American Baseball Dart Association
(A. B. D. A.)
About The A.B.D.A.
American Baseball Dart Association (A.B.D.A.)
Interview By George Silberzahn
Author Of "How To Master The Sport Of Darts"
Contribution by George Haines - A.B.D.A. Web Master
Click Here To View Or Print From PDF File!
The A.B.D.A. spun off from the Pennsylvania State Dart Tournament which
is the largest American Dart Tournament and has been around for almost
forty years now. There was no sanctioning body for American Darts so
you could go from town to town and you find the line is different,
everything
is different.
It covers all of American Darts, which isn’t a huge geography. It
covers eastern and central Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland
and a little bit of New York. That’s about it, it doesn’t
go much beyond that as far as organized leagues go certainly.
It’s kind of hard to say how many members shoot in leagues. Leagues
vary from 60 members to 120 members, that's based on 16 teams as a maximum,
most leagues are not that big. There’s a lot of variance on how many
members are on a team. There are three or four or five or six, but five
is the most popular. I keep an eye on about 25 American Dart Leagues myself.
I’m sure there are many more than that so probably 2500 to 5000
members now play organized American Darts.
Well, if you can get them young enough and interested enough they
should play until they die. A lot of the players are those who’ve been around
for a while. The younger players are more interested in bells and whistles.
Electronic darts, perhaps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,
darts is darts. Our game is kind of looked at as an old fashioned game.
You know, it’s a skill game. I would say that older players are some
of the better players, not that all the best players are older, because
as you get older your skills sort of go away a little and the younger players,
you know the thirties guys, thirty - thirty five maybe are generally still
the top players and they still are in the American game. Johnny Kuczynski
and Darin Young, they shoot in the same league, upstate American Darts.
They shoot every Thursday in the North Side Dart League. I mean they’re
the top two players and average fifty or better every year and that’s
about as good as it gets. I’m sure you know that. I mean, I don’t
care how far back you go, not too many players could average, in league
play (not tournament play now) fifty or better. Your better member is the
guy who’s been around for a while, you know, younger guys come and
go. Their jobs move them around. It’s pretty much a local game.
Not very many women play. We do have women who play but some
leagues just don’t allow women to play in their league,
it’s in the by-laws,
it’ll say right in the by-laws it’s a men’s
dart league. I’m saying leagues are all different. There’s
social leagues and there you’re going to have more women,
there’s handicapped
leagues, there’s open leagues that are, you know, very
competitive. Maybe they have a cap on the average for the team
so you’re not really
giving points or getting points, you’re trying to balance
the team to at least hold them down to a level of play where
a particular team isn’t
going to run away with it every year. Johnny
K and Darin Young, to my knowledge, I don’t
think they play any leagues other than American Darts. They may have
played some electronic
darts, because it was available. Up in their area you will
find very few dart bars with a bristle board. They practice and can go
to Richie’s
where there’s a bristle board because the locals (many
of them) compete at the British Style tournaments that are
easy to travel to. There’s
the Ray Chesney and Virginia Beach, and of course Johnny
and Darin, they travel all over the world. In upstate PA
you find American Darts primarily
and maybe find electronic darts up there where Jerry Umberger
pushed them a few years back. I would say Johnny and Darin
probably play a little
electronic
but they play American every Thursday in the North Side Dart League.
Like most organizations, the leagues have one or two guys
who do all the work. They may have a President, Vice President,
Secretary, Treasurer,
Statistician. You know that’s your basic, but mostly one or two guys
do all that work. And that’s usually what happens. The statistician
keeps track of who shot, how many games they shot, what their average
is for the year, things like that.
There’s usually some money involved. Somehow some way they all have
their ways of collecting money, either from the shooters directly or from
the establishments where darts are being held or most likely a combination
of the two. And, of course, the establishments are benefiting financially
because they get a dozen guys or so in their establishments who other wise
wouldn’t be there. The amount they collect depends on how lavish
an affair they are looking for at the end of the year. Some will have
a simple banquet or picnic. There are trophies, some have cash prizes,
for
top high game, top high triple, that sort of thing. But then some leagues
have a lavish banquet (phone rings). Excuse me I have answer the phone.
