Joe Bob's Wild America
Last Man Standing (To Be a World-Class Dart Player, You Need Steel Nerves, Deadly Aim, and an Unquenchable Thirst for...Beer)
by Joe Bob Briggs
August 2000

The perfect preparation for a full day of throwing darts is three Mai Tais, two Tequila shots, and a beer to hold in your non-business hand to keep the edge off. I'm not kidding--I've researched this carefully. If you're in a pub serving cheap Puerto Rican rum, I suggest substituting Cuba Libres for the Mai Tais, and I would further recommend that you space the Tequila, knocking it off at key moments in the contest, a strategem which has the added advantage of looking cool. "What do I need? Triple 18 and double 7? Okay, fine, just a minute." Down the Tequila. Approach the line. Fling. If you miss you can always say "Hey! That was Cuervo, wasn't it? You didn't slip in some generic Tequila on me, did you?"

Of course I didn't actually win any games at the 28th Annual Blueberry Hill Dart Tournament (steel tips only), which happens to be the largest and oldest pub-based dart tournament in North America. I spent most of my time, in fact, studying the drinking habits of guys who like to load up on alcohol, pick up three potentially lethal pointy objects, and then play a delicate hand-eye coordination game that is frequently decided by differences of less than one-sixteenth of an inch.

"Oh yes, I definitely play better with at least three beers." This was a puffy-faced guy from Cincinnati I met on Friday night, the beginning of the three-day event, but he was quickly seconded by his Kansas City colleague. "It's an individual thing, I think," said . . . well, let's call him Sal. Sal had the milky saucer eyes of a man who's repeated several grades in Whiskey School, and at the moment he was Holding Forth. "One guy might just need two beers." (His mind was obviously incapable of conceiving a beer in isolation.) "Another guy, he might need six. I wouldn't go past six, though."

Now. Before I bring down on my head the wrath of the American Darts Organization, let me point out that I met plenty of dart players who were non-drinking, non-smoking masters of athletic refinement, and two or three of them are among the best players in the world, but I don't think they're representative of the species. Even though darts is the ultimate low-impact sport, requiring neither strength nor speed nor endurance--although there is one athletic injury, similar to tennis elbow, that afflicts the professional player--it seems to attract huge guys, beefy bearded descendants of Middle Europe. The game could be played by a one-armed legless man, and its mathematical precision would seem to make it attractive to the geeks of the world, yet the constant commotion of a pub dart tournament is more like hanging out with the Roman legion, quaffing mead, after a long day of barbarian-killing and wenching. These are hearty guys with mud on their boots. The number of divorced spouses, I would imagine, exceeds the number of men.

Of course, it's primarily an English game--the World Cup is always won by a United Kingdom team, and the number one ranked player in the world is almost invariably English--but there's a strong corps of Americans who are starting to show up in the world rankings. (Okay, I know. Until now you didn't know there were world rankings, did you? Remember, I've spent three days among dartists.) Alas, the top-ranked American is actually an Englishman who married an American. Thirty-seven-year-old Steve Brown, a jolly, animated man with oversized horn-rim glasses and Hogarthian girth, is a true dart professional. He makes his living from prize money, travelling 35 to 40 weekends a year in his 1983 Toyota Tercel outfitted with a microwave in the back seat. "To tell you the truth, they're usually not happy to see me," he says. "The tournament may only have $5000 or $10,000 in prize money, and they expect a local to win it."

There are fewer than ten darters in North America who make a living from the sport, partly because there are no products to endorse. The darts themselves have spokesmen, but even the finest set of "Black Widows" sell for around $200, and many of the top players use darts that cost only $20. There's no wardrobe to speak of--most players favor a sloppy sweatshirt and a pair of janitor's pants--and, of course, there's no media. There are televised competitions in Europe, most of which are rebroadcast on Fox Sports at 3 or 4 in the morning--and fortunately most dart players tend to be up at that hour anyway. At the World Championships, always held in Perfleet, England in January, there's an audience of about 1500 people and a live broadcast to 13 countries via Sky Sports. Purse for the winner is 32,000 pounds, or about $50,000.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's Friday night, and I've just arrived at Blueberry Hill, a rock-and-roll bar, restaurant and live-music venue near the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. There are 44 dart boards positioned at various places in the complex, including the "Wall of Fame" room, which has oversized photographs of every Blueberry Hill champion since 1973. Total prize money this year is $20,000 for 16 events, culminating with the men's singles "301" tournament on Sunday afternoon, with a top prize of $1000. Everywhere you look there are dartsters tossing darts, but the scoring on the games goes so fast that, unless you're concentrating, you'll never know who's winning, who's losing, or, in some cases, when the game is over. Fortunately, I have the running commentary of Joe Edwards, proud papa of Blueberry Hill, darts aficionado, and czar of the trendy Delmar Boulevard shopping and arts district.

