Me and my cars

Honest, they were in a display case.

My wife and I are going to be moving, which means we're working on boxing stuff up. Today, that included my collection of die-cast cars. 

With the exception of a couple Randy LaJoie cars and a Robby Gordon, all my cars of Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick. I mostly get them as Christmas and birthday gifts, unless I see a good deal somewhere, like when I was able to grab a couple Harvick cars (including an autographed one) on clearance at the Childress museum last year. I actually have a couple that aren't shown here, but since I just got them for Christmas and knew I would be packing them up, anyway, I didn't bother taking them out.

Fortunately for both my parents' and my bank accounts, I'm not a completist; I basically get the stuff I like. I still don't have any Harvick No. 4 cars, something I obviously have to rectify, and in addition to whatever current cars I add to the collection, I'd like to grab the Earnhardt Wheaties car, the Earnhardt Jr. and Harvick ACDelco cars and maybe a Ron Hornaday NAPA truck if I can find them somewhere.

As I looked over the collection spread out on our TV room floor, for all the color (and yes, I have four cars with Wrangler-themed paint schemes), the one that jumped out at me was mostly white.

Mine

The original

This may sound crazy, but I don't think Kevin Harvick has ever gotten enough credit for what he did.

The most-popular driver in the sport had just died during the Daytona 500, the entire sport and its fans were in mourning and Richard Childress, instead of finding a veteran to finish out the season and buy time until he could decide on a permanent driver, turned to Harvick, his 25-year-old, second-year Busch Series driver.

Not only did he have to start racing a white No. 29 car that just the last week had been the iconic black No. 3, he was keeping his full-time Busch Series ride.

So all he did was win his third Cup start in a you-remember-where-you-were-when-it-happened moment, finish in the top 10 in Cup points and take the Busch Series title ... with reminders of what was lost and whose car he was driving present every week. (How Dale Jr., who, after all, lost his father, managed is beyond my feeble comprehension.)

Harvick couldn't replace Dale Earnhardt -- an impossibility if there ever was one -- but he and Dale Jr. (remember the trip back to Daytona that season?) at least gave his fans something to celebrate.

Three of my favorites

On his new blog, Joe Posnanski is asking people to write about their favorite athletes in 100 words or less.

I've already written about mine, Don Mattingly, in far more than 100 words, but I'll give it a shot with three others who are favorites both because of their greatness and because of the connections they have led to.

* * * * *

Jerseys of two pretty good players ...  and Diana Taurasi

For me, Diana Taurasi is women's basketball.

I never followed it until I started dating the future Mrs. Last Honest, who is a massive Connecticut fan, and so it was that one of the first games I watched was the UConn-Tennessee game Dec. 31, 2000. when Taurasi, a freshman, sparked the Huskies off the bench.

It was love (basketball love, that is) at first sight.

And there's so much to love: her shooting, her passing, her fun, her devilish sense of humor. And by the good fortune of when I started dating my wife, I've been there from the start.

* * * * *

Gilmour ... Dougie Gilmour

My junior and senior years in college, we only took breaks from hockey on the Sega for several things: classes, eating, sleeping, the radio station, going out occasionally ...

... and "Hockey Night in Canada."

One of the stations we got locally aired the CBC, which meant Saturday night hockey, which usually meant the Toronto Maple Leafs. Hard as it may be to believe, the Leafs were really good in those years, and Doug Gilmour was the leader of the pack, passing, scoring, hitting and throwing his body all over the ice.

Me and my boys couldn't get enough.

* * * * *

I wish I could have seen more of these.

When I was growing up, my father and I watched baseball. As I got older, he drifted away from baseball and toward Michael Jordan, who I hated.

Then he got into NASCAR, and drew me into it. It gave us something to talk about, and since Dale Earnhardt was his favorite driver, he became mine. A thrill of my first NASCAR race in Dover was seeing Earnhardt come out for second-round qualifying, which he rarely did back then.

We didn't see him win like he did in his best days, but we had Bristol, Talladega and, of course, Daytona.

Jimmie Johnson hatred is no shock

In the hours before what is surely going to be 400 miles of insomnia therapy at Indianapolis Motor Speedway today -- hint to NASCAR, please go back to Eldora, but don't make it the week of Indianapolis unless you want the Brickyard 400 to keep suffering in comparison -- I came across this on the Twitter machine.

@JennaFryer amazingly enough, JG is now less hated than 5-time.
— Adam Samrov (@asamrov) July 28, 2013

JJ is Jimmie Johnson, and JG is Jeff Gordon, but unlike Mr. Samrov, I'm not the least bit surprised that Johnson is not hated more than Gordon. In fact, it's only logical if you look at history.

Probably the primary complaint about Johnson is that he wins too much, much like Gordon back when he was dominating. Unless it's who you root for, what's the point of watching if you know who is going to win all the time? It's not as easy (or as much fun) to hate Gordon now, since he doesn't win that much.

(Strangely enough, my mother was a big Gordon fan back in the day but swore off NASCAR last year because she got tired of Johnson winning. The illogical nature of this has been pointed out to her multiple times, but I fear still may be lost on her.)

Now add that Johnson, much like Gordon was, is much more successful than all his Hendrick Motorsports teammates (one in particular, who we'll get to later), and it's not hard for fans to think that he's so good because he's getting all the best stuff and leaving the other drivers with leftovers.

In Ray Evernham and Chad Knaus, Gordon and Johnson, respectively, had or have crew chiefs who always seem to always make the right move and are willing to push the rulebook right to its limits. True, Evernham was never suspended for cheating like Knaus has been, but then again, does anyone remember the T-Rex?

Sure, it was legal, but NASCAR told Hendrick to never race it again.

Both Gordon and Johnson have been thought of as being "too slick" or "too polished," which I actually don't think is fair to Johnson. Gordon's old interviews sounded like they were programmed by some PR firm, and Johnson seems to have a decent sense of humor about the #BlameJJ hashtag on Twitter.

Rained out... #BlameJJ
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) June 30, 2013

Say what!?!? Find a new store ASAP. “@Dodgechic49: @JimmieJohnson @twitter The liquor store is out of my beer. #BlameJJ”
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) June 3, 2013

That's a big 10/4 “@brettonscott88: can I use the #BlameJJ excuse when I forget to take out the trash or finish the "honey-do" list?
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) June 3, 2013

Yes it's my fault @Twitter crashed... #BlameJJ
— Jimmie Johnson (@JimmieJohnson) June 3, 2013

And you also can't forget the Earnhardt factor. When Gordon was coming up, Dale Earnhardt was the main man in NASCAR, and here was this kid, this milk-drinker knocking their man off the throne. That will earn you some hate.

Now Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are not only teammates, but shop-mates, yet Earnhardt somehow never manages to have cars as good as Johnson, and we Earnhardt Jr. fans are still waiting for Johnson to repay him for the finish at Talladega in 2011, pretty sure it's never going to happen. (This is a frequent topic of conversation between That_Sports_Chick and myself on Twitter.)

They share a shop, but seemingly not much else.

Basically, Jimmie Johnson is what Jeff Gordon used to be in the eyes of a lot of NASCAR fans. That's why they hate him.