Thursday, April 2, 2009 | 3:46 p.m.
NOW
I don't know where you draw the line in promoting Indy-car races. I guess it would be somewhere between Danica Patrick taking a shower with another woman in a GoDaddy.com ad during the Super Bowl and a fiery crash from the past that killed two drivers.
During the recent Mountain West basketball championship game between Utah and San Diego State I saw an ad for Versus' coverage of the Indy Racing season. It was a video montage that included a brief snippet of the 1964 crash at the Indy 500 in which popular driver Eddie Sachs and rookie Dave MacDonald lost their lives.
It was probably just due to a film editor who didn't know the tragic outcome of a crash that occurred 45 years ago. But you would think that somebody who knew something about the sport would have to give his OK before the spot aired.
Anyway, I just saw the ad for this weekend's season opening race in Florida. The fiery wreck wasn't included. So kudos to whoever had the decency to remove it.
Also, Danica Patrick was shown in her drivers suit, and it was zipped all the way up.
THEN
"We're all speeding toward death at the rate of 60 minutes every hour. The only difference is that we don't know how to speed and Eddie Sachs did. And so, since death has a thousand or more doors, Eddie Sachs exits this earth in a race car, and, knowing Eddie, I assume this is the way he would have wanted it."
-- From former Indy 500 broadcaster Sid Collins' on-air eulogy of Eddie Sachs, 1964.
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