Earnhardt sacrificed to our need for thrills

The great race driver Dale Earnhardt did not just die in a crash during the Daytona 500 two weeks ago; he was sacrificed to our collective need for progressive thrills in professional sports. The national grief we have felt is in part our guilt that he died giving us those thrills, and that we were right there with him, urging him on, until he crashed. At that point he was on his own.

“The Intimidator,” as he was called, was no babe from the woods on the issue of risk. He was a big boy playing with big boy toys. He refused to use some available safety equipment in his racing car. He supported impact-absorbing walls around race tracks but scorned efforts to control race speeds, and challenged the bravery of those who supported speed controls. He made millions of dollars and millions of fans using the same aggressive racing techniques that ultimately killed him. None of us is responsible for the fact that there are cars that go 190 mph and men who will drive them that fast. It is not our fault that the human body was not made to hit a wall at 190 mph.

We are responsible, however, for our need for progressive risk and violence in professional (and other) sports to keep us interested enough to watch them. Earnhardt put the pedal to the metal for us, and died in part because someone needs to crash once in a while to remind us how dangerous and thrilling it is to drive 190 mph in a pack of racing machines always inches away from a 30 car pileup. He died in part because it can be reasonably asked whether millions would watch if no driver ever crashed.

Auto racing is not the only professional sport in which progressive risk of athlete injury and violence are thinly disguised marketing tools. Violence has become to sports what the bikini is to bathing suits, and we shouldn’t be more surprised at the resulting fistfights, injuries, crashes, and deaths than we are to see most of someone’s rear end at the beach. The National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are less deadly than auto racing only because no one has yet discovered a pair of legs that can move a player at 190mph. All have allowed escalating levels of player confrontation, violence, and deliberate injury, and then used it to sell the sports.

The television networks have been willing, active participants. The new XFL is the concept turned into an entire football league by NBC. Jesse Ventura, ex-Navy Seal and ex-wrestler, is its commentator because he can hype confrontation and violence, not because NBC wanted to know if someone with the football insight of a turnip could be a football commentator. (Ventura will find ideal work as a commentator only when we begin televising mean dogs chasing small cars.)

The wider the range of tolerated dangerous behavior the more frequently we will see extremes of behavior. It should be no surprise to anyone that the NHL, which has tolerated players and hitting techniques designed to injure other players, occasionally barfs up a player who takes a swing at his opponent’s head with a hockey stick and almost kills him. No one should be surprised that a football league which highlights brutal hits and fails to adequately penalize for them produces players who occasionally (often?) tackle in ways designed to injure their opponents. No one should be surprised that Dale Earnhardt finally failed to walk away from a crash.

The prevalence of violence and injury will increase if we do not want and demand something better, but with any luck Earnhardt ran this country’s collective recklessness about risk in professional sports into the wall with him. Every sport carries with it a threat of player injury. The question is how much threat of injury is tolerable, and what level must be tolerated for the game to be played well? Can the NFL be reasonably safe without looking like water ballet? The answer is obviously yes.

While we will never eliminate risk of injury in sports, we should be willing to reasonably limit risk, and to get more of our thrills from the chase and fewer from the crash. We should do so out of grief for Earnhardt and others like him, and because the violence and risk are degrading the games and the races.

We should do so because such deaths are unnecessary and partly our fault, just as surely as if we had steered Earnhardt’s car toward the wall and stepped on the gas. We should do so because our children want to be just like him. Vrooom, vroooom, indeed.

Erik Steele, D.O. is the administrator for emergency services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and is on the staff for emergency department coverage at six hospitals in the Bangor Daily News coverage area.