Columnist Ron Kantowski: Conspiracy theories do not hold up

Tuesday, July 10, 2001 | 10:18 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

The way the national media responded to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s victory in Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway -- the same track on which his legendary father was killed five months ago -- you would have thought his crew chief were Oliver Stone.

One of the widely held beliefs in Winston Cup racing is that certain drivers or teams, when it behooves NASCAR, are given "The Call" -- a euphemism for officials allowing a team to bend the rules and then looking the other way during the postrace inspection.

Many casual observers believe that Earnhardt Jr. must have gotten The Call on Saturday, figuring that it was the least NASCAR could do to pay homage to his late father and his legions of loyal fans.

It's true that Junior had a Magic Bullet under the hood of his Budweiser Chevy. But he also had a dominant engine during the Daytona 500 in February, when he finished second.

Junior's car had so much horsepower on Saturday night that he might have pitted for oats instead of gas. Yet I still believe his victory was legit. In NASCAR, guys who run strong on a particular track during the spring usually run just as strong on that track in the summer, or whenever they next return.

Micah Roberts, a local auto racing authority who sets the racing betting lines for Station Casinos, said he has received numerous calls from sports writers around the country, asking about "The Fix" at Daytona.

"It's getting irritating, because these writers who cover the sport don't even have enough sense to figure things out based on the numbers," Roberts said.

Roberts then went into the statistics for the three NASCAR restrictor plate (metal devices designed to limit air flow to the engine) races held so far, which illustrate Earnhardt Jr.'s dominance in those events.

"He is the only driver since his father died to show any consistency on the superspeedways," Roberts said. "His father knew more about superspeedways than anyone, and (Junior's) car was set up from his father's notes. It was inevitable he would eventually win an aero-race."

Then Roberts noted the intangible factor. "He was in a zone for that race for reasons we can all understand."

No argument here. But if Dave Marcis (a retiring journeyman driver) finishes in the top 5 in his final race at Daytona next February, they'll have to park his car on the Grassy Knoll.

Williams asked Helton "Are you worried (about catastrophic injuries) when you go home from work, given the death rate in two years?"

To which Helton replied: "Not about that as much as the tumult created from it. But certainly I have a deep sincere interest, as everybody in NASCAR does, to find an answer for it not to happen again."

The first part of Helton's answer almost reads like "We could deal with people getting killed in our sport, as long as nobody in the press complains about it."

But Helton's statement wasn't quite as inflammatory as NASCAR chief Bill France Jr.'s brush-off of a question regarding the Earnhardt investigation during race weekend at California Speedway in May.

"I'm not going to talk to you about any of that stuff ..." France said. "So just mosey on back to the media center, because we've got a lot more to do than mess with that --- damn (expletive)."

France and Helton were close friends of Earnhardt's, but that doesn't mean they couldn't benefit from some sensitivity training in talking about their fallen buddy.

Well, I was right. Sort of. According to a fax I received from J. Jeffrey Tate of Las Vegas, Phoenix, with four major league teams, has an infinite number more than Las Vegas, not four times as many.

Writes Tate: "If, as you state, Phoenix enjoys a 4-to-1 ratio over Las Vegas, yet we have no major league teams, logically zero equals one; that is, it matters not whether Las Vegas has no major league teams or that is has one, in either situation you claim that the ratio is 4-to-1. That is clearly absurd.

"Anyway," Tate wrote in closing, "good article."

I'm not here to argue with you, J. Jeffrey. I was just hoping you could explain how to set my VCR.

Last week, the Ferris wheel at Comerica Park in Detroit get stuck, and firefighters had to use a cherry picker to rescue riders. Then two parachutists crashed while trying to land at Miller Park in Milwaukee during the pregame gimmick -- er, festivities.

As Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News points out, if they tried sticking to baseball at these ballparks instead of staging extracurricular shenanigans, perhaps it might free up firemen for more important tasks -- like putting out fires, for instance.