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DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he feels better as he continues to rehabilitate the vision and balance issues he suffers from but added that he does not belong in a race car as he recovers from a concussion suffered in June.Earnhardt, who has missed the past seven Sprint Cup races including Sundays Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, announced Friday that he would not return to his Hendrick Motorsports car for the rest of this year.I have the passion and the desire to drive, Earnhardt said Sunday at Darlington Raceway. I enjoy it. ... My heart is there to continue, and if my doctor says Im physically able to continue, thats an easier decision for me to make.[Retirement] is not something I think about. Were trying to focus on just getting well and getting normal.The 41-year-old driver is preparing to return to the seat in 2017, and his doctor Sunday said the treatment focuses on Earnhardt -- who he said was pretty sick -- being able to handle everyday life and then a race car.Were doing what were doing right now to make sure we get Dales systems rehabbed to the point where not only does he feel normal but hopefully to the point where we dont see less force causes [them] to come back, said Dr. Micky Collins of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program.Weve advanced things to a point where we know how to rehab these symptoms well. ... Hopefully we can get to a point where we see that he can withstand the normal forces of a race car driver. If he had a significant force, that would cause an injury as it would anyone.Earnhardt has battled balance and vision issues associated with gaze stability -- the ability to focus on an object in the distance while moving his head. He is going through vision, stability and exercise therapy.Collins treated Earnhardt in 2012 when he missed two races because of two concussions in six weeks.We went through this process in 2012, Earnhardt said. It was very scary and difficult. Micky told me that I would one day be well and I would win races again, and he was right. ... Hes telling me this is possible again, and I believe it.Earnhardt vows to race again despite having a history of concussions dating back to 2002. The June 12 wreck at Michigan International Speedway this year didnt appear so violent that it should cause a concussion. His car got jostled about three weeks later at Daytona, and the symptoms started the following week.He said he has seen significant improvement over the past few weeks, and both the driver and doctor said the decision not to race the remainder of the year has relieved stress, which should accelerate his recovery.I struggled with my eyes for a while, Earnhardt said. Im starting to see improvements there, which I was thrilled to wake up one day and feel a difference. ... My balance is miles better than when it was when I first went to see Micky.Collins said Earnhardt has worked as hard as any patient he has had.When I first saw Dale, my goal was to see Dale become a human being again, Collins said. And I can tell you with confidence that is occurring in front of our eyes. ... The second goal is Dale becoming a race car driver again.Yes, we will be working on that as well. Im very confident we are moving in the right direction.While he feels comfortable driving a car and doing things in everyday life, Earnhardt said there are still times where he would be in the car and stumble.Earnhardt, who turns 42 in October, has 26 victories -- including two Daytona 500 wins -- in 595 career Sprint Cup starts. He has finished in the top 10 in 42 percent of his races. The son of seven-time Sprint Cup champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt, Earnhardt Jr. has never won a Cup title, with a best finish in the season standings of third in 2003. After missing the Chase for two consecutive seasons, he has enjoyed a career resurgence with five consecutive Chase appearances from 2011 to 2015.I definitely dont belong in a race car today by any stretch of the imagination, Earnhardt said. You dont know how long this process is going to take. We want to be healthy and be able to compete at some point.But we also dont want to take any risks to reinjure ourselves or put ourselves in a situation where we essentially erase all the hard work we did to get better.Four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon has competed in five races since Earnhardt had to step out of the car, including a 14th-place finish Sunday night in the Southern 500, and he will drive three more this season. Alex Bowman, who has driven in two races in place of Earnhardt, will drive eight more to the end of the year.Gordon said the team has not let the potential of Earnhardt never returning affect its week-to-week preparation.I dont think were ready to go there with that mindset yet, Gordon said about thoughts of Earnhardt retiring. I think were all positive this is the right thing for him.The doctors feel confident in that. 