Joe is a bearded and pony-tailed child of the sixties, a St. Louis native who, thirty years ago, was casting about for something to do with his life and his collection of 40,000 rock- and-roll records, when he decided to open up an early version of the Hard Rock Cafe on a block of Delmar known for boarded-up buildings and danger. His principal customers were members of two rival motorcycle gangs--the all-white Boneshakers of St. Louis and the all-black Warlords of East St. Louis. "I opened a little bar--just me, my wife and one employee--and for the first year I threw out two-thirds of my customers. And when I threw someone out, it was a lifetime ban. I just made a decision that I was going to create something nice, a place where everyone could feel comfortable."

And the first thing that started changing the character of the neighborhood was a dart board.

"Actually a guy named Ed Schafer, who was a writer for the Associated Press, came in one night and said 'Why don't you have a dart board?' And I didn't know anything about darts. And he said, 'Put up a dart board. You can borrow mine.' And I didn't think much about it. I told him no, I didn't want to borrow his dart board. But then another guy came in, ordered a beer, and said 'Do you have a dart board?' And I said no and he left. And every four or five days someone would ask about a dart board, in one way or another. Finally Ed came back in and I took him up on his offer to use his dart board, and I noticed that it instantly made the bar more sociable. Even if you just had three people in the place, they might not talk to one another, but if one of them got up and played darts, after a while the others would either be watching or start playing as well. A whole community started forming around that dart board. Later on I find out that Ed Schafer had staged the whole thing. Every single person who asked about the dart board had been sent by him. It was an elaborate con, and he'd done it perfectly. He had them spaced out in a random manner. Some would order the beer first, then ask. Some would ask and leave without ordering. Some would stay three or four hours, then idly inquire about darts. I'm usually pretty good at picking up on things like that, but he totally conned me."

Appropriately, Ed Schafer was the winner of the first Blueberry Hill tournament, in 1973, besting a field of six.

These days the tournament attracts upwards of 400 players over the three days, and many of them Joe knows personally. He moves easily through the "Duck Room"--where Chuck Berry plays once a month but is this night filled with Budweiser logos and dart boards--and he greets many by their first names, pointing out past winners and perennial challengers. "It's a fascinating game," he tells me. "You'll see things that seem impossible. See that guy." He nods toward the only Asian in the place. "That's Paul Lim of Singapore. He lives in San Bernardino now. He scored the only perfect game in the history of the world championships." (A perfect game is throwing six darts to score 301, opening and finishing with a double.) We watch as the slightly built but intense Lim throws a round--one, two, three, hardly stopping long enough to breathe--and nails two triple 20's and a 19. Like most of the players at the top of the field, he can hit any number at any time. Nearby we find Dan Lauby, better known as "Cujo," a Weird Al Yankovich lookalike and professional jazz drummer who is currently ranked 26th in the world. Since there were no real dart pubs in his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana, Cujo learned to play eight years ago at an after-hours bar that had electronic "bar darts." ("They're light and impossible to throw.") He liked the game enough to put up a board in his music studio, then hit the tournament circuit in 1996. "I dedicated three months to it. And I just kept getting better and better."

Most of the good players have similar stories. Darts is not a game you grow up wanting to play. "At least not in this country," says Steve Brown, "because American mothers think children shouldn't play with darts. I happen to think it's the safest sport there is. Each year there are about 200 dart-related injuries, and none of them require an overnight hospital stay. And there are 21 million dart players in this country."

I stop short of telling "Brownie," as he's called, that 200 dart-related injuries are probably still enough to frighten the typical American mom, who would have visions of a steel-tipped dart carelessly thrown into a toy box where it could impale a little sister or, more likely, "put an eye out." Darts look like they were made to put an eye out, and it will probably take a while for American parents to accept them the way Brits do. Brownie played darts as a child, but then he's one of the few players who is genetically predisposed to dart fame. Hailing from the village of Carshalton, near Wimbledon, his father was "News of the World" dart champion in 1972, winning a famous tournament sponsored by the London tabloid, and served six times on the all- England team. But by the time Brownie turned pro in 1990, he was frustrated by the politics of British darts. "Since England wins no matter who is sent to the international competitions, they hand-pick the teams. If you're the top player in the world, you'll probably get picked--as the fourth or fifth man. The rest of the spots go to popular players who may or may not be having a good year but are known to the public." After loudly protesting against the exclusion of several top players from competition, he moved to Warrenton, Missouri, with his American wife, became eligible to play for America, and now is the top-ranked American player (12th in the world) and captain of the World Cup team, which returns to competition in 2001 in Malaysia. Because of this, he's considered a traitor and a pariah in England, making him all the more popular among Americans. While we were speaking, two fairly drunk fans approached him to ask for autographs. "We saw you on Fox Sports, man, and you know what? FUCK THEM!"