[Johnny K, how are you? Guess who’s sitting here with me right now?
George Silberzahn. He wrote that book "How to Master The Sport of
Darts," yea, yea, you’ve seen him down at the Ray Chesney I’m
sure. He’s sitting here interviewing me about American Darts, the
leagues. No. Yea, you should get it today or tomorrow. Two O’clock?
OK, now you know what’s it’s for, that’s me. Specialty.
I didn’t put a note in there or anything. Yea, yea, yea, OK. He cut
his teeth on American Darts. Oh, yea. I was just telling him you shoot
every Thursday in the North Side League. Do you shoot electronic darts
somewhere? Occasionally, or you still do? At the Towers right? OK. There’s
no organized bristle boards up there, right? Not that I know of. You all
go over to Richie’s or you go home to shoot, right? You go to a
tournament to shoot bristle right? So your skill level comes from where?
You know
right where it comes from, absolutely, here tell him.]
Hi Johnny K. Congratulations on your shooting. Ah,
I think I know the answer to this but I need you
to tell
me. Where
does
your skill
level
come from,
how did you get to it? That’s what I thought. Uh huh, I understand
that. Can you speak for Darin about this? You both have the same background,
right. OK, that’s terrific, I won’t hold you up any more.
Thanks very much. You need talk to George Haines again? OK, hang on.
OK Johnny, hey, good luck in Vegas next week. You’ll qualify. Bear
down, OK, have a good one, right, see you now.
He has to go out to Vegas Sunday to qualify. He
didn’t get a free
ride this year.
I read in your book, and you’re absolutely right, in American Darts
there’s no strategy to it, at all. It’s repetition, it’s
all offense. And the good thing is, you can tell if you’re getting
better, strictly by the numbers, ‘cause you can’t beat anybody
any other way. It’s just the more points you score, the higher your
average will be. Obviously Johnny K’s skill level comes from American
Darts. He’s played since he was a kid, his dad taught him and his
brother, and when he got older his dad would take him to the fire house.
You know, he got to playing with the guys, he couldn’t shoot in
the league at first, you had to be 21 in order to shoot because they
generally
serve alcohol at these establishments. Then when he got to be 21 he joined
the league and he was pretty good right out of the blocks.
Some others who came out of there were Jerry
Umberger, Jim Watkins and Rick Nye. Rick shot
in our A.B.D.A.
tournament last year.
The first time
I met Jerry was at the PA State Dart Tournament.
He was the
player I was supposed to cover. I didn’t know who he was, really, and I was shooting
one of my better games, ‘cause I wasn’t intimidated, I just
didn’t know who he was. Then finally somebody said, you know who
you’re covering here, Jerry Umberger. I said, who’s he and
they said well, he’s the winningest active professional dart player
in the world right now. Our world wasn’t really the whole world,
of course, just America and mostly American darts. I think he only beat
me by one dart the first game then I fell off to my normal kind of average
after that.
I think the rules the leagues use are mostly
several pages long and are all a little different.
They
involve how many
players
on a team,
who’s
allowed to shoot, some leagues prohibit out of town shooters, even women
you know, they draw all kinds of barriers. I’m not sure why, well
I do know why, they don’t want somebody coming in from out of town
and taking their trophies and money, it’s that simple. But then there’s
other leagues that encourage that and because they do they get the best
players. The one thing that holds true, no matter what, in American Darts
the better players want to be together. Invariably that ends up with power
house teams that crush every body and that’s not fun either, even
for them. They don’t want to go out week after week and just crush
everybody and win, win, win. See, as an example the North Side Dart League
put caps on the average. You can’t put Johnny K, Darin Young, Eddie
Shoepe, Chris Kuehn, and Mark Wuerstle all on the same team. You’re
just going to kill everybody. So, lets put a cap on the average, I think
they use 210 points for five guys, that’s forty two, forty three
a man. Darin and Johnny know, if they don’t shoot fifty or better
on Thursday night, in all probability they’re team is going to loose.
It’s not a big league, there’s only about eight teams, I think,
but it’s a very competitive league and it produces a lot of good
averages.
There are three brands of American Darts
that are used and it gets to be a geographic
thing.
