My take on the reported shoving match between Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards in the Nationwide garage: Give ‘em hell, Carl!

The only thing better would have been if it had happened on the telecast Sunday at Talledega, in the interviews after Edwards ignited the Big One, when the smirking Harvick ridiculed Columbia, Mo.’s racing hero for starting the wreck and then called him “a pansy” for hanging out at the back of the peloton throughout the race.

Them’s fighting words in these parts, and I can understand fully why my cycling cohort Edwards was P.O.-ed at Smirk Face.

It’s like this …

Edwards was man enough to admit that he screwed up in causing the Big One, accidentally spinning out his own teammate, Greg Biffle, and starting the chain-reaction that took out 14 cars, including another teammate, Matt Kenseth, plus Harvick and others in the Chase to the Sprint-tel-ston Cup.

Conversely, Happy Harvick, whom I actually like by the by — great smirk, dude, was not man enough to call Edwards a pansy to his face.

Then again, do you blame him? Harvick tried the face-to-face with Juan Pablo Montoya last year at Watkins Glen, and look how that turned out. … OK, OK, I’m being a hypocrite for stating all this on the Internets, not in person to Harvick directly, do as I say not as I do, etc., but I’m just a schlub at a computer and Harvick ain’t gonna show up at my garage to confront me. (Actually, that’d be pretty cool.)

Sooo, at the safety of my keyboard, I hypocritically submit that Harvick should not have yapped to the wretched media about Edwards, just because he should have done it in person. If that had happened, Edwards could have apologized in person, too, and they’d be all square without getting tangled up in the garage the other day.

Instead, we have Internets flame, nasty forum posts, plus a report and (supposedly) photos of a smart aleck note Edwards left smart aleck Harvick thanking him for (expletiving) him on TV.

Edwards has taken the high road in interviews since stories about the dust-up broke, by saying it’s between him and Harvick, which is as it should be and as it should have been if Harvick had kept his trap shut.

When someone admits straight up that he’s at fault and that he’s sorry, you accept the apology and move on – like Biffie and Kenseth did. When Edwards and Kenseth had a tete-a-tete last year, (which did make it onto YouTube), Biffie publicly sided with Kenseth, and pundits yapped about Edwards being all Opie Taylor one minute and Mr Hyde the next, and blah blah blah. With teammates fueding publicly, team owner Jack Roush seemed to have a problem on his hands at Roush-Fenway Racing, but the lads worked through it and got back on the same page, which has been evident throughout this season and was evident in the aftermath of Sunday’s crash.

When I saw the three Roush cars spinning Sunday, I half-expected a renewal of the inner-team strife, but Edwards apologized immediately and neither teammate has said a cross word about him. Instead, they’ve noted that Talledega’s a train wreck anyway, the Big One was bound to happen, and Edwards was trying to push Biffle to the front when the cars started careening at 200 mph.

If Harvick had taken the same conciliatory tact, perhaps none of this would have happened and I’d have nothing to yap about about and you wouldn’t be reading this. Maybe Harvick and Edwards would have laughed it off. But, no, Harvick ripped Edwards, the spit hit the fan, and again, I don’t blame Edwards one bit for being upset at KH.

From what I know of Edwards, I’m confident his apology was genuine, and that he felt horrible about the wreck, not only because it cost his teammates and other drivers points in the standings, but also because it demolished the work of the wrenches in the team shops and in the garage area who build and work on the cars. That’s Carl. He cares about those guys, and I’m sure Harvick does, too, and maybe that’s who Harvick was thinking about when he spoke against Edwards.

Still, Harvick chose a public forum to rub Edwards’ nose in it and stoop to name-calling instead of having a man-to-man talk, which makes me wonder who really is the pansy — well, other than me hiding here behind my keyboard. 

I don’t think it is Edwards.

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