The sport is rich with arcana. On a standard dart layout, the throwing line is precisely seven feet, 9 and one-quarter inches from the board, and the bull's eye is precisely five feet, eight inches from the floor. The reasons for this are obscure and hotly debated within the history of English pubs, some of which don't abide by the rules. Just as some baseball stadia have short fences, there are pubs in Wales and Scotland where the game is played at a six-foot distance and where the darts are sometimes bounced off of low ceiling beams to make carom bull's eyes. Why? Probably for no more reason than that the pubs are small and badly constructed. "There are no spots inside the pub with eight feet of unobstructed floor," explains Brownie. Likewise, the special lingo of the game comes from the pub world. If you score a 26, it's called "bed and breakfast." ("Because the traditional cost of a pub bed and breakfast was two shillings and six.") A double "1" is called "the madhouse." A "triple 1" is called a Nelson. ("It's named for Admiral Nelson, who had one eye, one arm and one asshole.") A single, double and triple on one number is a Shanghai. If you're playing without concentration, that's "loose darts." If you fail to achieve anything during your round, it's "a bit of a blob."

Brownie, it turns out, made a bit of a blob in the men's singles finals on Sunday afternoon. He was nursing an injury, caused by falling down in the Motel 6 shower that morning, throwing his timing off. Nevertheless, he knocked off ex-champion Luis Martinez in the second round. ("This is the problem with American darts," said Brown. "They don't have seeding. You can have the two best players competing in the first round. The amateurs don't want seeding because they think that gives them a better chance to get to the late rounds.") But in the third he fell victim to 19-year-old phenom Jason Jarvis. A few matches later, with only 15 or so well lubricated spectators left in the "Wall of Fame" room, Paul Lim and John Part of Canada met in the best-of-five "301" final.

It was rapid and brutal. Lim needed only eight darts, ending with a double 8, to win the first game. But Part got zoned in and finished the second game with a triple 20, closing with a double 19. The most amazing thing about watching pro dart players is that they can do the math so quickly. They throw a dart--say, a triple 19, worth 57 points--and immediately know that they now have 83 points, that if the next dart is a triple 19 they'll be at 26 and can close with a double 13. They've hit every number on the board so many thousands of times and in so many different combinations that the slight stroke of their arm, as they arc the dart boardward, calls on years and years of fine muscle memory, adjusted slightly for local conditions.

Lim bulls-eyed to get the honors in the third game, but his first two throws were way off and after his second round he was still at 170. Part, from 76, hit a triple 20, followed by a double 8 and was one game away from victory.

Lim started the fourth game as well, but couldn't double in his first three darts. Part took advantage and ended 20, triple- 20, double 16 two in the tournament and the $1,000 first prize. More important than the prize money, though, was his inclusion on the "Wall of Fame," the only such place for dart honorees in the world.

A few minutes later I met Part in the bar and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he had defeated all the teetotalers, several of whom had told me that you shouldn't drink if you intend to compete at the top levels of any sport.

"I can't deny that I've had a drink or two today," said Part, who lives in the General Motors company town of Oshawa, Ontario, and is currently ranked fourth in the world. He's a stocky outgoing sort, one of two non-Brits ever to win the World Championship, who taught himself to play darts by reading a book called "All About Darts" and endlessly pelting a dart board he'd received as a Christmas present while listening to Lynryd Skynyrd at maximum volume. "Somehow it relaxed me," he said.

And the drinking? Does it make him a better dart player?

"You know, we have the reputation as being these big drinkers, smokers, whatever, and I don't want to say you have to drink to play darts. Obviously Brownie doesn't drink, but look at him. Instead of drinking he has to run around talking all the time. The way I look at it, there are two forces involved in the body chemistry of a dart player. Adrenalin and alcohol. Adrenalin is your deadly enemy. It strikes hard and fast, and can render you defenseless. Adrenalin turns men into little girls. So one or two drinks can effectively eliminate the largest part of that danger. Keep the muscles loose. Kill the butterflies. Because this sport is all about pressure. It's all in your head. It's so hard to execute the mechanics of this sport. There is no sport with pressure like this game. You have much more leeway with putting in golf. This sport is so much in your head it's unreal."

And then we had a beer. Because some of that adrenaline was starting to sneak up on him, and he needed to be relaxed . . . for all the drinking that would go on at the celebration later on.

Brownie was turning in early, though, because he was still nursing the bum leg. ("It's okay--I got a free room out of it.") And then he cranked up the Toyota Tercel and was off, because next week there was money to be won in Cleveland, the week after that . . . Saskatoon. The famous Saskatoon tournament. But then, that's another dart story.