Not so for Mario. Oh, no, not Mario. The plan for the eldest Andretti is far more grotesque, in the same way that the rack is far more grotesque than the guillotine.
Every year since he won in 1969, Mario's been there at the speedway, hoping against hope that he'll win again. He's always close; he never manages to win it. Sometimes you wonder if it would be less painful if someone gave him a slow car and told him he had no chance to win. Being a contender and not losing is what hurts the most.
In sexual posturing, you can always second-guess yourself. Was it the hair? The suit/dress? The wrong cologne/perfume?
In sports, it's a lot harder. How do you second-guess being snake-bit? It there something about Mario Andretti's driving style that causes his cars to fall apart around him? The wrong chassis, tires, motor oil? Maybe it is the hair.
The man is cursed, I say. There's no other explanation.
Through all this, there's one thing that the pain of Mario Andretti has taught us: curses are genetic! It's not just Mario who is cursed: it's his son, Michael, who might even be a better racer than Mario. And it's all the other racing Andrettis, sons or cousins or brothers or nephews or whoever they are. John Andretti also raced in Sunday's Indy 500. His name was among the many Andrettis littering the scoreboard, with the infamous three-letter word next to his name. "Andretti -- OUT." Perhaps we'll see it on Mario's tombstone one day.
If Michael really is a better racer than his dad, this means that he must've also picked up the curse in spades. During Sunday's race, he led more than 80 percent of the time... and then his engine quit with 12 laps to go. A true Andretti.
What was it that caused the Andrettis to be cursed like this? Did Mario's grandfather beat up a devil-worshiper during a drunken brawl? Was one of Mario's cruel fat jokes overheard by the Michelin Man? Did the Andrettis sign on Don King as a promoter?
Whatever they did, it's a mistake that certainly wasn't made by that jolly old Unser family. Sunday's win by Al Unser Jr. means that Little Al can now join his father Al Sr. and his uncle Bobby as the third member of the Unser clan to win Indy.
Three people in one family. The Andrettis must be slapping their foreheads in puzzlement.
Little Al and Big Al are both still active racers; Big Al was driving one of the few cars who finished this year's race. And Bobby? Oh, he's an ABC announcer, on par with great pit reporters Jack Arute and Gary Gerrold.
Perhaps the great Unser patriarch (Resnu "Bob" Unser, who owed his greatness to the fact that his name was palindromic) made his own little deal with the devil. Look here, Mr. Beelzebub, he said way back when, if you make damned sure my family's successful, I'll sell you my soul.
Satan took him up on the offer, and "Bob" became a minion of evil, which makes sense since "Bob" worked in television and was the creator of syndication. Without "Bob" Unser, father to Big Al and Bobby, we'd never have seen the likes of "Small Wonder" and "She's the Sheriff."
Ah. An obscure TV reference -- now that you can be sure that it's me who is writing this column. (And you'll have to sit through one more of these before I'm done.) Still, why am I, Baseball Elitist Boy, watching the Indy 500?
I don't, as a rule, watch automobile races of any kind. In fact, I only watch one race a year: the Indy 500. Why watch it?
Not the reason it seems most people do, which is to see spectacular crashes (there were more than usual this year, by the way). The repercussions of such crashes are far too serious for me to actually hope to see one. Just look at what happened to Jovy Marcelo, a 27-year-old rookie driver who died when he hit the wall at a slow (for Indy) 172 mph. Look at the injuries suffered last week by Rick Mears and Nelson Piquet.
No, I can't watch Indy just in hopes of seeing someone bite the wall. But there is a reason I watch: the Andretti curse.
Every year I pick Mario and Michael Andretti as two of my favorites to win. Which means every year there's a Sunday in May where I sit in front of the television and wait, patiently, for them to fall out of the race.
They're rarely hurt -- though this year a couple of the Andrettis had to go to the hospital. Most of the time the curse doesn't hurt the bodies of the Andrettis -- just their minds. They're riding along fine, just like Michael was today, and suddenly their machines just give out.
I guess Indy 500 and the Andretti Curse are just part of a standard 20th century drama -- Man versus Machine. The ending is exactly what you'd expect, of course.
The machine wins every time.