First Night Minor Points: Part 2

Minor Point #5: Slow and Steady Wins the Day

Speed sells, high horsepower engines are sexy and chicks dig fast cars (and demo drivers dig fast chicks).  Yet, in the first round, two of the drivers who got the checkered flag, Mean Green Machines’ Matt Pierce and Reckoning’s Wally Hartung, got it by driving slow and steady.

Pierce and Hartung both allowed their crushers and blockers to help them out and won the race.  You can question how this will hold up throughout the season, but for now, Pierce and Hartung’s teams are a combined 4-1.  And there’s no arguing with that.

Minor Point #6: The Junkyard Dogs’ Numbers Are the Worst Numbers in History of Organized Sports (See Above Picture, courtesy of Santa Fe Mopar)

During the first round race between The Junkyard Dogs and Reckoning, I was sitting in the bleachers.  Everyone around me was trying to figure out which cars of The Junkyard Dogs’ were which.

“Did Ryan Bleuer just hit that guy?” someone asked.

“No, Bleuer is in Turn 1,” someone else said.

“No, 03 is in Turn 4,” another person piped up.

“Who is 34?” a woman asked.

“There is no 34,” a former driver said.

“Well, who is 36 then?” someone else asked.

“There is no 36 either,” the former driver said.

“Are they all 38?” another woman asked.

“I think there are only two 38s,” someone else said.*

“Wait, those squares on the side of the cars are numbers?” a guy in the back row asked incredulously.

* Knowing Kyle Shearer’s driving style, it’s entirely possible that he was, in fact, in two places at once.  I put nothing passed him.

A number of drivers suspected that the Dogs’ hard-to-read numbers were designed to confuse their opponents, but after talking to JYD’s Kyle Shearer, those suspicions were quickly quashed.  “The numbers were terrible,” Shearer sighed, “I couldn’t read any of them.  They were white on a dark background and when the cars were moving, I couldn’t tell who anyone was.  I’d like to at least know who my own lap runners are.”

When talking about the JYD/Reckoning race, specifics gave way to generic overviews.  Instead of being able to say, “Wow, did you see how Jason Ritacco came around the corner of Turn 3 like a beast and cleared the way for Brice Martin?” it devolved into, “Wow, did you see that, uh, one car… block for that, uh, other car… Oh, just forget it.”

Given that the numbers on the tops of the cars are exactly the same as the numbers on the sides of the cars, I can only imagine how much trouble the scorekeepers were having with them.

When I spoke to Reckoning’s Brian Anderson after the race, I asked him who hit him in the passenger side door, a hit I was going to mark down as in the running for hit-of-the-month.  “Joe Snow,” Anderson told me.  “I think it was his number.”

The only issue with this was, of course, that Snow was not racing.  He and Gerritt “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt sat the first race.  (I then used logic to figure it out.  My thought process went like this, and somehow it is voiced in my head in Homer Simpson’s voice: “If I was looking for someone who delivered a kick ass hit who would I look—KYLE SHEARER!”  What is funny is that it actually was Shearer who delivered the hit on Anderson again.  More on this later).

I never thought I’d be trumpeting the benefits of the Helvetica font but, in an open letter to the Dogs, I beseech them, for everyone involved, even if you use Helvetica, please change the font of your numbers!

Minor Point #7: Some Demolition Derby Etiquette.  This Week’s Edition: What to Do if Your Car Crocks at the Starting Line

Seek-N-Destroy pulled a fan out of the stands to drive for them in the first round.  Thanks to a slight car-building quirk, to put it politely, the replacement driver’s car crocked out about 30 feet from the starting line.  It wasn’t until after the race ended that the replacement driver figured out what was causing the problem—a wire had come detached—so he fixed it… and then drove off the track.

As the replacement driver neared the track exit, he saw a friend of his both laughing and yelling at him, “You don’t drive off the track if you sat the whole race!”

The replacement driver hung his head, instantly aware that it looked like he sandbagged the race.  “God, do I look like a huge pussy?” the replacement driver asked.  His friend nodded emphatically.

And these are words to live by.  If you ever find yourself running in any kind of demolition derby and your car crocks out, if you can’t fix it while the race is still in doubt, sit there and be towed/carried off the track.  It’s better for everyone involved.

Minor Point #8: Was First Night a Sign of How Life Is Going to Be for The Junkyard Dogs’ Ryan Bleuer without Johnny Ryan and Tom “Brickman” Lewis?

For the better part of the last 4-5 years, runner extraordinaire, Ryan Bleuer, has been racing with either or both crushing/blocking legends, Johnny Ryan and Tom “Brickman” Lewis.  Both men’s pedigrees are impeccable; Ryan is a seven time TDA champ, Lewis a five time TDA champ.  The three started out on The Junkyard Dogs and then matriculated to Orange Crush.  This year though, marks the first season in a long while that Bleuer hasn’t had one of his two long-time protectors with him.

The Dogs’ current crushers, Jason Ritacco, Kyle Shearer and Joe Snow, are very, very good at what they do, but they utilize a far more smash-mouth style of driving than do Ryan and Lewis.  This is not to say that Ryan and Lewis can’t or don’t hit people.  Quite the contrary.  But as extreme veterans of the TDA, both men know that there is a time and a place to deliver a walloping blow and another time and place to merely dink someone and push him out of the way.

Ritacco, Shearer and Snow are all competent, capable drivers but there will certainly be an adjustment period where they get used to protecting an all-star runner—something Ritacco and Shearer haven’t had to do during the last two years—or just getting back on the track on a regular basis in the case of Snow.

This is all part of getting in synch with new teammates and something that will help determine how JYD does this year.

Minor Point #9: The Junkyard Dogs and Orange Crush Don’t Have To Re-invent the Wheel Between Races

Yes, The Junkyard Dogs and Orange Crush both lost in the first round of First Night, to Reckoning and Damage, Inc respectively.  However, this is not the end of the world.  There are times to panic and there are times to keep a cool head; this is distinctly and definitively the latter.

There are many types of different losses, but, as a team, I think the hardest ones to deal with are the ones where you play hard… and still lose.  JYD and Orange Crush both raced hard… and still lost.  Had a few slightly different things happened First Night, they could have both won.  Those things didn’t happen and they lost.  It happens.

The talent level of drivers on both teams is so good that it will be exciting to see how they respond to these set backs.  Worst case scenario going forward?  The Dogs and Crush face each other in the first round of Second Night.  As a fan, I love the prospect of that; the energy of that race will be scintillating.  Whichever team loses will effectively be pushed out of the championship hunt.  You don’t normally get that do-or-die mindset until later in the season, but this could be different.  There’s a 1 in 6 chance it will happen.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.