haven't seen it yet," said Wheeler, regarded as the sport's greatest promoter, in a telephone interview. "To find out about NASCAR, you have to go to the small towns of the South, to the mountains of Appalachia. I go to those places, and I hear what they have to say. They're not as enthused as they were. They're looking for another (Dale) Earnhardt Sr.," Earnhardt's legendary father who died tragically in the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
"Dale Jr. wasn't the boy next door. He was the farm-boy next door," Wheeler said. "We needed that because NASCAR had gotten away from our roots, and that hurt us badly in some ways. With his father's demise, we needed an Earnhardt badly. He was a breath of fresh air when we really needed it."