Tee'sReads          

 
Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with NASCAR
by Jeff MacGregor
HarperCollins (cover: $25.95; Amazon: $17.13)

Sportswriters have long found readers fascinated by disquisitions on various sports and the cultures that grow up around them. Perhaps originating from George Plimpton's 1964 "Paper Lion," in which the most famous jock wannabe gave us an insider's view of professional football, the genre has taken on some worthy and riveting subjects.


It's also taken off like reality TV. Whether the topic is the cult of prep football (Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights"), the hyping of high school hoops (Frey's "The Last Shot"), or the cutting edge of baseball management (Lewis' "Moneyball"), we are endlessly curious about the inner workings of the sports we follow and how those sports reflect back on us.

In "Sunday Money," Jeff MacGregor has tried to pull off a similar documentary-style feat -- and with an equally deserving and compelling topic, NASCAR racing. But while the ride the author takes us on is a whirlwind of keen and often hilarious observations, MacGregor ends up braking too often to rubberneck at scenes unrelated and irrelevant to his primary destination.

The promise of "Sunday Money" is tantalizing. Just what is the allure of NASCAR? I want to know. What is the purpose of driving 500 laps or miles or whatever, when races might hold one's attention longer if they were shorter? And how is it that today's stock-car drivers, maybe one or two generations away from hill-country shade-tree mechanics, are suddenly Madison Avenue sexpots calling themselves athletes? Who are these fans, swooning over the Dukes-of-Hazzard, good-ole-boy jive of drivers who in reality belong less to the ranks of the modern Confederacy than to the upper echelons of corporate shillery? And, finally, how is it that the dead Dale Earnhardt so quickly displaced the dead Elvis Presley as the favorite son of Deep-South sentimentalists? Really, I want to know.

To some degree, MacGregor knows what his readers want -- at least part of it anyway. And he delivers in spades the snarky assessment we crave of some of the dumber aspects of NASCAR and the characters who inhabit this exhaust-fogged, burnt-rubber-scented "sport." For instance, he takes a closer look at the "bad math" that "explains" how NASCAR has become America's #2 sport. And he nails the looks and manners of several of racing's demigods -- for instance, describing Richard Petty this way: "Richard Petty is a set of teeth coming at you. Big white teeth." And MacGregor is spot-on in portraying the women who prance through the teams' garage, called "Pit Lizards," naked in their ambition to attract the attention of someone, anyone rich. Also, he captures the very tedium even fans feel in watching just one entire race, let alone closely following NASCAR's stultifyingly long season.

Thing is, while apt, entertaining and sometimes even literary in his essayistic appraisals, these NASCAR snapshots have a way of ending up more like murals. They just take up too much space. MacGregor's physical description of Petty expands over two pages. Another two he spends sizing up a singular female race fan, an aging Dolly-Parton-type bleach blond, who may have been glamorous 30 years ago deep in the backwoods of Tennessee, but who now only seems a worn-out caricature. Throughout "Sunday Money," MacGregor literally has to interrupt his own reveries about his NASCAR-trailing travels and his and his wife's trevails in owning a motorhome to tell us, in stingy McNugget-sized bites, the history of NASCAR racing. It's hard to think a writer could go overboard in describing the excesses of NASCAR, but MacGregor's exuberance spills onto whatever is in his sights, which in "Sunday Money" isn't limited to the subject at hand. The book seems more like a thinly-veiled paean to Tom Wolfe's hyper-caffeinated style than an insightful and amusing ethnography of a season at the races.

Which is exactly why I still don't know whether races consist of laps or miles or whatever. And why I'm still clueless about how the Cup championship points system works (or, I gather from additional reading, why it doesn't). Further, the dust jacket promises profiles of the lives of drivers -- but here we really do get only snapshots. For example, MacGregor skulks around Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s garage stall as well as his hometown, waiting for a Junior sighting, but he never gets anywhere. This may be because, as he admits early on, he doesn't have the Super-Sized Credentials that would get him into the main Media Centers; he sports creds that allow him to gather only "literary color." Nor do the drivers, who have second full-time jobs as Fortune 500 face men, seem inclined to do yet another interview. Most frustratingly, this book is basically three years old: MacGregor has followed the 2002 season, and updates some of the changes in the interim with one- to two-sentence quick hits in his epilogue. I might as well pluck "Ball Four" off the shelf again to see what today's MLB is all about.

