People have often asked me what my favorite race of the TDA season is. It always used to be First Night. The prevailing wisdom for First Night is that no one knows what to expect from the different teams and that anything is possible; it’s been pointed out to me numerous times that during First Night’s national anthem, everyone is in first place (or last place, depending on whether you’re a glass-is-half-full or glass-is-half-empty kind of person).
This culminated in 2011’s First Night where the new team on the block, Full Throttle, beat the defending champions, Orange Crush, in the first round on their way to an appearance in the night finals. That was a great night of racing! David vs. Goliath stories have a way of making that happen. However, as I’m growing ever more aware of, upsets don’t happen all that often in the TDA. (I don’t look at Real Steel’s Second Night win being an upset; they are a legitimately good team).
In 2012, it was fantastic to see Damage, Inc. and owner Dave Swan churning out win after win, ultimately making it to the finals for the first time in team history Third Night. Damage, Inc. hasn’t had an enormous track record of success and it was absolutely great for the sport and great for the fans to see them fighting and winning races in four out of the five nights of racing.
Whenever I watch a given race, I invariably hope that the underdog will win (or the team that Robbie Stahulak is racing for should he be racing, but that’s a topic for another column). I love upsets, they make everything more interesting… but they just don’t happen with any kind of regularity. In team demolition derby, the better teams almost always beat the poorer teams. And while it would be absolutely great to see Seek-N-Destroy win a night or simply appear in the finals this year, the sad truth is that there are very long odds against that happening. I’m sincerely hoping for it, but I’m definitely not expecting it.
With the bloom off this ‘anything can happen’ rose, First Night has lost some of its otherworldly luster in my eyes. I love the racing, I love the start of the new season and I love the fact that, invariably, despite having eight months to build their cars, some teams are still working on things at the track, but First Night is no longer my favorite night of racing. That distinction now belongs to Third Night.
One of the unfortunate side effects of having a five evening season is that almost everything can be explained away by simply bringing up the concept of a small sample size.
When writing about sports, a writer always wants to cull from as much data as possible in order to present the best possible opinion or theory. If I were to argue that the Cubs are a terrible baseball team because they haven’t won a World Series in 100 years, that seems extremely valid. If I were to argue that the Cubs are the best team in the game because they beat the Mets on Tuesday, it doesn’t seem anywhere near as accurate. Why? Because of the latter’s small sample size.
In short, watching Mean Green Machine race one time doesn’t help me understand much about them as a team. Maybe they had a good race, maybe they had a bad race, how am I supposed to know without some perspective? Watching 3+ evenings of racing for a team? That helps a lot more.
And herein lies the beauty of Third Night. There’s finally enough information to make an informed judgment about the unfolding season. If a team has two nights of bad races and one night of good racing, it’s fair to label that team sub-par. Conversely, if a team has two good nights of racing and one bad night, it’s eminently reasonable to label that team good. So, come Sunday morning after Third Night, the smoke has cleared some and greater perspective can be had. And greater perspective is never a bad thing.
So far in this column, lost in the minutia of sample sizes and upsets is the fact that there was actually a great night of racing Third Night (Carl Brouwer’s injury aside; read more about that here). Oh, yes! What stuck with me the most about the racing was how The Junkyard Dogs looked like The Junkyard Dogs that everyone had been expecting for, well, the last two years.
When runner extraordinaire, Ryan Bleuer, joined the Dogs in 2012, people (myself included) predicted great things for the team. And then nothing happened. The Dogs went into Fifth Night of 2012 tied in the standings with Seek-N-Destroy.
When JYD got Tom “Brickman” Lewis for the 2013 season, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the team was going to plow through the competition. And then the first two nights of racing took place and while they looked substantially better than they did in 2012, The Junkyard Dogs never quite seemed to be clicking on all cylinders. Third Night, this changed. JYD came out and looked ferocious. Bleuer was racing on another level, channeling his 2010 season with Orange Crush, at times appearing to toy with the competition. They absolutely nailed it.
Rather naturally, this lead to the worst possible scenario for the Dogs: rather than appreciating the victories at hand, people started wondering why this hadn’t happened earlier. Oh, sure, you won your last three races, but what have you done for me lately? (Where is that sarcasm font when I need it?) Those people can shove it for now. It was simply fantastic watching Bleuer speeding down the straight-aways and debating with other people about whether he ever cracked 60.
It might be hard to see in light of Brouwer’s injury, but Orange Crush turned out yet another top notch performance, that figuratively clinched them the championship. Orange Crush has been so dominant this year through three nights of racing, that we are already at the point in time where almost all victorious scenarios for other teams begin with the statement, “Now Orange has to lose in the first round twice…” And given that Orange Crush is going to race two of the following four opponents in the first round, Seek-N-Destroy, Full Throttle, Mean Green Machine or the Junkyard Dogs, that situation doesn’t seem all that likely to play out.
While it is still mathematically possible for Reckoning (and Mean Green Machine) to win the title, there is only one scenario where this could happen: if Reckoning (or Mean Green Machine) wins Fourth and Fifth Night and Orange Crush loses in the first round both nights. And even in that scenario, Reckoning would only top Orange Crush by one point. One! Mean Green Machine would top them by two.
Full Throttle, Seek-N-Destroy and Damage, Inc. all have been eliminated.
So, with two full nights of racing ahead of us, only three teams really remain in the championship hunt:* Orange Crush (duh!), The Junkyard Dogs and Real Steel. Fortunately for us, Orange Crush and JYD have yet to meet in the first round. Suffice it to say, if they do meet and Orange Crush wins, the Dogs will have quite a hole to climb out of. Real Steel has already faced Orange Crush in the first round and, as such, will be looking for help from another (preferably non-JYD) team to take out Orange. Seek-N-Destroy? Calling Seek-N-Destroy?
* These are the only teams that don’t need to win the night twice and have Orange lose twice in the first round to take the championship.
The TDA changed the points system in the off-season as a way to potentially break up ties and give the league some parity (as I mentioned in my preview column, this new points system created the potential for a team entering Fifth Night with an 0-4 record to top a team that entered Fifth Night with a 4-4 record). Orange Crush is making a mockery of this because, like it or not, the one way to make all points systems aimed at parity fail is to just win all the time. And, at 7-2 on the season, Orange is just about doing that.