Balling the Jack. Frank Baldwin
a little background on darts. To me, it’s the best bar game there is. Full of skill and strategy, and best of all, you get better the more you drink. Up to a point, anyway. I learned to play from Dad, who grew up throwing for drinks in neighborhood bars in south Jersey. In college I kept a board on the back of my door and played for shots with the fellas.
One night after graduation, Dave and I challenged a couple drunks to a game in a West Side dive. Loser buys. We beat ’em four straight with their darts. After the last game they showed us empty wallets and the bigger one steadied himself with a hand on my shoulder.
“So you see, gents, we kenna pay. But a debt is a debt, so I give you this.”
He handed me a business card with “Adam’s Curse” printed on it.
“Go there and see Stella. Tell her Jerry sent you. She’ll put you on a team and you can stop beating up on the likes of us.” They rolled out the door.
The next day we looked up Adam’s Curse and met Stella, the seventy-fìve-year old matron of the place. “So you beat Jerry, did you?” she asked.
“Four straight, ma’am.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. Every time he sends me a new team I let him drink on the house for half an hour. I run eight squads out of here on two nights and Jerry sent half of them to me. Now—you’ll need six players to field a team. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I’ll put you in C division—the rookie league. You can pick up your schedule Saturday night.”
Dave and I signed up our whole gang from college—Jimmy, Bobby, Tank and Claire. At first, we saw the team as a drinking club. A chance to meet once a week, check out different bars, get trashed, and throw a few arrows besides. As time went on, though, a funny thing happened: we got good.
Stella gave us old boards we put up at home and practiced on a little each day. Sunday nights we entered her five-dollar luck-of-the-draw tournaments. Once we got the hang of the league matches, we found we all had the right makeup for darts—we love to drink and we hate to lose. Especially to some of the cows in C division. Every team carried at least one porker, and the lesser teams two or three. Guys who couldn’t make the bar softball team but didn’t want to go home to the wife, with bad breath and bellies that could stop a truck. Beat ’em and they retreated to the bar, but lose and you were in for it. They’d take you aside, give you a few pointers, tell you their whole darting history, if you let them, from the day they first picked one up. Facing guys like that week after week was a powerful incentive to get good in a hurry.
That first season we sneaked into the playoffs as the fourth-place team and pulled a couple upsets before losing in the semis. We’ve moved up and gone farther each season since and now, in our first crack at A division, we’re in the finals.
I’m the captain and the third-best shooter on the team. No one can touch Jimmy, our ace, and Tank’s more consistent, but I’m streaky and when I get on a roll, look out. I’ve come on strong this season since resolving not to worry about my form. Used to be I’d spend a lot of time on technique, breaking down the dart throw to its component parts—the proper grip, the angle of the elbow, the release point. I’d work on keeping my head still and minimizing arm motion. In the end I gave all that up. You can’t have a hundred things running through your head when you step to the line. Now I make sure I have enough liquor in me come game time, see the target and throw. Not exactly what they tell you in the videos, but it works for me.
As captain, my main task is to set the lineups. I decide the order in singles and the partners in doubles. We carry the minimum six players, so I’m spared the worst part of a captain’s job: deciding who sits out. We really should carry another body, because as it stands, if one of us didn’t show we’d have to play five on six. We’re pretty hard-core, though. We’d all miss a work day before we’d miss a dart night, and in three seasons we’ve never played short.
The chief game we play in the league is 501. Each player starts with 501 points and the first to get down to zero wins. Sounds easy, right? The catch comes at the finish. To win the game you must go out on an exact double. In darts, the double section is the strip of two-inch-by-one-half-inch rectangles ringing the outside of the board. If a player has 40 left, he can only win by hitting the double 20. If he has 20 left, he must hit the double 10, and so on. Doubling out separates the good shooters from the rest, and turns plenty of the latter into alcoholics. A lot of guys can score, but nothing sends you to the bar quicker than pissing away a big lead and losing because you can’t hit that double.
To have any chance at all tonight, we’ll have to hit our doubles, or “take our outs,” as they say. The Hellions are loaded with shooters, and you can’t give them any extra throws.
They have one guy, name of Sean Killigan, who I would pay to see. Best player in the league, except maybe our Jimmy. Only the Irish teams come up with guys like Killigan. He’s tiny, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, but he throws the sweetest dart I’ve ever seen. Comes out of his hand in a gentle arc and hits dead straight every time, whether he’s shooting the top of the board or the bottom. A robot couldn’t land it any cleaner. When he’s on, nobody beats him.
Killigan has a little problem, though. It comes in a bottle. He’s a first-rate alkie, and when he drinks, his dart game goes out the window. He won’t hit one 20 in three. He has a pattern to him. He’ll stay off the sauce for a few months and kick ass in the league. Then one day he’ll take a few nips on the job, tell off the boss, get canned, fall hard off the wagon and drop out of sight. Just when you’ve forgotten him you walk into County Hell and he’s back, drinking seltzer and nailing 20s.
I saw him play for the first time about a year back. Right here at Adam’s Curse. Our A-division team at the time, the Dudes, was taking on this same Hellion crew for the trophy we’ll be playing them for tonight. I came to root on the home team, but also to get a look at this Killigan fellow, to see if he was as good as the hype. From all the stories I’d heard, the guy never missed.
Killigan had been off the sauce all season at the time and was torching the league. First in wins, first in all-star points. Nobody could touch him. Well, he comes through the door that night and I can see he’s loaded. He orders a beer but Joe Duggan comes over, knocks it away and says something low and mean to him in close. His teammates take him aside, pour coffee down him, water, anything to sober him up, but no dice. The match starts and he’s useless. Gets routed in singles 501, and then again in cricket, the other game we play in the league. Duggan pulled him before doubles 501, but the damage was done. The Dudes won going away.
When it was over, Duggan put his arm around Killigan’s shoulder and walked him to the bar. He ordered him a beer, then pulled back and smashed his forehead into Killigan’s face, splitting his nose right open and knocking him to the floor. Happened right in front of me. Sean is lying there holding his face and Duggan empties his beer on him, says, “Have that on me, you fuckin’ drunk,” and walks out. On the way by me he cuts me a stare and says, “Careful who you root for, college boy.” That was my introduction to Joe Duggan.
Three months later we joined A division and started facing the Hellions ourselves.
As for Killigan, by the next season he was back on the wagon and back on the team, as if nothing happened. By midseason, though, he was out again, sacked from his job, kicked right into the street by Duggan, who tracked him down in some rum hole when Sean didn’t show for a match. And so on.
Unfortunately for us, Killigan seems to have turned his life around. He’s been off the stuff three months now. I heard he got himself a job as an elevator man in Times Square. Rumor is he even has a girl. His arm has never been better, that’s for sure. We’ll have our hands full with him tonight.
I flag down Mason for another pint. It’s a little more than an hour before the match and the rest of the team is due here any minute. I asked them all to come early so we could get fired up.
We’ll need to be. On paper we don’t stack up against these guys. Top to bottom they come at you with someone good.