Up in
the north
part of
the state
they
use Widdy
darts,
the Bethlehem City League shoots Apex,
then there’s other leagues
that shoot the Darto dart that’s a little heavier with bigger feathers
that seems to easier to throw. The barrels are made of wood instead of
some exotic metal. They’re carnival darts, that’s really what
they are. They are not the most precise dart. That’s where the skill
comes from. If you take an American Dart player and you put precision darts
in their hands they can really produce. They’re used to throwing
a very light dart that is kind of touchy. The Apex #1 Dart is only about
12 to 13 grams, Widdy weighs 13 to 14 grams, and the Darto is 14 ½ grams.
The dart board is made from end grain bass
wood assembled in a butcher block fashion.
It is the
softest of
the true hardwoods.
I’ve done
a little research because I have interest in the game. It has this ability
to heal itself. It gets full of holes and gets better, to a point, then
it will begin to deteriorate. An American dart board should last the average
player a life time at home. I don’t use a potato here in the shop.
(I do in competition!) A potato makes the darts stick better but there
is nothing exotic in a potato by the way, it just makes the dart point
wet so it penetrates the wood better and gives it better grip.
American dart leagues used to be a city
game and most of the equipment is still
manufactured
in
Philly. But
you
don’t find so many American
dart boards in the city anymore. The
English darts came along in the seventies
and took over, because the players
were good, they had a skill level that
put them at the top immediately. English
darts took over the city, and of course,
people also moved out of the city to
the suburbs. So American
Darts moved out of the city into the
suburbs and country areas like the
Hazelton and Freeland area, the coal
regions were always good places to
find American Darts. There was a lot
of unemployment up there and a lot
of these guys had time on their hands
and this was a way they could have
fun and not cost them very much money.
This produced a number of quality players
in that neck of the woods. Good competition
leads to a good deapth
of better players.
That deapth of talent led to the rise of top players like Johnny Bobby, Camy Melchiorre, and Jerry Umberger. More top shots like Lee Bredbenner, Pete “Primrose” Polinsky, Charlie Mateyak. They were just the best of their day. Some of them crossed over into the English game but most of them didn’t and they were some of the best dart players ever, but nobody knows who they are unless you play American Darts.
The game we play is, well that’s where the name comes from, baseball.
We play one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine, in that
order. There’s no defense, make as many points as you can with three
darts. The triple ring is on the outside of the board, which is the double
in the English game, and one reason for our success in the English game
is we (American Dart shooters) are not afraid to go after that outer ring.
The idea is to shoot for the red, that’s our double and it’s
next to the triple and about twice as wide as the triple and it’s
your biggest scoring area. It only gets two but if you miss a bit and it
hits the triple that’s a good thing. If you’re trip hunting
and you’re not getting them you’re not going to score very
well. And of course if you hit inside the double you only get one. Unless
you quit or pass out (I’ve seen it happen!), you get 27 darts every
game and the average comes from the score from your twenty seven darts.
There may be a mental advantage to going first or last because some like
to know what they need to make so there might be an advantage to taking
the hammer. We shoot cork at tournaments
to get choice of going first or second. Sometimes going first isn’t a bad deal either because you
get to put pressure on. But both competitors get twenty seven darts so
it’s not like playing 501
where going first is a clear (at
least three darts) advantage.
The A.B.D.A. is trying to attract more leagues to participate. We talked about geography, where the game is played. We found the Lehigh Valley area turns out to be a good location to hold our national tournament (run by Keith Bauer) because it doesn’t cause too much travel but we haven’t attracted players from Maryland, because I just they don’t come up to PA. They don’t come up here and we don’t go down there. If we could get a Qualifier Tournament in MD it would add something to our National Finals. A team could say that because they won their division they got their way paid into the A.B.D.A. National Tournament. That might give them extra incentive to come up and compete.
There are generally five players
on a team although I’ve seen as
many as six and as few as three or four. That’s where the A.B.D.A.
comes in. If you start looking at team averages in the newspaper and see
really high ones you may find there are six players (instead of five) on
a team and that’s misleading.
I have some old records. A few
years back we were trying to
determine who was the
oldest American Dart League
and the Delco
Dart League
claims they
are the oldest and I was not
able to disprove that.
