FanNation - The Republic of Sport

This story begins back in the late 1970's. My father had introduced me to sports very early, and I was hooked from the get-go. I eagerly devoured magazines with titles like Football Digest, Baseball Digest, Pro Football Weekly, and even Sports Illustrated.  Incidentally, my parents never forbade me from the Swimsuit Issue, although I did take much teasing from my older sisters about it. Anyway, a sports fan I became, and I was everything a young sports fan is. Like any sports fan that age, I daydreamed about what it would be like if my hometown had a professional sports team. Unfortunately, I lived in a place called Casper, Wyoming, where, even during the height of the late 70's oil boom, the population always hovered around 50,000 people. Hardly big enough to support an NFL, MLB, or even NBA franchise.

My parents divorced in 1977, and I found my comfort in my teams and my statistics. It seemed I would be forever doomed to live in a small Podunk town with no team to call my own, other than the actually quite formidable Casper College (JC) Thunderbirds, led by local basketball guru Swede Erickson. They were something of a junior college powerhouse, at least for the region. They had this mascot, who was a Thunderbird (obviously) but not the cartoonish San Diego Chicken like mascot. No, he was an Indian Warrior dressed up in Thunderbird garb doing a War Dance type mascot. Pretty Evil, and in no way disrespectful to the Indian tribes who inhabited the region. So my father had moved up to Billings, Montana, and I was sent for a winter time visit over a long weekend.

To make sure I would not get bored, and as my father knew me better than anyone else at the time, he had the perfect entertainment set up. We went to see a Hockey game. You see, Billings had a professional minor league hockey team, the Billings Bighorns. Until this day, I had no real concept of "minor league" or even any idea of what a league beyond the major powers could be. To me, minor league hockey was fantastic. Having the somewhat reaching imagination I had, the dream of my town having a team, any kind of team, was rekindled. Casper could be a minor league town. It should be, almost all my friends and their dads were all sports fans. And the dream began......

Years went by. Frustrating years of the dream remaining just that, only a dream. Then one day in 1982, I read in the Sports section, (I read the sports columns religiously everyday) that some investors were interested in bringing professional basketball to Casper. Spurred on by the community's diehard devotion to the junior college team, the Continental Basketball Association had decided that Casper would be a good fit for a new expansion franchise. A new community events center had just the year before been built up on the hill overlooking the north side of town, and could hold 8,000 people for concerts, conventions, and yes, Basketball. The dream was finally a reality, and the Wyoming Wildcatters, professional basketball team was born.

The CBA was not the NBA, but it was as close as you could get in those days. The Continental Basketball Association actually predated the NBA, and hence was the oldest professional basketball league, until their untimely demise in 2001 at the management magical hands of Isiah Thomas. It was pro basketball, 12 minute quarters and a three point line at NBA distance. They played a 44 game season the first few years, then later that became 48 games. Exciting, up tempo ball with lots of scoring. Some of the players were old NBA'ers, who didn't want to go play in Europe and were trying for that one last chance at the pros. Many were younger, guys who had been drafted but unable to find a spot on an NBA roster. Just the same, the talent level was above that of college ball, clearly. My brother-in-law was one of the first to get season tickets, and would invite me along whenever his own brother was too tired from being a Dad (which was often) and couldn't go.

The Wildcatters were always competitive, right from the get go. Plus, the town never had any problem supporting the team. In their second year, they advanced in the playoffs all the way to the CBA Championship Series. A best of five, they fell 3 games to 2, to the Albany Patroons of the Eastern Division. Albany was coached by some guy named Phil Jackson. This Jackson character once said that a CBA coach learns more about his profession in a single season than a college coach learns in five years. Sounds pretty crazy, I know. I heard that guy later went on to coach some guy from North Carolina, who they say was pretty good. Then headed west to coach some other fellas. I'm sure he demanded their respect because he has a CBA Championship ring.  They would reach the CBA finals again in 1988, their final year of existence, once again losing to the Patroons. This time a close, 4 games to 3, as the Patroons and their then head coach Bill Musselman prevailed.

The Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz were the de facto Major league teams and we were their farm team. It wasn't anything official, but due to geographical realities, those teams just aligned themselves with the ‘Catters. One of the main ideas begun at this time was the concept of the 10-day contract. When the NBA teams had an injury or something, they would pluck one of our guys, usually our Best guy, and sign him to a 10-day, sometimes multiple 10 days. If he impressed and the injury to the other player was serious, he might get a real contract through the rest of the season. Many occasions we saw our best players go to the Jazz or Nuggets. Rather than be sad about losing one for our team, we would be proud of him, though he might only be a bench warming 12^th man in the NBA or not. We got most of the Nuggets games on TV, and at that point in my life they were my favorite NBA team anyway. Signing our guys just made the bond stronger.

A lot of really great players would pass through our little town, whether on our team or the visitors. The CBA was a great little league. In 1987, the Wildcatters signed a guy who was not good enough to make the Utah Jazz roster. He really wasn't good enough to be a starter for the Catters either, and only averaged 9 minutes a game for us. His name was Billy Donovan. He would later go on to coach some college team down in Florida. The Gators or something like that. I hear they won a couple of big games a year or two ago. No doubt his time in Casper convinced him he was more cut out for teaching rather than playing.

Such is just a snippet of the rich history of the CBA and the Wyoming Wildcatters, who existed from 1982 until 1988 - all my teenage years coincidentally. Sadly, the CBA was mismanaged into non-existence by the same guy James Dolan thought could turn his NBA franchise around. Most of what I've tried to present here today was taken from my memories, which are now creeping towards 25 years ago. The CBA was revived, but it no longer holds the place it used to before, now that spot is taken by the D-League and their official backing of the NBA. The CBA is now a sideshow league, a league that might let Dennis Rodman play again if it brought in a few fans for a couple of games.

