What do you mean off topic? It's almost May, dammit.

And now for something completely different. Get used to these outbursts through Memorial Day...

It's almost May. And May means for three weeks, Indianapolis' continued existence can be justified. Sort of. In a watered-down, sanitized-for-your-protection-from-the-dangers-of-actual-enjoyment-as-a-fan sort of way, much like everything else in the sporting world.

I speak of course of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, which, battered though it has been by political division and gross mismanagement over the past decade and a half, is still like nothing else in sports. For two whole weeks, it is the facility itself which takes on all comers, challenging all who would face its four tight corners, who would push the limits of their own temerity, who would laugh at its unforgiving concrete walls. Then, and only then, will the 33 drivers who have best succeeded at coaxing their machines to beat the track and beat the clock be permitted, a week later, to compete directly with one another.

Like everything else, it's not what it was, will never be, it seems, what it was. The preliminary entry list for the 93rd running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing was released today, and while Tony George and is ministry of disinformation correctly point out that the 40 entries are two more than were posted at this stage last year, it's still a paltry showing. Those 40 entries comprise 77 cars if you include the spare "T" cars, which could, theoretically, end up making qualifying attempts of their own. But with only 28 drivers named thus far, the hope of seeing even those 40 primary cars on-track during the month is fairly dim. For comparison's sake, in 1992, there were 68 entries, comprising well over 100 total cars, and while surely many of them never turned a wheel, it certainly did make the three-week buildup to the race itself a more meaningful exercise. 

And those cars. Though by the 80s it was possible to buy a car off the shelf and be almost certain it would be reasonably competitive (first from March, then from Lola, then from Reynard), there were oddities and question marks throughout. Compelling stories emerged. Teams that wouldn't be seen again until the following May would crop up to take advantage of the bizarre loopholes and equivalencies peculiar to USAC's one-race "championship." If pressed for a reason, it would be hard to come up with a good explanation, but it was just impossible to look away, from the minute Dick Simon's cars made their presence known for the only time all month as they logged a ceremonial first lap on opening day to the minute the simply grotesque BorgWarner Trophy was presented to the first team to reach what Paul Page always called "a white line painted on a yard of bricks, five hundred miles away," everything else melted away.

Will it ever be that compelling again? I doubt it. But nevertheless...is it May yet?