If you are an active member of the gaming community, you know that game lobbies are riddled with all kinds of weird, unique names.
I’d venture to say that almost every online game has at least one person who has chosen to make their online persona (gamertag) Dale Jr. or Dale Earnhardt adjacent.
And on certain occasions, Dale Jr. himself is online and one of those names. That means that there’s always a rare chance that someone using the name of Dale Jr. could run into the actual Dale Jr. in the virtual world.
Funny enough, that exact thing happened, and Dale Jr. talked all about it on a recent episode of The Dale Jr. Download:
“For the last three years, I’ve been playing ‘Hell Let Loose’ and it’s a World War II shooter. So you’ll get into the games and there’s a lot of conversation, a lot of talking, you can talk to people that are in your proximity.
And everybody’s got their name over their head, right? They’re running around trying to get in the best spots. So I hop in this server, and there’s a Dale Jr.”
The NASCAR driver was ecstatic to see that someone going by his name was in the same game with him. But convincing the other gamer that he was the real Dale Jr. wasn’t an easy feat:
“I’m like ‘Hey, Dale Jr. hey, Dale Jr.’ And I run over to him and he’s like, ‘What?’ And I say ‘I’m Dale Jr. I’m you! I’m Dale Jr.’ And he just turned and ran away. I said ‘Damn man, you just have no idea how cool this could be.'”
What a missed opportunity. I’m sure that guy is kicking himself if he caught this clip on social media.
Earnhardt went on to say that though that example didn’t work out, there have been plenty of others that have:
“Then there’s the other people that are like ‘Hey, Dale Jr.,’ and I’ll start talking to them and they’ll go ‘Whoa, it really is you!’ And then we’ll stand there in this World War II scene, having a conversation.”
So let this be a lesson that if you happen to be involved in the gaming world (and you specifically play Hell Let Loose), you should always be on the lookout for a potential conversation with one of NASCAR’s all-time-greats.
