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It is notoriously difficult to see a truly great race car driver ever show us a lot of real, raw emotion. Not anger. We’ve all seen that plenty. Not celebratory joy. That’s what we see most, when the driver who has just pulled into Victory Lane finally shows us their face after it’s been hidden under a helmet for four hours. But by that time of revelation, they’ve typically already done all their real emoting when we couldn’t see them and what we get is the scripted, corporatized post-win photo and hat dance.

We never see tears. Ever. We might hear them, a quick choke of the throat caught over a racer’s radio transmission to their pit crew during the cooldown lap. But by the time that lap is done, the ice-in-their-veins drivers have long ago hit their temperament reset button and their once-wet eyes have completely dried.

Not being able to find a crack in that firewall of feeling has always been a bit maddening, particularly when it has come to Kyle Larson. But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, Larson, the just-crowned Cup Series champion, wept openly. Then he wept again. And again. In his car, caught on camera. On the pit lane during his live TV interview. In Victory Lane, amid celebrating the race win and the resulting championship. In the media center. During the late evening photo ops with the trophy.

“Just thinking about the journey and how tough of a road it’s been to get to this point for so long,” the 29-year-old explained when he was asked about what had produced so many repeated tears. “But especially the last year and a half.”

Larson has always been a master of the classic motorsports understated reaction. He has won hundreds of races across countless series and tracks, so once he started winning regularly in NASCAR’s Cup Series, the big leagues of American auto racing, he always stuck to the “act like you’ve been there” approach.

But where he has been over that past year and a half he keeps referring to, no racer has been before or since. A self-triggered trip into stock car purgatory, fired by Chip Ganassi Racing and banished from the NASCAR garage on April 13, 2020, for an inexplicable utterance of the N-word during a live broadcast of a pandemic lockdown video game competition.

On Nov. 8, 2020, Kyle Larson watched Chase Elliott celebrate winning the Cup no different than the rest of us, from a television in his living room. On Nov. 7, 2021, he outran now-teammate Elliott and three others to not only win NASCAR’s ultimate prize, he did so by way of the most dominant statistical season seen in nearly a decade and a half.

His 10 wins (11 if you include the non-points-paying NASCAR All-Star Race) was the most seen since Jimmie Johnson, also driving for Hendrick Motorsports, won that many races in 2007. He posted 20 top fives and 26 top 10s in 36 races, both first among all drivers, and his 2,581 laps led was nearly 1,100 more than the nearest competitor. He became only the seventh driver in 75 years of NASCAR racing to win a Cup Series title one year after not racing in the series full-time, and the first to do it since 1966.

What’s more, he also spent 2021 dominating the American short track scene at a level only matched by the likes of A.J. Foyt and drew comparisons from his Hendrick Motorsports boss, Jeff Gordon, to another auto racing cross-discipline demigod, Mario Andretti. From the Chili Bowl to the Knoxville Nationals to Sunday at Phoenix, it’s been an all-time Paul Bunyan-with-a-steering wheel type of season.

Now, what’s he going to do with all of that? Where will Larson, with “NASCAR Cup Series champion” forever affixed to his name, go from here? There are those who will say the answer to that question should be racing-only, that he has served his time of public shame and it’s time to move on.

But nothing with Larson will ever be that simple again.

To earn NASCAR reinstatement, he was required to spend 2020 undergoing sensitivity training, but he also chose to do more than was required. He traveled to see young Black racers that had once looked up to him as a hero and faced their questions of “Why would you say that word?” face to face. He was given history lessons on racial tensions in America by the people who run that program. Before the tears we saw at Phoenix on Sunday night, there were others we will never see, from those days in April 2020 when he called the likes of Bubba Wallace, Black members of his own race team, and then most painfully, his mother.

Janet Larson (née Miyata) is a Japanese-American woman who had been so proud of her son’s development, more easily embracing his Asian heritage as he grew into adulthood, researching his grandparents’ time in World War II internment camps and visiting youth centers to talk to Asian-American kids about his racing career. Now she was just mad.

NASCAR leadership continues to work to undo its once-well-earned reputation as a place unwilling to embrace diversity. That’s not what the garage is anymore. Anyone who was there years ago and is also there now, we are fully aware of the very different world that it has become. But there is still so much more work to do. Officials in business suits can only do so much. Ultimately, it will always be the racers in the firesuits who will have the greatest impact.

Say, showing how someone can learn from their stupidest mistake. Showing how someone can bomb their career and the reputation of their sport back to the Stone Age with one idiotic sentence, but if given a second chance can perhaps become a better person and even a better race car driver.

Larson has always been a tough nut to crack emotionally. As an interview subject, he has been downright maddening because he’d never allow himself to fully open up and dive as deeply into hard topics of conversation as it felt like he could if he would just give himself permission. Even when the subjects were his multiracial background or that he might be the first graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program to win the Cup.

But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, amid the most meaningful racing celebration of a lifetime that is marked by trophy after trophy, Larson finally cracked a door into his emotions. He finally let us in.

His potential impact as an educator and a game-changer for the audience that watches the sport he loves more than most anyone? This part of the gig was not his dream. This is the burden he’ll always carry because of the nightmare, one of his own ignorant creation. But if he does what he could — what he should — he might very well make some racing dreams come true for someone who thought their race might keep them out of racing.