The Bux-Mont Dart League and
Delco Dart League both started
around the
same time but
they have records
that show they started in 1948
or
1949 and we don’t.
We have a "Wall of Fame" that was started with the PA State Tournament
and is named after it's founder Michael "Shakes" Lozinak. It’s
an open tournament, any three players can get together and enter it, only
a handful of them
have
a snow
ball’s
chance in hell of winning it. And we all know that. Now how many other
competitions
are
there where
you can compete with the
very best, side by side, you know for a couple
of bucks. You go to test
yourself.
The center of our cork is
63" from the floor. The line, now you get
to where we’re trying to standardize from league to league. The standard
was set about 35 years ago by the PA State Dart Tournament and we picked
up on what States uses - seven feet three inches from the FACE OF THE BOARD
- NOT from the wall. Not all walls are straight or floors level. So we
decided we could also use the hypotenuse from the cork more accurately
and conveniently. It’s actually one hundred seven and one half inches
and there is the line. Some may have a seven foot line, I’ve even
heard of a six foot nine line. That’s what divided up the Delco league.
We toe this line. The oche is a toe board. We have a curved toe line, and
why I’ve no idea but we’ve been doing it that way for years.
It’s based off the cork and we only shoot the cork to see who starts
the game. You will find straight lines in some places.
The A.B.D.A. is a hobby
for me. I manufacture
radio frequency
identification devices
that people with
dementia wear
to keep help track of
them and keep them in a safe
area. Darts is a labor
of love
for me. I take
care of the
A.B.D.A. web site.
The best thing about
the dart leagues is,
it’s a social thing. It’s
quite a mix of people. It’s primarily a blue collar game but you
have quite a number of professional people, you know, who play in the league.
It’s a down to earth game. Back in the day it was probably popular
because you don’t have to subtract numbers and all that stuff.
Start with zero and
work up that’s all there is to scoring. Forty
is sort of a magic number for an average to demonstrate proficiency. If
a player is even a thirty five average or better they’d probably
be in the top fifteen percent or so of all the players who play the game.
That leaves a huge number of people who are below that and they are the
players who make up most of the leagues. I think the better dart players
don’t quite get that. The Hazelton
Dart League had twenty eight team when I started
to shoot. And that was only six or seven or eight years ago. They had
three skill levels: A, B, and C. There were only, really,
a couple of teams
at the A skill level and over half of the rest of them were in the C
level, but they decided, since the North Side Dart League
was doing so well
with the 210 cap, to have a 195 cap. Well they just threw all the C teams
away. There was no way they could even come close, so all
of a sudden there
wasn’t any purpose, except to come out and drink
beer. So all of a sudden that league went down to 12 or 13 teams and it
never recovered. That’s
a shame.
The A.B.D.A. was
a little bit
of a different
twist
and the
fella
who started
the tournament
(John
Petrick) and
a small
group of
players created
three divisions
of play.
Division A is
capped at 130 for
three players,
B
is capped at
110 points, C is capped
at 90. These
(C Division) are guys
who don’t
usually play
tournaments.
We can accommodate
sixteen Division
A teams in the
finals but we
have yet to fill
the bracket.
Now guys are
finding out they
can go there
and win as much
money as guys
winning the
A division. There
are trophies
too but they
are just to document
what you did,
the money is
the real thing.
The C division
guys are starting
to catch on now
so things are
growing. This
was the sixth
year for us to
run the tournament
and now we have
Budweiser interested
and helping so
it’s
getting better.
For most players American Darts and the A.B.D.A. is a night out. Like pool, shuffle alley, bowling, like that. In a traveling league you get to shoot somebody different every week, and meet a whole lot of different people. Some the craziest you’ve ever meet to those who are very precise and tactical in their approach to the game. You can try to mimic somebody else's style but it probably isn’t going to work for you.
I am very proud
though of
my best moment
in my long
and
humble dart
career which
was when
VIP
Darts won
the inaugural
A.B.D.A.
National
Championship
in Drums,
PA. The team shooters
were
the late
B.J. Gerber,
Ed Kanick
and myself.
I wish I’d
have found
the guys
(top players)
upstate a
few
(25 or 30)
years ago.
I could
have become
a better
player.
For information contact www.vipid.com/abda/
