As always, I mention that I again live-tweeted the night of racing. You can read this at www.twitter.com/truedestruction It’s great if you like things 140 characters at a time with occasional spelling errors. I want to again mention that you do NOT need to have a twitter account to read this; you do, however, need to have a twitter account to follow the Behind the Destruction twitter feed, which I, of course, recommend all of you do. Special thanks to all those people who messaged me during the night with questions and took pictures of me looking insanely cold.
And the TDA’s 2012 season is over. Reckoning grabbed the title in storybook fashion, beating the only other contender for the crown, Mean Green Machine, in a tooth-and-nail battle in the finals to clear up any and all questions about who the league’s best team was this year. It was exactly like something out of a Disney movie… only the guys in black came out on top.
Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that’s the exact opposite of what happened.
In reality, the only two teams that could have won the year’s title, Mean Green Machine and Reckoning, both lost in the first round. And they didn’t just lose in the first round, Reckoning was dusted by Orange Crush and Mean Green Machine lost to Damage, Inc in a race that needed about an hour after its conclusion and an official review to be put in the books.
Talking with Reckoning owner, Brian Anderson, after the Mean Green Machine loss was declared true, I joked, “You lost your way to the championship! Congratulations!”
Anderson got my sarcasm, laughed and thanked me. The important part of my statement was the ‘championship’ part, not whatever came before it. And, given the ups-and-downs and all over nature of the 2012 TDA season, it somehow was fitting that the year’s champions would earn the league title on the heels of two straight losses.
Chatting with my podcast co-host and 2011 TDA champion, Steve Gursky Jr., prior to the night of races, we couldn’t agree on what would be a funnier and less satisfying way to anoint the season championship: 1) with both Mean Green and Reckoning losing in the first round, or 2) on some scoring confusion. Lucky for Steve and I, we got to experience both! (Somehow, both choices of horrible season-ending scenarios ranked above Ryan Decker getting abducted by aliens during the course of the deciding race, a choice that actually did enter the conversation).
In the first race of the night, Mean Green Machine lost to Damage, Inc. Believing that the winning car, Andrew Sherman (#8), had cut the very first tire of the race, the men in green challenged the on-track ruling. There was a brief moment of confusion on everybody’s part as they tried to figure out what this meant if true—Mean Green should have won the race—and then how this could possibly be enforced—honestly, it couldn’t have been. Fortunately for the sport, the replay showed Sherman went around the tire and Damage, Inc. was officially the victor.*
* I am going to write about this more at a later date, but I cannot stress how lucky the league is that Sherman didn’t actually cut the Turn 1 tire. If it showed up in the replay that Sherman had cut the tire, I have zero idea what would have happened. Would Damage, Inc. have kept the win because that was the ruling at the time? Would the league have simply awarded Mean Green the win (and thus the championship) even though Green didn’t actually, you know, win? It’s easy to sit back and say that, had Sherman cut the tire, Mean Green Machine’s Matt “Opie” Pierce would have go on to won, but since Pierce hadn’t actually crossed the finish line when the race ‘ended’ and also appeared somewhat stuck in his position near the Turn 4 tire, I don’t think that’s an assumption that can automatically be made. It seems like a good bet that that would have happened, but not with enough certainty to give that team the championship based upon it. So yeah, the league got REALLY lucky that Sherman didn’t cut that tire.
A few minutes after the Mean Green Machine vs. Damage, Inc. race concluded, Reckoning went out and was fairly well hammered by Orange Crush… and in getting beaten won the championship!
Um, yay?
But such is the nature of points based championships. The team with the most of them wins, regardless of whether they get the points in the first night of racing or the last night of racing. So, despite the fact that no team on the season looked better than Orange Crush did Third Night or Fifth Night, Reckoning got the gold. And that is an impressive feat no matter how you choose to couch it. (I will be writing more about this later too).