MacGregor really is telling us the truth in the first chapter when he writes, "This is a book about our year on the road, my wife and me, chasing NASCAR. In a motorhome." NASCAR is only part of the picture. Readers aren't introduced to team owners until page 96, and for the most part these heavies disappear, never to be seen nor heard from again. MacGregor mentions drivers early on, but they don't see the spotlight until owners exit stage-right. And because MacGregor's mostly following his own capricious and wandering reactions throughout, we don't get a fully-blown narrative sense of any of the drivers or their teams or the season. Only a snapshot of Daytona or Talladega here, a portrait-in-miniature of Tony Stewart there, then MacGregor and his wife manuever their unwieldy teal moho "Homer" on the road again.

What I missed most here, though, was a deeper look inside NASCAR fandom. MacGregor points out that NASCAR fans are attracted to the sort of old-school, spit-in-yer-eye Southern whiskey-runner ideal that went out of fashion in the 1970s. But he doesn't dig in to find out why they cling so tightly to this long-dead cultural icon. Are stock-car racing fans like middle-aged white men who still rock out to "Stairway to Heaven" and "Thunderstruck"? Holding on to a white-shrouded past they've known long enough now to finally feel comfortable with? Afraid of change, and thus terrified by a contemporary and, shall we say, more colorful pop culture? I want to know who these people are and why they are the way they are. NASCAR nation has come to be known by a different descriptor in another arena of American life -- as Red-Staters, and MacGregor had a perfect opportunity to decode for us at least one perhaps telling aspect of their values -- why they prefer this particular and particularizing sporting entertainment. Instead the author seems satisfied by what his eyes tell him, not all that unlike casual fans who are mesmerized by the dazzling colors of a racecar, but haven't got the sustained curiosity to check out what's under the hood.

Usually I finish books in this genre feeling like an insider and wanting to look firsthand into whatever subject I'd witnessed only vicariously through reading. With "Sunday Money," though, I found myself wanting to know more simply because, for all its bloated musings, the book didn't provide ample substance. Reading MacGregor's flights of fancy was like gorging myself on candy-store treats when what I was really in the mood for was a light lunch.
 

 
Lance Armstrong’s War: One Man’s Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France
By Daniel Coyle
HarperCollins (cover: $25.95; Amazon: $15.57)

The cover design of Daniel Coyle’s new book is perfect. Lance Armstrong in profile, his helmet on and Oakleys shading his eyes, and an earbud in place. Riding in a storm, rain dripping from that sharp nose and chin, breathing hard. But for his effort, inscrutable.



Because the Tour de France lasts only three weeks per year – and it’s in, well, France -- we don’t see as much of Armstrong as we do other American sports icons, like Barry Bonds or Tiger Woods. And what we do see of him is either filtered or only the teeniest bit of pure Lance – that is, the man on his bike, dancing on his pedals and breaking everybody’s balls on steep climbs and in time trials.

The filtered version, of course, rules. We’ve come to know this Lance through his endorsements – especially in a number of compelling Nike ads (also here and here) – as well as through his two memoirs (both best sellers), the celebrity-pages pics of him with Sheryl Crow, and his cancer foundation, which is responsible for lassoing the wrists of more than 30 million adoring fans with yellow rubber LiveStrong bracelets.

Pure Lance is harder to pin down. He’s a world-class athlete whose enlarged heart, superior lung capacity, limited lactate build-up and sheer determination in the face of opposition seem to know no bounds. This Lance beat testicular cancer, a disease which had spread to the extent that it would have killed mere mortals. And this Lance has since won seven Tours de France.

We know Lance Armstrong as one of the best athletes of all time, as an inspirational philanthropist, and as the Regular Joe he generally presents himself to be, but Daniel Coyle was interested in a more distilled picture. As all cyclists must appreciate, Coyle wanted the streamlined version, less burdened by the weight of Armstrong’s renown. Coyle wanted to know what made Lance tick – and to find out, he followed Armstrong for 15 months, through the Texan’s training for the 2004 Tour de France and Lance’s record sixth win.

What he found wasn’t so much what makes Lance tick as what ticks him off. Like Achilles in the "Iliad," Armstrong is all or nothing. Total devotion to his sport, and a zeal to win that is unmatched. Utter contempt for his rivals and enemies. Absolute fury at whosoever is fool enough to question or doubt him. Thus the subtitle of Coyle’s book, though breathtaking in its length and breadth, is as perfect in its way as the cover photo.

