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Stevie Wonder was Right!
Last night I committed THE major darting transgression -- and I’m not talking about throwing without a beer in my left hand. I stopped that three months ago after reading Dick Allix’s column about good health and darts.
Yep, I’m on the Atkin’s diet. I haven’t swigged a beer or crunched a crouton in over
ninety days. I’ve lost twenty pounds. I wonder how many carbohydrates there are in a Marlboro?
Anyway, I’ve been feeling guilty since the moment it happened.
I was right but I was wrong. Pretty much the way any man feels when he’s arguing with a woman.
I was throwing doubles 501, best two out of three, with my new league partner, Ritchie
Dantine. Our team was near the tail-end of a see-saw battle against the leading team in the league -- a team that had handed us our asses a month or so
earlier by a whopping score of 39-9. The result of Ritchie’s and my match would determine whether our team would avenge its loss.
Tied up a leg a piece, I stepped to the line with 74 remaining. Our opponents were
looking at 32. Victory hung on my final three arrows or possibly my last two, if I stuck the t14 and then the d16. Nothin’ to it…
But I missed. Instead, I pegged the single 14, just a hair south of the number 9
wire.
Immediately I threw to the top of the board and marked a perfect dart just below the double
top. And then… set. Stroke. Release. BAM! My final dart slid ever so neatly above my second and into the d20!!
Leg. Set. MATCH! There really wasn’t much to it. I was calm. Satisfied.
As I
began to walk to the board, behind me I heard Ritchie say something congratulatory. One of our opponents also acknowledged the finish. I felt
good. Revenge.
That’s when it happened...
I pulled my first dart out of the 14. I applied a little pressure to my second dart,
pushing it slightly south to expose my final throw -- just to be certain there was no question about its final position. Not that there was.
Then I pulled both of the remaining darts from the board.
That’s when the, well… let’s call it “the disagreement,” occurred…
It turns out that the other of our two opponents, Stevie Wonder, “saw” things a bit differently. He disputed our win, arguing that the 14 was actually a 9 -- leaving Ritchie, after the 69 scored, 5 still to close.
What does one say in such a circumstance? I knew that the dart was in the 14 --
everybody knew it was in the 14.
But the thing was, it wasn’t, at least not any more. It was in my hand.
Calmly, I argued my case. “No. No,” I said.
“The first dart was in the 14. Why else would I have moved to the top? If I’d have hit the 9, I’d have thrown my next dart at the bull...”
Not quite so calmly, he responded.
“You pulled your dart, man. I saw it hit the 9. I even said to my partner here that you’d handed us a break. You can’t be pullin’ your darts, man. You gotta learn the rules.”
“Hold it a minute!” I countered, while pointing at his buddy. “He saw it hit the
14! ASK him!” And then I challenged him. “What am I going to do, cheat?”
He came right back at me. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” he
said, accusingly. “I just saw it differently, man. You need to learn not to pull your darts.”
So now I’m thinking… being honest with myself, “damn, it doesn’t really matter what anybody
saw or didn’t see, the guy’s got a point -- I shouldn’t have pulled my darts.”
BUT then, all in an instant, I think a little more, “who is this wanker lecturing me about
the rules!”
So I ratcheted the thing up a notch. Not intentionally, mind you. But that was the effect of what I said next. “For Christ’s sake, give me a break. This is a friendly shoot. It was a 14. Even your partner acknowledges that. I’ve been playing this game for 25 years. Do me a favor and lecture someone else about the rules.”
And then I ventured completely over the line. I looked him square in the eyes and
admitted my faux pas. “You’re right,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pulled the dart. What I should have done is yank the frickin’ thing out of the board and shove it up your ass!”
No. No.
I didn’t actually say that. Oh, I thought about it. Don’t’ we all sometimes…
I apologized. I told him I had honestly tried to be careful and had intentionally
“shown” everybody that my final dart -- the one I thought might be in doubt -- by pushing my second dart just slightly out of the line of sight.
And I told him that he was right. Because he was.
I was wrong.
I pulled my darts too soon. Still, among the four of us we agreed to let the leg and set stand as finished.
Not long afterwards, my team mates and I tipped a last drink and headed out the door to find
our cars.
We had won 25 to 23 but I don’t think any of us felt very good about it.
From the Field,
—Dartoid
They Played Conkers, not Darts!
Something like four hundred years ago a small group English people hopped into a boat.
You’ve probably heard about it.
They sailed all the way to Cape Cod to have Thanksgiving dinner with our Indians before
converting them to the Christian Faith. It was a tumultuous time in the history of both old England and young America.
It was a time that gave birth to the familiar schoolyard riddle…
If April showers bring May flowers,
What do May flowers bring?
Of course, the answer is: ALLERGIES!
And Pilgrims.
Some would have us believe that this was also the moment the sport of darts took root in
America. It has been written and often repeated that the Pilgrims “amused themselves by playing darts” aboard the Mayflower.
