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The world has changed from NASCAR to Dakar, from truck driving to skin diving and from songwriting to bullfighting.

I don’t know whether it’s worse or better. I expect age tends to favor the former, but I try to roll with the punches.

In the mid-1990s, I covered a Busch Series race Larry Pearson won at Myrtle Beach Speedway. It was hotter than the 31st of August, or, this year, the 1st of October. When Larry got out of his car, he slid down the side and landed on the ground. There he remained for a while. To interview him, I had to squat down. He was heat prostrated; I was hung over. It’s debatable which of us felt worse.

The driver he outran, Jason Keller, congratulated him. He splashed a little water on him. Larry said it felt good.

At about the same time, I wrote about a short track race at Lanier in Gainesville, Ga. I was interviewing the winner when a fight broke out. One mechanic grabbed another and swung him around in a wide arc, apparently trying to find ring ropes or, better yet, a turnbuckle. I backpedaled just outside the radius of the whirl. Back in those days, while interviewing the winner, one could never be quite sure the runner-up wasn’t advancing into the celebration carrying a crowbar with malevolent intent.

A man’s got to be responsible for his actions, but he can’t often be expected to act like Ben Crenshaw – the most gentlemanly athlete I can think of right now – conceding a putt on the 16th hole of match play. I think one reason was that, a quarter century ago, many drivers had to fix what they tore up, and pay for it, too. Nowadays everything costs more and seems cheap.

When I saw how social media got all ablaze over Darrell (Bubba) Wallace Jr. throwing cold water in Alex Bowman’s face after the Rumble at the Roval, I said to myself, “My God, what is the world coming to?” When I expressed this disbelief on social media, a few people lit my shoelaces, too, figuratively. Not a literal hotfoot, mind you. That may carry a mandatory sentence in this age.

I really don’t favor either driver over the other, but my view is that spinning a driver intentionally into a wall, however soft it may be, is worse that splashing ice water. A nasty rumor has since spread that it was “a sticky liquid” such as Gatorade, which, by the way, I consider remarkably unsticky for a sweet beverage. If it had been a Cheerwine, maybe.

I would be on Bowman’s side if he had said to Wallace, “Thanks, I … needed that.”

NASCAR has fined teams $10,000 a lugnut. No telling how expensive a Gatorade might be. Apparently, a stern talking to is in order.

Up in Taylorsville, N.C., watching this on his patio, I wonder what Harry Gant thought.

I know what my father would have said, had he not died before those races at Myrtle Beach and Lanier had even been run.

“Damndest thing ever I seen.”

As noted before, I’m not entirely sure whether the world was better then or now. It seemed more fun, and I expect a tiny bit of the fun might have come from the danger, and I reckon I ought to feel guilty for that.

And thankful I even survived.