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They were putting most of their energy into a record-setting offensive display.The 1990s, the Queens Park Oval, West Indies playing - India, if memory serves, but mine is more likely to spit in my soup - and Carl Hooper slid down the wicket, like a cobra on cocaine, to lift some poor sap - Anil Kumble? - back over, first his head, then long-offs, then ours in the press box, which fell silent, everyone listening for the ball crashing onto the roof, except we did not hear it: either it was caught unseen on the top tier of the then Republic Bank Youth Stand or the ball cleared the peaked media building roof, sailed across St Clair Avenue and landed unheard in the grass of then King George V (now Nelson Mandela) Park.It might have been the stroke that inspired the young Kieron Pollard, todays hardest hitter, whom I like to imagine sitting that day, open-mouthed, in the Schoolboys Stand; but however far anyone hits the ball, no one, then or since, could match Carls careless, flowing grace in that accelerated, unpredictable glide down the wicket. Australian spin legend Shane Warne even when he too was hit clear out of the ballpark, publicly admired the athletic elegance of the man his captain Steve Waugh included in his 100 Best Cricketers list.The Oval crowd, which back then knew a bit more about cricket and a bit less about how to get on TV by wearing embarrassing outfits, went crazy. Slowly the cheering subsided and Hooper tapped his bat. The person sitting next to me (Tony Cozier? Christopher Martin-Jenkins? Peter Roebuck? I cant ask those three now) leaned towards me and asked, Do you know how you can tell Carl Hooper is going to be out next ball? He looks to be in astonishing form.It wasnt the next ball, but it wasnt that much longer before Hooper, who on that form ought to have made a double-century, was slouching back to the pavilion - and even then with the unconsidered grace of the ballerina turning heads in the supermarket - out for one of the many unmemorable scores that lowered his Test average from over 50 to the mid-30s.There was never a cricketer who looked as good as Hooper. Next to him, Jacques Kallis, the only other man to have scored 5000 runs, taken 100 wickets, held 100 catches and collected 100 caps in both Tests and ODIs, seems an oaf. In the slips or covers, players like Jonty Rhodes, Gus Logie and AB de Villiers may have approached Carl Hooper at his best - and all three would probably admit that Hooper looked better; but those men, and most others, with only a fraction of his ability, consistently did better.This was an athlete with a physique so fine, they wouldnt have to Photoshop his image for the Carl Hooper video game: broad shoulders, prominent chest, ridiculously narrow waist, a six-pack before the term was popular, long, strong limbs rippling with muscle, and all of it wrapped in an elegance more befitting of a gymnast, if not a ballet dancer. Indeed, you have to leave humankind altogether to find his natural physical comparisons: a barracuda slicing through the water; a cheetah racing so fast it seems not to be moving at all - or even the jeté-jumping gazelle it chases. Carl Hooper could get out caught off a thick top edge more stylishly than most batsmen could late-cut between the slip and the wicketkeeper.And he did. Often. Get out stylishly.It was as enraging to tally his score as it was enthrallingg to watch him bat, however long or short his innings might be; and it was usually not just too short, which you might forgive, but shorter than it ought to have been, which you could not forget.dddddddddddd Just watching him walk towards the wicket, swinging his bat like a baton, you could hear, in your minds ear, the string section being tuned for a symphony - which was almost always not just left unfinished but ended before its own overture!After his first few appearances at the Oval, as he walked to the middle, you would hear, from the then-knowledgeable crowd, what sounded at first like an affectionate contraction of his surname - Hoops - until you realised people were dismissively predicting the usual, unnecessary, entirely avoidable way he would soon get himself out: Oops!But there were and are many West Indian cricketers who I could theoretically hate to love ahead of Carl. The great Viv Richards, e.g., who could have grounded a criminal charge of chewing gum with intent, seemed not to notice that Brian Lara could carry his bat as easily as he could towels and water bottles.None of the modern West Indies players who habitually throw away their wickets, even Marlon Samuels, the closest Ive seen to Hooper in unrealised potential, can hold a candle to Carl when it comes to letting us down. Because no one Ive ever seen was potentially as good as Carl Hooper. Not Viv, not the legendary Sir Garry, not the otherworldly Kanhai, who caused a generation of West Indian sons to be named Rohan and handed a cricket bat in the crib. Not even Lara, who took back the record from Matthew Hayden just to prove that he could, or Mikey Holding or Malcolm Marshall or Curtly Ambrose or Courtney Walsh, all of whom could take ten wickets for fewer runs when needed most.Carl Hooper was beauty and grace personified. In most of the cricket world, that beauty would have been nurtured, that grace finessed, that explosive potential developed carefully, so as not to set it off prematurely and waste it. In the West Indies, though, our interest is in denying potential, in stifling possibility, not in shaping it. You couldnt run successful slave societies for 300 years without acquiring the knack, and the habit has stuck. Every time Carl Hooper walked to the wicket, he filled me with the hope that makes all West Indians go on, even as our little economies grind to a halt. Because I could see in Carl his beauty, because he had shown it to me himself, so often, over so many games, in a century in his second Test, in yet another impossible catch in the covers, in awe-inspiring sixes; in his grace, I saw our own hope.And, too many times, the glory that should have been his slipped away from him because he lacked the concentration, or the professionalism, or whatever it is he had to lack that day to be sure he would not do as well as he ought to.He would be shot down before he could soar. And usually it was he whod pulled the trigger.You could line up all our greats and none of them would be as great a disappointment to me as Carl Hooper - because Carl was the most West Indian of them all. Carl Hooper is me; if I ever stopped loving him, Id have to hate him.Cheap Jerseys - because Carl was the most West In