Last year, while looking for traits that were unique to the winning teams, I realized that having a stable roster was very connected to winning. The more drivers a team had racing for them, the worse they did, and the standings mirrored this finding. While this doesn’t hold as perfectly true in 2012, I will point out that Reckoning raced the very minimum number of drivers they could, four, and won the championship** while Stranglehold and Seek-N-Destroy both raced a league high eight different drivers and tied for last. And the outlier was Orange Crush. Orange Crush (and The Junkyard Dogs) used six drivers on the season and came in second place tied with Mean Green Machine. That is truly a testament to the Orange Crush spirit and the fact that the Fearsome Foursome lineup of Ron Tyrakowski, Carl Brouwer, Johnny Ryan and Tom “Brickman” Lewis was the most dominant lineup in the league once they got together in July.
** Full Throttle might have only raced four too, but I can’t remember if Andy Fleishman filled in during a race somewhere along the line. I originally thought Mean Green Machine only had used only four drivers until someone pointed out that Trey VanAllen had raced one race for them.
Fifth Night is always a tad melancholy for me. Not only does it mark the end of the demo season, something only the drivers seem excited by, but it also marks the farewells of the drivers who are retiring. And yes, I realize the folly in completely buying in to the late season grumbles and retirement announcements of the drivers. That said, three drivers mentioned to me that they were done racing and the three are all personal favorites of mine: Stranglehold’s Mel Noble Jr., and Orange Crush’s Johnny Ryan and Tom “Brickman” Lewis.
Noble Jr. came to my attention in 2010 when I learned that he was blind and driving in the demolition derby. It took a special kind of crazy to do this. I learned exactly how special in 2011 when Noble Jr. voluntary entered a head on collision with Mean Green Machine’s Ryan Decker minus a helmet. Whenever I talk to him about it, he sort of shrugs and throws some variety of the platitude ‘It is what it is’ back at me. Occasionally, he’ll pepper that statement with a ‘What are you going to do?’ or ‘I did what I had to do’. His responses are so dry and staid that it almost makes you forget that he took a head on collision with Ryan Decker without a helmet.
Without.
A.
Helmet.
Noble Jr. also played on track doctor, popping broken and/or dislocated body parts of his back into place while racing when the aforementioned body parts would get in the way of his driving. Noble Jr. actually carried a hacksaw around with him when he raced just in case he needed to saw off one of his limbs in order to get a couple more minutes of racing in.*** And, by way of a crazy outtro, Noble Jr. (with help from Freddie Knight) managed to completely burn a car to the ground two days before the last night of racing.
*** This is not true, but in a couple of years, with the right amount of mentions, I think I could have people believing it.
Ryan and Lewis are both inextricably linked to one another. The two men have not only been teammates for years on end, first on The Junkyard Dogs and then Orange Crush, but they also make up the best crushing tandem I’ve ever seen race. Watching the two protect their runners, obliterate opponents and cause mayhem all over the track (and sometimes in the staging area) was a thing of absolute beauty this year.
It’s hard to conceive of a situation where two men crashing cars into things is seen as artistry, but Ryan and Lewis achieved that level of driving in 2012.
Individually, the men are quite different. Especially on the 360 days of the year they’re not racing. Ryan is talkative and out-spoken while Lewis is reserved and camera shy. On the track though, both men are true competitors who care so much about winning that is bleeds into everything they do. They drive exceptionally hard (and fast) and are truly two of the most talented drivers to ever step foot through the gates of The Route 66 Raceway.
If all three men are in fact done with racing, the league is going to be a lot poorer for it.
With the off-season now upon us, it marks a time to reflect on the things that were this year. I will be writing about a multitude of different things in the coming weeks on such things as Reckoning’s most unusual championship, the integrity of the league and the scoring SNAFUs that are plaguing this as well as handing out a variety of (my own) awards.
My phone number is 310.498.1680. My email address is chris@stumpedmagazine.com If anybody has a problem with anything I write, they can always feel free to call me, text me or email me those thoughts.