How dare you, race fans.

Let’s be clear before I get wound up here. I am not talking about all race fans. I am not talking about all of the fans who were at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday. I’m not even talking to all of the fans who hurled beer cans and other debris onto the track after the controversial finish of the Aaron’s 499.

I am talking specifically to about a dozen or so idiots who were seated in front of the press box, people who I watched fling stuff toward the race track and simply could not believe my eyes.

Shame on you. How dare you do that after what you’d seen all day?

Forty-three men climbed into their race cars and went out there to entertain you. Twenty-three of them led at least one lap. They swapped the lead 54 times.

They banged into and off of each other like pinballs all day because NASCAR, in an attempt to make rules to give you a memorable race, has created at this 2.66-mile track what can only be described as regulated insanity.

The drivers do it because they’re paid handsomely and because, well, it’s the job they signed up for. Some of them even say they enjoy this type of racing, but frankly that’s hard to believe.

These men are fathers. They’re husbands. They’re sons. Yes, to some degree, they may be a sandwich or two short of a picnic for doing what they do for a living, but they’re still human beings. They are literally risking their lives for your amusement.

If you didn’t like the call NASCAR made giving Gordon the lead and the win, then boo until your lungs burn. If you haven’t been raised better, you can even flip the finger as some of you did Sunday.

But throwing stuff on the track? You have got to be kidding me.

Stone sober and after a 15-minute warm-up, some of the people I saw throwing stuff Sunday couldn’t hit the ocean from a boat. Half-drunk or worse, they were lucky not to hit the guy two rows in front of them. Aim had nothing to do with it; only God’s grace kept dozens of people in the stands from getting hurt in that shameful mess.

The tickets fans bought for Sunday’s race did not grant them immunity from laws, and if there isn’t a specific law that says it’s wrong to throw objects onto the field of play in a sporting event, there should be.

Even if NASCAR had messed things up totally Sunday, made every possible mistake in making every possible decision, there still would have been no excuse for what I saw those people do on the final laps.

It was not passion, it was malicious petulance.

And it certainly wasn’t about being a fan. Being a fool is more like it.