At the Elks Lodge in Poway on a recent Wednesday night, a dart match is being played between two teams belonging to the Greater San Diego Darting Association: the Camelot Inn Motley Crew, and the team sponsored by Culligan Water (who, like so many dart teams, adopted for itself a name we can’t print without, at the very least, blushing).
Like all traditional steel-tip dart matches, this one is conducted in near silence. One player at a time toes up to the line, holds his dart ready, eyes his target, freezes, and then flicks the first of three darts on its way. If he shoots poorly, his teammates, speaking in low tones, will encourage him. If he shoots well, they will congratulate him. If he shoots perfectly, members of the opposing team will also congratulate him; he’ll hear “Good darts” all around. The winning team will be one step closer to achieving the goal of every GSDDA player: the right to display, for the duration of at least one 10-week playing “session,” the league’s championship trophy in their team sponsor’s pub, bar, or business.
Whatever the outcome of this particular match, it will conclude as it began: with all of its competitors shaking hands.
At the exact same time the Elks Lodge game is being played, another dart game is underway at Babe’s Billiards ‘N Brew in El Cajon. Unlike the match at the Elks Lodge, the one at Babe’s is a loud, raucous affair. Contributing mightily to the racket is the dartboard itself, an electronic machine that is whistling, roaring, ringing and buzzing, as well as continuously updating and flashing the players’ scores. And whereas the Elks Lodge game is played with patience and respect, at Babe’s it’s not uncommon, for instance, for one player to begin shooting while another is still at the board retrieving his darts. And why not? As one player put it about the soft-tip darts used with the electronic boards, “The only way these things can hurt you is if they hit you, like, right in the eye.”
What is the relationship between these two games, between the old way of playing darts and the new? Can both rightly be considered “darts”? Not exactly a Sphinx-worthy conundrum, perhaps, but to those for whom the game of darts is more than just a pastime, it is a question of some import.
Len Heard, who plays on the Culligan Unmentionables, is San Diego’s most famous dart player. Throughout the ‘80s he was consistently ranked among the top 10 players in the world. A plumber by trade, Heard, now 57, retired from the professional dart circuit nine years ago when, in a work related accident, the very piece of his right thumb that he used to hold his darts was cut off. Though the piece was seamlessly grafted back into place, Heard was left without the exquisite sensitivity upon which his game depended.
When asked what impact the newfangled electronic boards have had on his beloved traditional game, Heard, a gracious bear of a man, grows dark. Speaking in the even, steady cadence of a man accustomed to hitting his mark, he answers, “Steel-tip darts are at an all-time low right now. And that’s not just due to the electronic machines. When the new drinking laws were passed in the mid ‘80’s — when they lowered the blood alcohol limit to .8%, and instituted the tough new drinking and driving laws — the dart leagues just got hammered. Almost overnight, membership in the GSDDA was cut in half. Today it’s maybe a tenth of what it was then. We’ve got, what, 25 teams? That’s nothing. People are just too afraid anymore to come out, have a drink or two, and then drive back home.” Heard shakes his head. “I doubt if darts will ever go back to being what they were.”
Frank DeVito, Heard’s longtime friend and teammate — and president of the GSDDA — concurs.
“It’s not likely, given the popularity of soft-tips,” says the spirited, affable DeVito. “Electronic darts have really impacted the game. Neither we nor the South Bay Darting Association — San Diego’s other steel-tip league — has anywhere near the number of players the soft-tip leagues have. Soft-tip darts are very popular. It’s such an easier game to play, is why. For one, you don’t have to keep score; the machine does it all for you. Also, if the dart bounces off the board, you still get your points — as far as the board knows, the dart stuck, see? Another thing is, every time you hit something good or whatever, you got a bunch of bells and whistles going off. Everybody knows you did something good. People really like that.”
People like it so much that electronic darts has become a huge business. Few if any bars in San Diego aren’t equipped with at least one electronic dart board, and there are four soft-tip leagues in the area, each with at least 100 teams. Once or twice a year these leagues participate in a major tournament (typically held in Las Vegas), with prize money often totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jim Miholich operates one of San Diego’s largest soft-tip leagues; he owns some 250 electronic dart machines placed in over 100 local bars. This soft-spoken, good-natured young man is, in effect, the king of San Diego soft-tip darts.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” laughs Miholich. “I do all right, I guess. About five years ago I bought the league from a guy everybody knew as Dan the Dart Man. I worked for Dan for a couple of years; and when the time came to sell his league, he offered it to me. So now it’s mine, and I go around to the bars, and keep up the machines, and run the league and all. It’s a lot of fun. And since every game costs a quarter or fifty cents to play, it’s also a lot of quarters.”
Back at the Elks Lodge in Poway, the Culligan Unprintables have won the match. Besides Len Heard and Frank DeVito, the six-man team includes Mark Lantz, the gregarious Culligan’s manager who is responsible for the team’s sponsorship, Brian Tipling, who in his weathered cowboy hat and boots could be the Marlboro Man himself, and the youngest and newest member of the team, John Abalos, whose steady hand and preternatural calm have already proven invaluable to the team.
And the final member of the Culligan steel-tip dart team?
That would be the King of Soft-Tips, Jim Miholich.
“What can I say?” offers Miholich. “I’ve always played steel-tip. I love steel-tip darts.” He shrugs his shoulders, and smiles. “But,” he says, “you gotta go with the times.”