Dynasties
The American public claims to want winners. To a degree, they care about which individual player caught the most touchdown passes, won the most gold medals or had the most rebounds in a given season or event, but they really care about who wins. (Except in baseball. Then the public wants stats). The TDA statistic department has whole-heartedly gotten behind this winning-trumps-everything mentality. The only statistic that they keep easily accessible is that of the season champion. If you want to know what team won the third night event in 2003, you’re out of luck. The difficulty of getting information multiplies exponentially if you want to know how many races Rob Stahulak won in his career, how many cars Johnny Ryan took out in 2008 or how many driver’s door shots Steve Gursky Jr. delivered last year.
After conferring with the TDA’s media guru, Jason Twite, we put together a list of all the teams that had won a night of racing since the beginning of the 2007 season; a span of 20 total nights of racing. The results were somewhat surprising to me. The two teams that won the most events combined to win exactly half of last 20 nights of racing. One of those teams is, of course, the Junkyard Dogs; the 1960’s Boston Celtics of the TDA. The second team came as something of a shock to me: it wasn’t Orange Crush, but, rather, Reckoning.
Dynasties are formed and maintained over a period of years. You get some pieces, you put them together, you massage the makeup of the team a bit and then, one day, you look back and realize, “Hey, we are doing pretty well here!” It’s easy to look at the NBA and see the Chicago Bulls, LA Lakers and San Antonio Spurs as dynasties because all of those teams have won multiple championships.
There are a twofold of problems with finding dynasties in the TDA. 1) In most sports, dynasties are developed in the post season. Teams’ reputations are made (and broken) in the playoffs. And the TDA doesn’t have a post season. 2) In sports where there is no post-season, dynasties are usually spotted when one team/individual wins a number of titles over a multiple year span of time. And the TDA has more team and roster turnover than any sport anywhere on the planet. Teams just don’t stay together long enough to become a recognized entity and drivers change teams more often than most people change channels during commercial breaks. Seek-N-Destroy has been a top three team in the league over the course of the last three years and they have employed at least ten different drivers over the course of 12 events; this kind of flux is absolutely unheard of in other team sports.
The Junkyard Dogs bucked the odds by sticking around for multiple years and winning multiple championships during their run. Sure, their roster had a fair degree of fluidity—I can think of about six drivers who seem to represent JYD, Ryan Bleuer, Johnny Ryan, Garret “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt, Ed “Booger” Walker Jr., Tom “Brickman” Lewis and Chris Kruver—but their team and team core remained for a number of years.
Besides the Dogs, it was hard for me to think of any other dynasties. The current Orange Crush team seems like they could challenge for this kind of status if they stick together for a few more years, but no other team leaped out at me. Then, as I looked at the number of night’s won different teams had won over, I realized that there is something going on right now in the TDA that deserves both our attention and admiration: Reckoning has won more nights over the course of the last five years than any other team, save for the Junkyard Dogs.
Night in and night out, Reckoning’s drivers have brought well-built cars to the track and competed. More impressive still, they have made it to the finals and lost another three times. This means that Reckoning has been in existence for a total of 11 events and made it to the finals an amazing 7 times. In the last three years, no team has won more nights or been to the finals more often than Reckoning.
The only thing missing from Reckoning’s resume is a championship but, with a six point lead over their heated rival, Orange Crush,* 2011 might well be the year that changes.
* Reckoning and Orange Crush have met in the finals an astounding five times in the last seven events. Reckoning has won two of those contests, Orange Crush three.
5 Things I Want to See…
…Mean Green Machine vs. Orange Crush in the first round
Rumors keep circulating that Art Scarbro will dust off his helmet and join Mean Green Machine. I can neither confirm nor refute these rumors, but it’d be great to see a truly old school Santa Fe matchup of Scarbro vs. Pete Ryan on the track, bringing back memories of XXX vs. The Locomotives.
