Golly gee !!! To think I blew right by this thread until boB pointed it out.
As I understand meaning of the comments from both Tiny and boB, they wonder how fans would react to actually working on a Winston Cup team or being associated in some other capacity if they find so much excitement in the mere sight of a Winston Cup show car or taking a tour of a race team facility.
To enthusiasts like Tiny and boB, anyone with less than twenty years of actual hands-on asssociation in racing, including the Winston Cup series might be a "newbie".
Guys like Tiny and boB are used to being involved directly with the sport and because of that type of contact in different forms of racing, accept thier involvement as an everyday occurance. To them, seeing a race car and being involved raises the pulse rate, but the sight of a show car or a visit to a team race shop causes little or no variation in blood pressure or excitement level.
There are so many "late bloomer fans" involved in the sport, it is harder and harder to find fans from another era. That is, the era of Tiny and boB. To some people, a "newbie" is someone with less than ten years as a fan. For others, it is someone who knows the sport from an experience that can only be gleened with time, yet many consider a "newbie" to be someone who knows less about the sport than they do and the length of time as a fan has no bearing on the final analysis.
Both Tiny and boB have both been around so long they cannot get the grease from under thier fingernails. Tiny got his shooting races and bob wasn't happy if he wasn't rolling around in the dirt under a race car. Of course, for those of you who have never seen Winston Cup cars race on dirt might miss the point here. But for those of us old enough to remember those scenes, you are "newbies". Keep in mind, it is all relative.
The "newbies" who are too young or not fans long enough to recall those days considered those of us who do, "old fartz". And someday, if you remain fans after the next sport craze takes the place of NASCAR, yes, you too could graduate from being "newbies" to the worldly(?) status known as "old fartz". Isn't that something to look forward too ???
