Embrace the role of the villain

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Nearly five years ago Kurt Busch — that would be the Busch brother from Las Vegas who doesn’t win races anymore — was feuding with Jimmy Spencer and trying to win back NASCAR fans who never liked him in the first place.

I wrote a column suggesting he should just embrace the villain’s role, which worked pretty well for guys like Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace and Jeff Gordon and even The Man Himself. Yes, there was a time before Dale Earnhardt became a deity in a fire suit when he was despised and reviled by stock car racing fans for flagrant acts of intimidation behind the wheel.

But besides Kurt being curt with a couple of sheriff’s deputies in Phoenix, he by and large has been on his best behavior since he started driving for Roger Penske, who sort of insists on that. He got his ears fixed and his attitude adjusted ... and became Todd Bodine with talent. He’s 22nd in the point standings, four spots behind Travis Kvapil, who drives an unsponsored car, and six spots behind Juan Montoya, who hails from Colombia — the one with an “o.”

Kurt Busch has become yesterday’s bad news.

His kid brother, on the other hand, is today’s bad news. He has his face on every wanted poster from Kannapolis to Talladega.

To paraphrase Ali MacGraw in the movies, Kyle Busch knows stock car racing is never having to say you’re sorry.

Oh, I once had my doubts about the lad. I remember my last one-on-one interview with The Shrub/Rowdy/Wild Thing/Charles Manson on Wheels or whatever nickname he’s answering to this week. It was during a break in testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before his rookie season. Back before he traveled with a police escort and you could get an interview with him just by asking if he had a minute.

This was when Kurt still was acting petulant and winning races. Young Kyle said he hoped to learn from his brother on both counts, that he wanted to win but hoped he could do it in such a manner that people wouldn’t chuck beers and chicken bones at his car when he took a victory lap. Don’t paint me with the same brush as my brother, he said. We’re different people.

Yes and no. Kyle is what Kurt was before the public relations seminars.

I remember writing that Kurt Busch should quit apologizing, because he didn’t grow up at Columbia with a “u” and that people in the Carolinas were never going to like him anyway because, like Gordon, he was an outsider. I wrote he might as well spin out Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the last lap at Daytona and be done with it.

Young Kyle must have been reading. Only it was Richmond, not Daytona. And it was on lap 398 (of 410) instead of lap 199 when he put The Intimidator’s kid plumb smack into the wall two weeks ago. It just might have been the biggest crash since Wall Street in ’29, at least down in those parts.

NASCAR fans were getting pretty fed up with young Kyle anyway, because he had been winning all those races while Junior was finishing seventh or eighth. But when Little B punted Little E into the wall as the two raced side by side for the win, the commonwealth of Virginia let him have it. It was like Patrick Henry at the House of Burgesses. Only these Virginians weren’t much interested in giving young Kyle liberty or anything that resembled it.

Giving him death, on the other hand, had crossed their minds.

Young Kyle needed a police escort to and from the post-race interview session, which he thought was pretty cool. The escort, not the interview session. It was sort of like the scene in “Slapshot” where the Hanson Brothers are led away in handcuffs, smiling from ear to ear. At Saturday’s race at Darlington, young Kyle encouraged those NASCAR fans to boo louder after his name was announced. Then he went out and won the race while Dale Jr. finished fourth.

“If I win, it just makes ’em more upset and crying on their way home,” young Kyle said.

He gets it. If you can’t be the good guy in NASCAR, you might as well be the bad guy. Besides, the bad guys sell more T-shirts and die-cast cars.

It’s like those “Batman” movies. Anybody can be Batman. But without Jack Nicholson as the Joker or Danny DeVito as the Penguin or Jim Carrey as the Riddler or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, about all you have is Michael Keaton or George Clooney or Val Kilmer running around Gotham City in a silly-looking costume.

That’s about as exciting as watching Todd Bodine run practice laps.