NASCAR Las Vegas

Another NASCAR Sunday is ahead of us, this time in Las Vegas, where the Kobalt 400 will go at 2:30 PM ET on Fox, and NASCAR time at TheSportsNotebook means it’s time for me to pick up the phone and call my brother Bill, who follows this stuff the way I follow college hoops, spring training and NCIS Los Angeles. Which makes it appropriate that this week’s race gave Bill an opportunity to point out something where NASCAR bears an unfortuante similarity to baseball. The wave of baseball stadiums that arose in 1970s were known as “cookie-cutters”, because between the dimensions and the artificial turf, the parks in places like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St. Louis looked like they were stamped out of the same cookie-cutter. Baseball’s learned its lesson and followed the lead of Baltimore’s Camden Yards that ushered in a new era of uniqueness and style to each park. NASCAR fans aren’t so lucky.