Romantic as it may sound, this myth has recently been debunked by American author Dan Peek
and British darts historian Patrick Chaplin. Both have dug deep into the dusty annals of history and proclaimed: “THE ANNALS ARE DUSTY!”
The Pilgrims did not set up a dartboard on the bow of the Mayflower to wile away the hours as they traveled to the New World.
What they did was play conkers.
Now, if you’re an American you are probably scratching your head and muttering to yourself:
“Conkers? What the heck is that?” If you’re British, you are most certainly saying: “Bloody ‘ell!! They played conkers on the Mayflower!!” In fact, if you’re British, this may well be the most exciting news ever to come your way.
Outside of England (and as you’ll soon learn -- entirely by British design), it is a little
known fact that conkers -- not darts -- is the real national sport of the land. Every September and October for generations the activity has taken over
schoolyards across the country.
It all culminates on the second Sunday of each October in the Village at Ashton in Northamptonshire where contestants gather to battle it out for the Conker Championship of the World.
A conker is the hard brown seed found inside the prickly green casings that fall each autumn
from the horse chestnut tree.
The same thing actually happens here in America but we call the tree and the seeds buckeyes. We named a whole state after them. People from Ann Arbor drill screws into the nuts and wear them as accessories at football games in Columbus. Americans can be so uncivilized.
It’s much different in England. They are a class act.
What the Brits do is collect the nuts from the ground, carefully drill holes through them
and thread the nuts on lengths of string.
Two contestants then pair off like gladiators, just as in darts. One suspends his conker from one hand, to a length of approximately a foot, while the other contestant (the striker) attempts, by swinging his conker, after wrapping his string tightly around his hand, to break his opponent’s conker to smithereens with a single blow. If he succeeds he wins the contest.
If not, the positions are reversed and the first contestant assumes the role of striker and
attempts to break his opponent’s conker. The positions are repeatedly reversed until someone completely destroys the other’s nut.
But there’s more to it than this. If a striker’s first shot misses he is allowed up to
two additional turns to score a hit.
If the two strings tangle, as they often do, the first player to yell “strings” gets an extra shot. If a player drops his conker, the other player can yell “stamps” and jump on it unless (and this is extremely important) the owner yells “no stamps” first, in which case the other player can not squash the nut. It’s all highly technical, just like darts.
What is called a “count” is kept for each conker during the course of its competitive life. For example, a conker that has battled twice and won
twice is called a “two-er.” Three wins earns a nut the distinction of “three-er” and so forth.
However, if a “two-er” defeats a “three-er” that conker is credited, not just with another win, but with the entire record of the vanquished nut -- hence it becomes a “five-er.” Curiously, the concept is very similar to the American Darts Organization’s (ADO) national ranking system.
Just as in darts, there are varying degrees of quality when it comes to conkers.
Just as tungsten outplays brass, it is said that firm, un-cracked and symmetrical nuts are superior to mealy, oddly-shaped ones. And just as flight construction and point selection can play an important role in the performance of a dart, soaking a conker in vinegar, baking it in the oven and then storing it in a dark place for a year is said to harden the nut and impart it with a competitive edge for the next season. Yes, it is all very sophisticated.
But more than that, it is just another example of the brilliance of the British people.
As indisputable as the evidence is that the Pilgrims carried conkers with them to the New
World (Is a whole frickin’ state full of buckeye trees not proof?), it would seem just as obvious that the Pilgrims made a conscious choice not to take their
arrows on the cruise.
The British are a proud people. It only stands to reason that the Pilgrims did not
bring their darts because they feared American sports superiority. It is due to this same fear that they buried their nuts in Ohio.
I ask you: name one, just ONE, famous athlete who hails, who has EVER hailed, from
jolly old England.
Jim Thorpe? No.
Babe Ruth?
Arnold Palmer? Wilt Chamberlain? Muhammad Ali? Mark Spitz? Lance Armstrong?
No. No! NOOOOOO!!!
There aren’t any!
Even the current heavy weight champion of the world is, technically, from Hamilton, Ontario.
This is why blokes like John Alden and Myles Standish didn’t carry their darts on the Mayflower.
They were afraid (and they were right) that the Americans would someday take over the sport, just like they rule every other sport on the planet.
This is why the Pilgrims brought their conkers instead and then buried them deep in
hinterlands of Ohio. They didn’t want us to get them and come over to their country and kick their asses from moor to shining moor.
So you see, it was all by design. The evidence is flat-out indisputable.
The Pilgrims “amused themselves” with conkers, not darts, on the Mayflower.
Ah, the British are very, very smart indeed.
From the Field,
—Dartoid
Also included on page 47 of our January/February 2004 print edition is a third Dartoid’s World piece entitled, Don’t Know Much About H-I-S-T-O-R-Y...
What? You’re not already a BEN subscriber? Dartoid would be ashamed! (Ahem... You might miss one of his articles! ;) Click here, it’s easy to sign up online... 
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