Nope, sorry, hate to tell ya, but Lance Armstrong isn’t Prince Charming. He calls his rivals "fucking chumps," even after having made them eat his dust in last year’s Tour. It’s as if winning isn’t good enough – Lance has to make them pay for ever thinking they had a chance against him. And rivals are not the only sworn enemies. Armstrong has left a bike trail of broken friendships and professional relationships in his wake that makes one wonder how he’s remained untouched through seven years at the top of the cycling world. How has he not alienated someone with power enough to hurt him?

Not that some haven’t tried. The former assistant/mechanic, Mike Anderson, who claims he saw steroids in Armstrong’s bathroom cabinet. Lance’s ex-masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, who claimed she’d once taxied EPO to Lance and disposed of used syringes. Lance’s former hero, three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond, went public because his intuition tells him that Armstrong dopes. The Irish reporter David Walsh, once a fan of Armstrong, became famous as the author of "L.A. Confidentiel: Les secrets de Lance Armstrong," which uses an array of circumstantial evidence to implicate the Texan for doping. And SCA Promotions, the underwriter for half of a $10 million bonus Lance was to have received for winning his sixth Tour, later refused to pay up, citing the company’s own investigation of doping allegations. All of whom, as well as bevies of others, such as the French press, have entered the legions of what Lance himself likes to call "trolls" – those whom he believes are out to destroy him.

Coyle gives a fair hearing to both Anderson and Walsh in "War," though I didn’t find either especially compelling. More interesting is the season-long struggle Lance engages with his own teammate, Floyd Landis. The ever irascible Landis is having some growing pangs, the natural progression for a cyclist with his all-around talent. He is at pains to knuckle under to his team leader’s whims, which is exactly what a domestique must do if he rides for U.S. Postal. (Lance’s team changed sponsors, to the Discovery Channel, at the end of the 2004 season.) But Armstrong’s whims have a cruel streak when it comes to Landis, whom he once considered a close friend, but whom he also understands is challenging his supremacy. Postal had experienced the holes caused by other team members leaving to try their wings as the leaders of other teams – notably, Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, and Levi Leipheimer; however, none was indispensable. But because of Landis’ central role on the team, his chafing under Lance’s rule rubbed both ways – even if the Tough Guy Lance Armstrong was loath to admit it.

Coyle seems only to see Lance with his thumb on Landis, pressing until Floyd squeaks. And just as he gives the benefit of the doubt to Landis in "War," Coyle also feels for the Tour’s top-ranked second-placer, Jan Ullrich, and Basque homeboy Iban Mayo and whoever else fails to go to the extreme physical, mental and emotional lengths to which Armstrong will go to win the world’s most grueling race.

At the end of Coyle’s 15-month study, his subject asks him, "How do you like me now?" A dangerous question for someone aiming to get beyond hero-worship.

Coyle wants to be fair, and his book aptly and eloquently characterizes Armstrong’s considerable charm, wit and allure as well as his fanaticism about training and take-no-prisoners competitive drive. But it’s the Machiavellian quality of Lance’s management style and racing strategies that knock the writer off-kilter. Coyle seems to keep expecting to find the innocence and wonder in Lance that we tend to presume of our heroes. In another work by this author, "Hardball: A Season in the Projects," Coyle penned a vivid and compassionate story of a group of adolescent baseball players living in Chicago’s worst neighborhood. One would think the boys in this profile have no illusions about life, having spent their lives amidst crack addicts and violent crime, but Coyle finds in them an awe in their sport and its heroes as well as a belief in themselves beyond their immediate means that are refreshing and uplifting. In Lance Armstrong, he finds a man at the top of his game whose naivety is long gone – and Coyle himself doesn’t seem to know what sort of emotional adjustment to make as a result.

Now that we know, what do we do? Shall we continue to admire Lance? Be happy for him in his accomplishments? Inspired by his story? Or, conversely, curse his guile and callousness, and feel disenchanted? I’m not sure a crystalline version of either position is appropriate. Despite his seemingly superhuman physical makeup, Lance Armstrong is just a man – flawed, perhaps in spectacular ways, but also striving to connect with humanity, his own included.

Coyle’s book, while provocatively insightful and written with the best literary flair, is just one chapter in the trajectory of Armstrong’s extraordinary life. What will Lance do now that his superhuman powers are of little use? What new experiences will he have, and what new feelings and ideas will follow? What wonderment will capture him, this worldly man who may think he’s seen everything? At this point, we can only hope a writer as observant and skillful as Coyle will be around to chronicle those changes, whether or not he loses his faith as a result.