…Someone pushed completely over the wall
Last year, Reckoning pushed two cars onto the wall. This year, I put the challenge out there: don’t simply push someone up onto the wall, push them OVER the wall. I’ve got a case of beer for anyone who manages to accomplish this feat.
…A driver kiss a trophy girl, Adrien Brody style, after a big win
Adrien Brody forever endeared himself to the American public for planting a huge kiss on Halle Berry as she handed him his Oscar for his performance in The Pianist. I simply want to see a driver so caught up in the moment that he gives one of the trophy girls a smooch. The romantic comedy possibilities here are endless.
…Team Pink (or Team Estrogen)
It’s time for an all female team racing. Start with Lorna Milette, throw in a few BAD wives, the always tough Barb Gursky and you’ve got a team. If worse came to worse, you could fill in a roster spot with a male driver in a wig (and then sell the movie rights to the whole thing to Martin Lawrence). This would be both an interesting social experiment and a team that a lot of girlfriends and wives in the stands would be rooting for. I think Team Pink T-shirts would quickly sell out and might even engender some really funny team slogans like, ‘You’ve been hitting on us for years; it’s times for us to return the favor’ or ‘Normally, you’d want it fast and hard on a Saturday night, not tonight.”
…A good night of racing for Seek-N-Destroy
No team has had a worse run of luck this year than Seek-N-Destroy. It’s a shame too, not just because they’ve been the third best team in the TDA over the course of the last three years, but because Greg Mesich is one of the sport’s true good guys. They are due for some good things and I hope that second night marks that changing tide.
ROOKIE DRIVERS
I had originally planned to do a short piece on how well the rookie drivers of the first round performed on First Night. Rookies don’t usual have any kind of major influence on the night, but the May race was different. Matt Wilson looked strong for Damage, Inc., Kenny Prinner won a race for Mean Green Machine and Andy Fleischman not only won a race for Full Throttle, but helped take his team to the finals in his first ever night of racing. I was even contemplating checking in with the three drivers after each race just to see what they were learning and how the season was progressing for them and writing about that.
Well, those plans are scrapped now, as Prinner and Fleischman have left Mean Green and Full Throttle respectively. Fleischman, however, is still affiliated with Full Throttle. Team owner Ron Johnston explains, “[Andy] told me that he couldn’t drive all the time. He told me he couldn’t do it all season long. He needs to work. He’s still down at the shop helping up weld and all, but he just didn’t have the time necessary to drive full time.”
Wilson remains with Damage, Inc. Even this, though comes with its own tale of woe. Wilson told me before First Night that his dream would be to race against his father, Bad Company’s Rich Wilson. “I’d love to just crash right into him and take him out!” Matt Wilson grinned, not even bothering to hide the immense amount of glee he would have derived from the act. Naturally, Rich Wilson stepped down from Bad Company between First and Second Nights.
So, recapping: of the three rookie drivers who had such a great impact on the first night of racing, two have left their teams and one has had his racing dream shattered. Good times all around.
ODDS & ENDS
• I don’t know how I haven’t mentioned this yet. The last race took place on May 21st. According to a fringe group of religious zealots with a great publicist and an even better marketing manager, May 21st would mark the end of the world. May 21st was the day of reckoning. And it was… just not for the religious folks; it was, however, the day that Reckoning won the night of racing. I guess the lesson here is that you shouldn’t ever bet against Reckoning on the day of reckoning.
• Full Throttle team owner, Ron Johnston, had a unique take on the reporting of their upset victory over Orange Crush in the first round of last month’s race. “I like on the team demo website that it said that Orange had all kinds of mechanical problems against us last race,” Johnston laughed. “Last year when I was on Team 8, we raced against Orange and we had mechanical problems. They didn’t mention that though. Then it was, ‘Orange dominates again!’ Why can’t they mention that we had mechanical problems?”
Check back on Tuesday the 21st for all the stories and analysis of the second night of racing.