NASCAR needs to cut back on California Dreaming

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Unfortunately, due to some terrible weather, poor track conditions and bad circumstances, we've added a new word to the NASCAR language -- weepers.If you're still in a fog -- or mist, downpour or other inclement weather pattern -- after the weekend in California, weepers are best described as water seepage through the track. Really, though, weepers sounds like fans of Sylvia Plath or Dick Vermeil -- a gloomy poet who committed suicide and a coach who isn't hesitant to let the tear flow.But it's really hard these days to feel sorry for any non-fatal problem that occurs at California Speedway -- wait, that's Auto Club Speedway as of last week. Sorry, the corporate sponsorship tag hasn't completely sunk in yet.It's fairly easy -- and justifiable -- to feel this way if you've ever attended a race at Rockingham, enjoying good racing in the peaceful sand hills of lower North Carolina. Or ever stepped on the old shell-encrusted pavement at Darlington, not the new surface, and wondered in amazement, "How can tires last even a lap or two on this stuff?"The 2004 season signaled the beginning of our overexposure to the California racetrack that can no longer fill grandstands and has been doomed with bad weather. That was the first season we started watching two races annually from Fontana and the same time races at Rockingham and Darlington started to disappear.While the Academy was handing out Oscars in Hollywood on Sunday night to the Coen brothers and Daniel Day-Lewis, the Auto Club Speedway was filming its own flicks: "No Country for Good Racing" and "There Will Be Weepers."The time has come for NASCAR to re-evaluate its bi-annual presence in the country's second-largest broadcast market, not to remove the track completely but to move one of the race's somewhere else, somewhere better. LA's the same market that can't support a professional football team and has a hard time getting excited over its sports.Sure, they packed the house in 1997 when the new novelty of NASCAR rolled into Southern California, but those days -- ones when the sport's ratings and interest were sizzling -- are gone. Fans were willing to check out a race once a year, but coming back a second time over Labor Day weekend? They have better things to do, like show up late for a Dodgers game.And it's no beef with California, especially not Los Angeles. I spent many perfect days as a youngster running around Dodgertown trying to get a spring training autograph from Dusty Baker or Ron Cey, and the Magic Johnson-led Lakers were a highlight waiting to happen on every 3-on-2 fast break, so LA was a sports fantasyland over 2,600 miles away.But weepers? After six months of getting ready to race, SoCal's representative superspeedway ruins a weekend with weepers?Weepers now joins NASCAR's rich but unusual lexicon, which is filled with head-scratchers like "blowed up," "extry" (a Larry McReynolds-ism), "get up on the wheel," "hospital hop," and, of course," "Boogity, boogity, boogity."Sadly, the real weepers are those of us who have watched much better racing somewhere other than California.(Bill Whitehead covers NASCAR for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. E-mail him at wwhitehe@ircc.net.)