The Man in Blue on the Man in Black

Most people know Michael Waltrip for some combination of the following things.

• Being the baby brother of a former NASCAR Winston Cup champion.
• Hamming it up on Showtime and during TV commercials.
• Having rocket fuel (or something) show up in one of the first Sprint Cup cars he fielded as an owner.
• Winning the Daytona 500--his first points victory as a Sprint Cup driver--on the day Dale Earnhardt died blocking for him.

Now we can add another line to Michael's resume: author.
Claiming that "Nobody could tell the story" of the day Earnhardt died "like I could," the younger Waltrip has put out a book called "In the Blink of an Eye," written with the help of Ellis Henican.
Truth be told, though, this book focuses more on Michael Waltrip's career than anything else. To be fair, that is a story no one can tell quite like he can, since he was the one who lived it. We learn, for example, that Darrell Waltrip tried to discourage his brother from getting into racing. ("All you're gonna do is waste a lot of your time and other people's money.")
There are some parts of the book that discuss Earnhardt, who owned the car Waltrip took to Victory Lane that fateful day. For example, we learn that, in the days leading up to that race, Earnhardt laid out the strategy that would get Dale Earnhardt Inc. the checkered flag. Waltrip, Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. would work their way to the front, slowly but surely. "Whichever of us gets to the front," Waltrip quotes Earnhardt Sr. as saying, "at the end we're gonna push and we're gonna make sure that person stays in the front."It was quite prescient; Waltrip and the two Earnhardts were the top three drivers going into that final lap.

But even though nearly 100 pages of this book deal with that day and its immediate aftermath, this still feels more like a Waltrip autobiography than anything else. He may have had a burning desire to tell his story, but it's hard imagining the throngs of Dale Earnhardt fans needing to hear it.

Remember that we will be closing our polls for this week's lineup on Wednesday night. You have until then to help the People's Pitstop pick the drivers who will represent us at Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.