I was hoping to meet Dale Earnhardt in April.

The most famous name in auto racing, the man they call The Intimidator, is part-owner of a minor league baseball team, the Kannapolis Intimidators. The team I'll be covering, the Lakewood BlueClaws, begin their inaugural season in North Carolina against Kannapolis. The early rumors were that Earnhardt would make an appearance at opening day with his new team in his hometown.

There's sure to be a somber mood around Fieldcrest-Cannon Stadium on April 5 when the South Atlantic League season begins after Earnhardt's death today in the Daytona 500.

Less than a mile from the finish line, in the middle of the final turn of the final lap, Earnhardt's car came in slight contact with a competitor's behind him, slid a bit to the inside of the track, then turned hard to the right and into the wall, with a third car broad-siding Earnhart's black No. 3 car. The two vehicles became locked in a T and slid down the embankment into the infield.

It looked like a routine crash � and in NASCAR some crashes are routine. But one of the announcers for Fox television, Darrel Waltrip, said it may look like a soft crash, but hitting the wall head-on is a lot more jarring than it appears on your screen.

Earnhardt hit the wall at 180 mph � head-on into an immovable barrier of concrete. After they announced his death 90 minutes later, the doctors said he died from massive head injuries, at impact or shortly thereafter. Right when Mike Waltrip, Darrel's brother, was winning the race.

I'm nothing of a NASCAR fan. I've made the jokes and insulted it as barely a sport. I know some of the current names, but little of the history and nothing of the background of the sport. So I had no idea of the underlying storylines with this crash at Daytona.

Earnhardt was running third in the race at the time, behind his son, Dale Jr., and Waltrip. All three race for Dale Earnhardt Inc., the elder Earnhardt's racing team. As the race leaders turned into the final straightaway, Earnhardt was running the block for his teammates in front, taking up track to prevent rivals from make a run for first.

But something went wrong, a little nudge on the bumper and it was all over. Dale Jr. saw only his dad's car skidding into the wall in his rearview mirror, if that. When the race ended, he ran over to the medical team cutting his father from the car and taking him to the nearby hospital.

But he was already dead.

I watched the story unfold at work, and read the reports as they came across the wires. Dale Earnhardt was a name people knew and associated with auto racing, even if they cared little for it. It was no stretch to say, as ESPN did, that Earnhardt held the same stature in his sport as Michael Jordan does in basketball and Tiger Woods does in golf.

Dale Earnhardt is auto racing.

Or was.

I got the feeling tonight that had I met him in April, I would've become a fan. I might not watch more races on television, but when I flipped through them, I'd probably stop to see where the No. 3 car stood in the pack. I thought on the drive home tonight � at very safe speeds � about how auto racing is a sport. They compete, there are winners, losers, scores and prizes. It's a sport. Are the drivers athletes? Putting themselves in life-threatening situations as often as they do leads me to say yes.

Auto racing's popularity is rabid down South. Here in New Jersey, it's mild, probably ranking behind horse racing. But there's definitly an allure to it, there's something about cars at high speeds that attracts the interest of all little boys, if even as a passing phase, at some point.

Growing up, a boy's interest in baseball, football, basketball, etc., comes and goes, ebbs and flows, peaks and fades. Some just aren't into the more traditional sports.

But everyone loves cars. "Matchbox" and "Hot Wheels" are household names, with boys acting out crashes, making engine noises and tire squeals and transmission shifts with their mouths. And so our attention is drawn, no matter how briefly, to racing at some point.

Sports are the original reality TV programming. Athletes are out there every day, showing character and emotion. Last week I caught a rerun of the ESPY Awards on ESPN. After the introduction, they ran an extensive clip of the past year's sports highlights � everything from baseball to the Olympics to scenes of all the athletes who died during the year. I cried, even before they showed those who died with Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" on the soundtrack. The smiles of the Olympic gold medalists unable to hold back was touching, and I was surprised by my reaction. That's what I like about sports: The unexpected, the reality of it, the honesty of something that is only as good as the product, now matter how much producers, graphics artists, announcers and commissioners try to meddle with it.

What I don't like about sports is how it can consume us, make everything else seem so trivial. How it becomes life and death. Earlier this afternoon, I was frustrated with Notre Dame's basketball loss to Seton Hall, a clearly inferior team that simply played better today. Then I sat there watching Earnhardt hit the wall at a speed twice as fast as anything I've reached in my car on an interstate and I was reminded I had it backwards once again. Sports aren't life and death; sport happens during life, and death can sometimes happen during sport.

In the end, the Daytona 500 was just a race. Now the Earnhardt family, the NASCAR family have to find a way to race again after losing their heart and soul.

I wanted to meet Dale Earnhardt in April, and I had no idea how much.

Instead, I watched him die this afternoon.