Mark has come as close as anybody has recently to doing just that.
Some people have been convinced that banning autographs from the Winston Cup garage area is a capital idea.
That's an idea that race fans hate, and some understand their
position. While it's true that Winston Cup drivers are more
accessible to fans than almost any other type of famous
athlete, it's still tough for the average fan to get close
enough to a driver to get his signature. Making the garage
area off-limits to that would make such encounters even more
rare.Which brings up Mark's point.
"I know that if you take autographs out of the garage, all you do is create a worse feeding frenzy the minute you step through that fence," Mark said. "It's going to be 10 times worse then. Then I don't know you'd get to pit road to qualify, to drivers' introductions or to our cars."
Absolutely right. If fans can't get hats and T-shirts and trading cars and die-cast cars signed in the garage area, drivers automatically become prisoners in the off-limit portions of a race track. Anyone who ventures outside those protected areas will automatically be besieged.
Looking at it from that perspective, allowing fans in the garage during only certain portions of the day might create the worst of both worlds. Fans would be eager to get their bric-a-brac signed during the hours they're allowed in, then move to the outside and create the kind of gauntlet that Mark fears on top of that.
So what can be done to help the drivers deal with the sometimes odious demands placed on their time by eager fans?
"I don't have the answer," Mark says. "If I did, I would say, `Hey, you guys be quiet. Here's what you need to do.' "
Mark doesn't want anybody to think he's taking one side against another on the issue. He doesn't want to be pushed into that role the way Tony Stewart has been pushed into prominence on the other side.
When Stewart speaks on this issue, he's saying what's on is mind. Mark is doing the same thing, and he's speaking only from his own experience.
"It was overwhelming for me in 1990," Mark said. "I almost drowned. We ran for the championship with (Dale) Earnhardt and it was big. And it was very intense and it was a dramatic experience for my family and I to go through. Since then, nothing has been quite the same." Perhaps because Mark has the benefit of 390 more Winston Cup starts than Stewart, Mark sounds like a man who has come to terms with what he's facing.
"We do the best that we can to manage it," Mark says. "You know you hear that so-and-so is a sellout? Well, to be a Winston Cup driver you sell your privacy forever. It's gone. That's it, it will not ever, ever be the same again.
"I sold mine (privacy). It's gone. I accept it. I don't like it but, hey, I've been around for a long, long time. It's no surprise to me. I didn't wake up this morning and realize it was gone. It has been slipping away since 1989."
Mark has also learned to accept the inevitable conflicts between the fans' desire for access and the growing popularity of Winston Cup racing.
"Times have changed," said Mark, who can remember staying
around after American Speed Association races and signing
autographs for everybody who wanted one. "That's when maybe
3,000 people would be there that night. Now we have 3,000
people in the garage."We can't service everybody who wants what they want. That's frustrating for the fans and frustrating for the drivers because no matter what we do, we can't do enough.
"It's not that we don't want to, it's that you can't. When you've got 30 seconds and you look at 100 people standing there, what do you do? Do you sign one? Do you sign 100? Or do you just sign none?
"You don't have a good choice left in situations like that. I don't know what to do. Sometimes I just do the kids. Sometimes I can't even do that. Sometimes I do the kids and the parents swear at me. You can't win. It's physically impossible for us to do the exact right thing."
Maybe the right answer doesn't have anything to do with any kind of rules or policies that NASCAR might right or enforce.
Maybe the only real solution is for everybody involved to remember that one thing that makes NASCAR special is that the fans and its competitors still have a genuine affinity for one another.
If the fans are willing to do their part, the drivers will almost certainly do theirs. If fans give drivers a little bit of room when they need it the most and remember that a "please" and a "thank you" will still do wonders, then most drivers will be as accessible as they can be and still get their jobs done.
