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In all my years of watching stock car races and writing about them, I think I've heard two sentences more than any others, and both of them are well-intentioned lies.

That's a bit harsh. Fibs. They're fibs. Maybe just wishful thinking.

One is, "I don't know what you saw, but from where I was sitting, it was a great race." Usually, this is a comment made after a race that was, at best, a Great Caesar's Ghost.

It isn't, of course, an out-and-out lie. It's just that the perspective is skewed. One would hope that a man sitting in a cockpit, driving at breakneck speed in close proximity to other, similarly rapid automobiles, would not be tempted to nod off, though, if that happened, it would certainly explain lots of crashes.

Of course it's exciting from where the driver is sitting. Unfortunately, auto racing is a spectator sport, and the focus of its popularity is in what the spectators, either on site or in living rooms, think.

The drivers, man, they just want to race. They'd do it for nothing, though they haven't. The fans? They just want to watch. Not only do they do it for nothing. It costs them a lot.

The other sentence, invariably made by a sympathetic driver regarding another's slump, is, "I'll personally guarantee you that [insert fading star] didn't forget how to drive a race car."

Time takes its toll. Time offers no wave-arounds. Toby Keith probably sang it best: "I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

The best a guy can hope for is a last hurrah. Ask Peyton Manning. He knew the way to do it. At the end, his best offense was a good defense. He brought a Super Bowl home, despite all the hooks and crooks in his body. That’s the way to go.

We want our heroes to be gallant forever. The ones who stay active last longer. It's inevitable, though, that heroes fade away. They all race Father Time, and they all lose.

Fans often say things like, "Well, Jeff Gordon's retiring. I reckon that's it for me." I remember feeling such remorse as David Pearson's career faded, but then, what do you know? It wasn't long before I was stashing frequent-flyer miles and bouncing from one race track to the next with a band of gypsies that slowly got respectable over time.

It was more fun when they were a bit disreputable. It was the Land Before Talking Points, which isn't far from The Valley of Gwangi and The Land That Time Forgot. I remember when Warlords of Atlantis ran NASCAR. Now it's more like The Office.