In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there was an independent basketball team from Utica, N.Y. that was sponsored by Champlin Tire Wreckers. The Utica Wreckers were one of the top independent squads in New York, playing against teams like the Schenectady Schaefer Brewers. Among the recognizable names that suited up for the Wreckers was former Siena head coach Mike Deane. The Wreckers disbanded around 1978 or so, when the CBA tried two franchises in Central New York, the Mohawk Valley Thunderbirds (1979) and the Utica Olympics (1979-80).
Flash forward to 2007. A new iteration of the Utica Wreckers – a team created based on the frustrations of my seeing a trainwreck league like the American Basketball Association (the current iteration, which has absolutely nothing to do with the 1967-76 pro league other than the sharing of a name).
The current American Basketball Association uses the legacy of Julius Erving and Moses Malone, but gives us instead teams that fold in the middle of the night, squads that don’t show up for scheduled road games, players who don’t get paid or have any sort of worker’s compensation, owners that run out of money after a game and a half, and a league CEO who is more concerned about marketing and promoting everything about the league – with the exception of what should be its core element, the sport of basketball. Heck, even the one media outlet that would allow the ABA to post press releases – the minor league sports website Our Sports Central – doesn’t even list the ABA as a properly-operating league any more, due to all these shenanigans.
And with that, I created the Utica Wreckers.
The Wreckers were a creation – essentially a figment of my imagination – but much of the Wreckers’ existence was based on the grandiose and painful publicity stunts the ABA teams tried to do in order to draw any sort of business. In January 2007, a team in the ABA, the Rochester (N.Y.) Razorsharks, was in a dispute with ABA CEO Joe Newman, with Newman threatening to kick the ABA’s most successful and profitable team out of the league, just because the Sharks actually suggested that there be due diligence on some of the fly-by-night teams that were coming into the league, teams who didn’t have 25 cents to drop in a collection plate. Joe threatened to kick the Sharks out of the ABA and place another team in Rochester. He even announced a new team was moving into Rochester – until you read the press release and discovered he was putting the team in Rochester, Minnesota.
I was sick and tired of reading about Newman’s shenanigans – to sum it up, the guy could sell Steve Barnes an Olive Garden gift card – so I decided to make an online bulletin board post to satirize the ABA’s expansion policies (the ABA seemed to announce a new franchise every other day, with glowing reports about the franchise’s solid ownership and ties to the local community) and the ABA’s penchant for publicity stunt signings (female coaches of all-male teams, teams built around a single ethnicity, etc.).
And on February 8, 2007, the Utica Wreckers were born.
Post by post for about three years, I had the Wreckers’ roster announced with the same publicity-whoring excitement the ABA reserved for its other teams, with most of my announcements based on similar press releases in the ABA legacy. The first player signed to the Wreckers was 53-year-old center Schultz Dooley (yes, I borrowed the name from the talking beer mugs of Utica Club fame). I then added point guard Tyree Elk Deer, who would play for the Wreckers inbetween his time as an employee at Turning Stone Casino; Sylvain Lemieux, a hockey player from the old Utica Devils team who went into the penalty box one night and forgot to come out; Purlie Scarvin, a quick point guard despite being only nine years old; and DayShawn Wright, who at the time was in the middle of a signing controversy (teams in both the CBA and the ABA legitimately claimed him as their property).
I posted this information as a joke. Surprisingly, people on the OSC message boards took it as gospel. Fans chastised Joe Newman for sinking so low as to sign a nine-year-old kid to a playing contract. I decided to top that with a press release announcing Joe Newman had signed HIMSELF to a Wreckers contract – despite being three days older than dirt. (There was precedent here – Dave Welker, who owned the old Albany Choppers in the International Hockey League, signed HIMSELF to a contract so he could get a discount on the minor league hockey players’ health and dental plan).
The Wreckers took off with a life of its own. Every time Joe Newman announced some grandiose league accomplishment, I countered with a similar satirical announcement from the Wreckers. The ABA added a shoe deal with PONY; I gave the Wreckers a shoe deal with Bobos (as in “Bobos, they make your feet feel fine… Bobos, they cost a dollar ninety nine…”). The ABA promoted a grand deal to have all their games broadcast live over the Internet; I countered with the Wreckers promising to film all their games on 16mm film, then transferring it to VHS tape, then transferring it to DVD, then uploading it to their homepage.
I kept this thing going for about three years, and the lineup of Wreckers players just kept getting wilder and wilder. Included in the list were Valerio “V.D.” Dawson, who apparently led the team in steals, because nobody wanted to touch the ball after it had touched his filthy hands; Janos Skorzeky, the “Bouncing Czech,” as he was created to play for the Wreckers after an ABA team owner wrote a slew of rubber checks around town – and split shortly afterwards; Mark “The Scew” McSechlure, based on a basketball team owner who verbally attacked other message board posters who disagreed with him; and Dougie Heywon, another message board poster who spent most of his time listening in on conversations for any scintilla of information that he could then run and post on the boards, like a kid who has his own illicit AP wire service.
I kept the Wreckers alive on the message boards for about three years, and the Wreckers’ roster was extremely fluid – depending on what was going on with the ABA at the time. The ABA announced a spectacular statistics computer program that in reality couldn’t add two plus two; I countered with a computer program called “Whummy Warry” software (think the catchphrase of MAD magazine). The Wreckers had a dance team that was branded as the “Trailer Trash,” and who worked at the local go-go clubs on off-nights.
It just kept growing and growing and growing. To satirize the ABA’s reputation of teams not showing up for games, I had the Wreckers play an entire season at home, and every time someone didn’t show up, the Wreckers would hire some weekend athletes from the YMCA rec league, give them black jerseys with masking tape for numbers, and send them out against the Wreckers. Since the ABA’s printed statistics were virtually non-existent, I argued that the Wreckers were two-time ABA champions – because hey, there were no stats to prove otherwise.
And of course, I had fun with this. I used an online sports jersey software program to create Utica Wreckers team jerseys, and some people on OSC actually bought them. Wow.
But after a while, the Utica Wreckers had run their course. They joined a league called the United States Basketball Association, which had promised to play in 2007 – and in 2008 – and in 2009 – I’ve played more games than that league has. So I made the Wreckers the champions of that league, since nobody ever showed up to play against them.
Realistically, though, since I currently work with the Premier Basketball League, there’s really no reason any more to play games on a message board. Any Utica Wreckers posts I could come up with at this point would only look like petty, trite attacks on other leagues, rather than as the satire and comedy of which they were originally conceived. The Wreckers were a joke team – a fun joke team – and they’ve essentially become the go-to phrase for the most absurd and surreal actions in minor league sports today.
But if you want to read about how much fun the Wreckers were as a team and as a satirical concept, go to Our Sports Central’s website (http://www.oursportscentral.com) and search for the words “Utica Wreckers.”
Totally fun stuff.
Chuck The Writer 