If he chooses to do nothing for the short-term sake of taking the path of least resistance, he would be lowering his visor to the long-term damage. Silence will only bolster those who see NASCAR as still stuck in 1968, the perceived free pass given to the driver who dropped the N-word and then won the championship one year later. But Larson owning it publicly and carrying it with him as prominently as a sponsor on a car hood is the only way to convince anyone that anything has actually changed.

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Springer’s 7 RBIs help Jays pile on Yankees late

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Springer's 7 RBIs help Jays pile on Yankees late

George Springer had a career-high seven RBIs, including his ninth grand slam, and the Toronto Blue Jays celebrated Canada Day by beating the Yankees 12-5 on Tuesday and closing within one game of American League East-leading New York.

The seven RBIs are tied for the second most by any Blue Jays player in a home game, behind Edwin Encarnación (nine RBIs in 2015), according to ESPN Research.

Andrés Giménez had a go-ahead, three-run homer for the Blue Jays, who overcame a 2-0 deficit against Max Fried. After the Yankees tied the score 4-4 in the seventh, Toronto broke open the game in the bottom half against a reeling Yankees bullpen.

Springer went 3-for-4, starting the comeback with a solo homer in the fourth against Fried and boosting the lead to 9-5 with the slam off Luke Weaver after Ernie Clement‘s go-ahead single off shortstop Anthony Volpe‘s glove. Springer has 13 homers this season.

Toronto won the first two games of the four-game series and closed within one game of the Yankees for the first time since before play on April 20.

New York went 2-for-17 with runners in scoring position, dropping to 3-for-24 in the series, while the Blue Jays were 5-for-7. After going 13-14 in June, the Yankees fell to 10-14 against AL East rivals.

The Associate Press contributed to this report.

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Astros’ Alvarez to see hand specialist after setback

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Astros' Alvarez to see hand specialist after setback

DENVER — Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez has experienced a setback in his recovery from a broken right hand and will see a specialist.

Astros general manager Dana Brown said Alvarez felt pain when he arrived Tuesday at the team’s spring training complex in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he had a workout a day earlier. Alvarez also took batting practice Saturday at Daikin Park.

He will be shut down until he’s evaluated by the specialist.

“It’s a tough time going through this with Yordan, but I know that he’s still feeling pain and the soreness in his hand,” Brown said before Tuesday night’s series opener at Colorado, which the Astros won 6-5. “We’re not going to try to push it or force him through anything. We’re just going to allow him to heal and get a little bit more answers as to what steps we take next.”

Alvarez has been sidelined for nearly two months. The injury was initially diagnosed as a muscle strain, but when Alvarez felt pain again while hitting in late May, imaging revealed a small fracture.

The 28-year-old outfielder, who has hit 31 homers or more in each of the past four seasons, had been eyeing a return as soon as this weekend at the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now it’s uncertain when he’ll play.

“We felt like he was close because he had felt so good of late,” Brown said, “but this is certainly news that we didn’t want.”

Also Tuesday, the Astros officially placed shortstop Jeremy Peña on the 10-day injured list with a fractured rib and recalled infielder Shay Whitcomb from Triple-A Sugar Land.

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Ohtani’s 30th HR before break ties Dodgers mark

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Ohtani's 30th HR before break ties Dodgers mark

Shohei Ohtani reached 30 homers for the fifth straight season, hitting a fourth-inning drive after fouling a pitch off the plate umpire, and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox 6-1 on Tuesday night.

Ohtani fouled the ball off Alan Porter’s right knee in the fourth. Ohtani checked on the umpire and stood by watching until Parker got up under his own power. The three-time MVP then hit a 408-foot shot to center, snapping an 0-for-6 skid and extending the lead to 6-1. He tied Cody Bellinger in 2019 for most home runs before the All-Star break in Dodgers history; Bellinger won National League MVP that year.

Ohtani joined Seattle‘s Cal Raleigh (33) and Aaron Judge of the Yankees (30) as players with at least 30 homers by the All-Star break; it marks the fifth season that three players have reached the 30-homer threshold before the break (2019, 1998, 1994, 1969).

As for Ohtani, this is his third season hitting at least 30 home runs before the break, tying Ken Griffey Jr. for third most in MLB history (Judge and Mark McGwire each did so for four seasons).

During the seventh-inning stretch, Ohtani walked over and checked on Porter again before leading off.

Los Angeles scored its most runs this season in support of Yoshinobu Yamamoto (8-6), staking the Japanese right-hander to a 4-0 lead in the first inning.

The Dodgers won for the 13th time in 16 games and opened a season-high, eight-game NL West lead. They are 16-5 (.762 win percentage) since June 8, the best record in MLB during that span.

Every run Tuesday night was scored with two outs.

Yamamoto allowed one run and three hits in seven innings, struck out eight and walked one.

White Sox rookie Shane Smith (3-6) got two quick outs in the first before walking Will Smith and Max Muncy back-to-back. Teoscar Hernández followed with an RBI single, Andy Pages hit a run-scoring double and Michael Conforto had a two-run single.

Chicago’s lone run came on Lenyn Sosa‘s RBI single in the third.

ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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