NASCAR’s ‘Outlaw’ continues to gladly go his own way

Kurt Busch reminds me of that R.E.M. song. That's him in the corner, that's him in the spotlight. Losing his religion. Not to mention his ride.

All sorts of contretemps and shenanigans and fisticuffs broke out during Sunday's NASCAR race at Phoenix. But Busch 51 - er, make that Busch 78, because the Las Vegas leadfoot has switched teams again - wasn't involved in any of it, near as I could tell.

Busch 78 specializes in contretemps and shenanigans and fisticuffs. So much so that at age 34, when he should be entering his stock car racing prime - when a guy with his talent should be winning tons of races (Jimmie Johnson, for instance, is 37 and still winning races by the ton) - he finds himself with a midfield team, driving what essentially is a roller skate.

He finished eighth on Sunday, which is pretty good for having driven a roller skate.

Busch avoided the pileups and wrestling stuff on pit lane that often occurs when NASCAR is trying to pull the average sports fan away from the Cowboys-Eagles game. It's hard to get into pileups when one is driving a roller skate and the other guys are driving hot rods.

So in the aftermath of Phoenix, when NASCAR officials tried to say with straight faces that contretemps and shenanigans and fisticuffs bring shame, disgrace and disrepute to stock car racing, you had drivers such as Kevin Harvick saying exactly the opposite.

"The sport was made on fights," said Harvick, who won the race, which was like the 18th highlight that ESPN showed, after it showed every ultra-slow motion replay of Jeff Gordon wrecking Clint Bowyer on purpose, and Bowyer's crew guys wrecking Gordon's well-coiffed hair, also on purpose.

"We should have more fights," Harvick said. "I like fights.

"They're not always fun to be in - sometimes you're on the wrong end - but fights are what made NASCAR what it is."

Leave it to Harvick to speak truth; leave it to Jimmie Johnson to thank sponsors.

If what Harvick said is true (it is), then instead of throwing fried chicken bones at Kurt Busch's car, fans at Talladega should be buying can koozies with his picture on them.

Contretemps and shenanigans and fisticuffs are why Busch finds himself driving a roller skate instead of a hot rod, which is what Rusty Wallace called Roger Penske's No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge before Busch started driving it and cheesing people off.

A kid named Brad Keselowski drives it now. If Keselowski (who also has cheesed a few people off) finishes in 15th place or better in the season finale in Florida, he'll win the Sprint Cup championship and become the toast of Fremont Street when NASCAR gets all gussied up for Champions Week here later this month.

It makes you wonder what might have been had Penske not tired of Busch's contretemps and shenanigans and fisticuffs.

Busch won the NASCAR championship once, in 2004. A lot of people in racing think the next time he shoots himself, it will be in the kneecap, because he has run out of feet. He's the subject of a documentary that debuts at 6 p.m. Thursday on SPEED TV. It's called "Kurt Busch: The Outlaw."

They don't make documentaries called "David Stremme: The Outlaw." Or "Martin Truex Jr.: The Outlaw." For to be an outlaw, one first must drive like one - drive it like you stole it, as the NASCAR drivers say. Only then is one allowed to behave like an outlaw. Which is how Dale Earnhardt started. And A.J. Foyt.

But that's only the half of it, says Jennifer Williams, the executive director of the documentary.

Williams, who is not a NASCAR or sports fan - her Emmy Award winning documentary, "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations," was about a chef - said she met Busch through his girlfriend Patricia Driscoll's Armed Forces Foundation gala. She couldn't believe this was the same guy who in the heat of battle told all those people to go trade paint with themselves.

"We all screw up, we all have our high points and low points," Williams said in a telephone interview.

"I didn't expect he'd be such a pleasant person. I expected someone who is arrogant. I was incredibly surprised how humble he was, how funny, just how real he was."

None of this really surprises me, because, I too, have seen the two faces of Kurt Busch.

Whereas a lot of outlaws might say they do right 99 percent of the time, do wrong 1 percent and are judged by the 1 percent, Busch in the documentary said it's more like 97 percent and 3 percent with him.

But, for the first time, he says he is through apologizing.

He said what you see is what you get. That this is who he is. That as much as he would like to count to 10 and save himself a lot of grief (and another trip to the NASCAR hauler), that no amount of anger management will prevent him from speaking his mind the next time somebody cuts him off in Turn 2, probably before he gets to 7½.

That instead of trying to make him into something he's not, we should accept him for who he is: a guy who can drive the wheels off a racecar, a guy who does the right thing 97 percent of the time, a guy who spends the other 3 percent in the corner, in the spotlight - in the NASCAR hauler - losing his religion.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.