ATLANTA — Back on the Monday of March 12, 2001, Atlanta picked up its morning paper and read of many sporting splendors. Down in Florida, Braves pitcher John Smoltz made a second start in his recovery from elbow surgery. Lefty Driesell’s Georgia State basketball team had just earned an invite to the Big Dance (as unfathomable as it seems now, both Georgia and Georgia Tech also were included). The late and lightly lamented Thrashers had skated to a 3-3 tie with Calgary during the city’s second failed NHL marriage.
But it was at the car fights south of town in Hampton where real story gold had been spun.
There, driving a hybrid that was part-roaring stock car, part-hearse bearing the still warm memory of Dale Earnhardt, 25-year-old Kevin Harvick won a race. His first NASCAR Cup race win. In a car that had been set up for the legendary Earnhardt before his death only weeks before at the Daytona 500. On the track where the great “Intimidator” Earnhardt had amassed nine wins and built a worshipful following that so badly needed remedy.
