Mike Hembree: Jimmie, we hardly knew ye
By Mike Hembree - Associate Editor
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
DENVER – OK, the flight has landed. It’s snowing in the high mountains. But this can’t wait.
The girl’s name was Susie. At least those in her giggly traveling group called her that. Her brunette hair was long, and it was tied and
wrapped into a ponytail that had been weaved through the sizing hole in the back of her dark blue cap.
The cap? Unknowingly, it told of the fun to come. It had “Lowe’s” on the side and a bright yellow 48 on the front.
She wound up in seat 14A, which, remarkably in the modern math of current-day airline confusion, happens to be directly in front of 15A. Which happens to be quite unfortunate for the resident of 15A.
Susie apparently is on her way to Denver for a vacation, but she is not a happy skier. And it is contagious.
She has watched every Sprint Cup race this season, she is telling her seatmates, and, like, she is, like, so depressed. Her man, Jimmie Johnson, hasn’t done a thing, she says. Like, not even a win. Like, wow.
That’s seven races. Three top fives, to be sure. But no wins, and that’s attention-grabbing when you’re the two-time defending series champion.
“I may, like, quit watching,” Susie said to no one in particular, her giggly traveling mates having retreated to books and magazines.
By now, everyone is hoping she quits talking, too.
That is not happening. And it is not happening loudly.
“Like, I don’t understand it,” she said, as several nearby passengers looked longingly at the gate as the plane backed away. “Last year, like, none of them [presumably this refers to Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates] could lose. Now none of them can win. Like, what is it?”
If anyone knows (or cares), they don’t share their information with her.
She is irritated, clearly, perhaps as much as a surly Transportation Security Administration agent with hemorrhoids.
The guy in 13-A puts on his headphones.
Indeed, the statistics are somewhat ugly for those who expected Johnson to steamroll through another season. He finished second at Texas Sunday, and he’s a cozy sixth in points, but the stars are decidedly not aligned for Johnson at the moment, and that big zero in his win column becomes more noticeable with each passing (or, non-passing, as it were) week.
Can it be that Hendrick Motorsports has lost the handle on the new car and that Roush Fenway Racing has found it (maybe just by accident on some toolbox in the garage)?
You can argue that Carl Edwards has found it, thanks to his general excellence this year and the way he pounded the competition like so many tiny pretenders in Texas.
It all adds up to a miserable flight for those who are flying the friendly skies with, like, Susie.
“Like, I just don’t know about it,” she said.
Jimmie? Like, win, please. Soon.