When the CBA died, many great stories died along with it, and unfortunately the tales have not been well-chronicled. Indeed, in doing the research for my blog today I ran across that. First I hit Wikipedia. Only there is no entry for the Wildcatters, only a brief mention in the "history of the CBA" article. I tried googling them, and came up empty, save for the stories about when they played other teams. (esp Albany) The I found one article that really made me angry. Coming from the source, however, it was no surprise. It was not the first time this particular writer had drawn my ire, and I'm still in disbelief that some website would put a two-bit cheap shot artist such as this guy on their payroll.

Before I became a dedicated Fannation user, I sometimes would spend time reading what FoxSports website had to say. One of the writers on that site who would always drive me crazy is Charley Rosen. Charley is Hack, a terrible sportswriter, absolutely one of the worst in the business. The kind that could only be employed by the quasi-news propagandists of Fox. Before yesterday, my most memorable thought of Rosen was that he was unaware that Tim Duncan was a US citizen. Charley, it's the US Virgin Islands he comes from, you idiot. So in one of his columns for this "Imitation Fannation" world they got going there, Charley is offering stories of CBA trades. Here's the story I take issue with. On his column dated January 13, 2008 Charley writes:

"Here's another bizarre CBA trade, one that hinged on the flight of a paper airplane.

The Wyoming Wildcatters were in deep financial trouble. Their host city - Casper, the Friendly Ghost Town - simply didn't have the population to support a team. Desperate to boost their gate, the owners decided to run a sensational halftime giveaway.

During the mid-game intermission, a brand-new Chevrolet was driven out to center court.

The deal was this: The center-page of every program (sold for $2 each) was stamped with a different number. The fans were invited to pull out the center page, fashion it into a paper airplane, stand anywhere they wished along the sidelines and launch their missive toward the car. The first one that flew through the car through the open sun roof would win the car.

The car dealer had guaranteed that such accuracy was virtually impossible, especially if the ventilation grids were tilted just so and the fans turned on full blast.

Of course, one lucky fan defied the odds.

The team owners were aghast, and so was the car dealer.

What could be done?

To refuse the car to the winner would be tantamount to the franchise folding in a flash. The dealer, in his desire to keep the Wildcatters in town, agreed to sell the car to the team for $5,000.

Eventually, the Wildcatters contacted the league's wealthiest team and allowed the Rockford Lightning to buy their best player - center Brad Wright - for the five grand.

Unfortunately, Wright only lasted in Rockford for three weeks before being called up to the Denver Nuggets. The Wildcatters continued to operate on a shoestring, losing huge amounts of money before ceasing operations two years later.

It was the classic CBA trade - a bad one for both teams."

First off, Charley, I was there. I was one of the 7,398 fans that packed the Casper Events Center that night (roughly 15% of the entire town). It was the CBA All-Star game, January 31, 1984. I watched our Wildcatters fall to the CBA All-Stars in overtime, despite a remarkable 46 point effort from our best player that year, Anthony Roberts. I also took part in the paper airplane promotion, although my plane did not fly any farther than a few rows below me. Secondly, the town NEVER had any trouble supporting the team, despite the population. Indeed, Casper may be many things I hate to this day, but one thing it is that is good, it is a town of sports nuts. The season tickets goals were always met, and attendance even weekday games, at least all the ones I was at, generally ran between 2,000-3,000, plenty enough to support a minor league basketball team. To this day, Casper supports a minor league baseball team, and has done so for the last 7 years just fine. And one other thing, you are not allowed to call it "Casper, the Friendly Ghost town" unless you are from there. So back off man, if this weren't the internet I would threaten physical force against you. Third thing, the car dealer in question was anything but hurting financially. Indeed, they had the largest and oldest dealership in the state, and were only in as much trouble financially as the rest of the state was at the time, in the midst of the failed policies of Reaganomics, which were pushing unemployment in our town up around 20%. (But as a Fox writer you would ignore that of course, else admit conservative defeat) Lastly, Brad Wright was far from our best player, and in fact wasn't even on the squad that year. Brad Wright played for the Wildcatters in 1987-88, 3 years after the All-Star game took place. (And it was 3 years later, not two, before the Catters folded.) Your story is a COMPLETE fabrication. Anthony Roberts was our best player the year of the All-star game in question, by the way, and was in fact called up to the Nuggets later that year (1984), were he went on to average 14.8 ppg in 19 games.

Mr. Rosen, had you bothered to do your job, you know, do research before you happily published lies and half-truths, you might have discovered the err of your ways. But you didn't. You are a joke, a moron and a miserably bad writer. You also failed to realize that if you bad-mouth a team out here on the internet, a fan of that team, even if defunct for 20 years now, might hear you and call you on your bluff and lies. Well Mr. Rosen, you messed with the wrong team this time. Don't mess with a Fan. More importantly, DON'T DISS MY TEAM. I'm done with you now.

To all my Fannation friends and readers, have a great week and enjoy these NBA Finals. I'm exhausted, not from my blogging duties here, but from that other life I lead, the one that works all day. So I'm taking a few days off next week, and don't expect to be back here til Thursday at the soonest or maybe not at all. Need to recharge my batteries and get ready for the next six week stretch til its my vacation time. I've been having a lot of fun this last week on FN, though, and I still think I got some more stuff in me to put out there for you. Finally, to ____, in regards to our Fanmail correspondence yesterday,  I'm sorry you think I hate you. I don't hate you. Charley Rosen, him I effin' hate, but you, eh, not so much. I don't know how you got the idea I did, but you might want to think about growing a little thicker skin if you really plan to be a writer someday.

Peace!