By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
At 96 years old, Mel Karns is just hitting his prime at dartball.
“He still throws better than many half his age,” said Mark Kunstmann, who maintains the standings and stats for the Wood County Dartball League.
That’s the glory of dartball. As the knees go and the aim falters a bit, players can still compete, still banter with their teammates, and still pester their opponents.
On Monday evening, there was a lot of ribbing and wisecracking going on at the Wood County Dartball League tournament play at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Bowling Green. As they do every year at the end of the 66-game season, the 12 teams gather for four tournament nights to decide the reigning champs of the league.
The sport is baseball played with darts, with managers keeping score and umpires stationed down by the boards, to rule on close calls. Players throw darts underhand at a square board that is laid out like a baseball diamond. The darts can hit strikes, balls, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, and outs. There also are spots on the board for a double play, an error, and a sacrifice.
On Monday evening, the men (and a handful of women) shared stories on the sidelines, until it was their time at bat. Then the focus shifted from farming, families and food as they took aim at the board 20 feet in front of them.
Some are there to socialize … but if they happen to win, all the better.
“Attaboy,” yelled Pepper Martin, with one of the Bethlehem Lutheran teams. “It’s just like when we used to play softball,” but there are far fewer aches afterward.
Karns, who has played since 1954 on a Bethlehem Lutheran team from Pemberville, said he doesn’t take the game too seriously. “I enjoy getting out,” said the retired farmer.
But fellow teammate Kenny Rahe said Karns was fibbing. “He’s pretty serious. He is one of our better hitters,” Rahe countered.
“Wellllll, I do like to win,” Karns admitted.
The team to beat this year seems to be BG Nazarene, which only lost 11 of 66 games in the regular season. But during the second game Monday evening, the BG Nazarene team was in a tight game with St. Mark’s Lutheran right up to the eighth inning. Then Nazarene players started hitting and didn’t stop till they swamped St. Mark’s.
Nazarene team manager Mike Barbour, whose pre-game pep talk takes the form of a prayer, said the close game may have been due to St. Mark’s home team advantage. And while winning is nice, it’s not the biggest draw for dartball.
“It’s the 120 guys and girls I wouldn’t know otherwise,” Barbour said. Everyone from carpenters, teachers, lawyers and farmers roll up their sleeves every Monday from October through April to play. “It’s open to all people.”
And all ages, with the range on Monday evening spanning 10 to 96 years. To celebrate the end to the season, the church prepared traditional ballpark food of coney dogs and popcorn, and traditional Midwest church food of homemade peach, apple, sweet potato and strawberry pie.
The Wood County Dartball League is a church league that currently fields 12 teams from the communities of Bowling Green, Pemberville, Luckey, New Rochester, Stony Ridge and Bradner.
Leave it to church dartball teams to joke about Holy Week being “holey” with all the darts flying.
The exact starting date of the league (which at the time was just in the Pemberville area) is not certain. It is believed to have begun in the 1930s, with the first post-season banquet held in 1939, Kunstmann said.
COVID ended the league’s streak of playing annually since the conclusion of World War II. The league took a break during the war years with many of its players or family members being in the service.
Some players pass on their skills to the next generation.
The St. John’s Lutheran team from Stony Ridge boasts three generations of the same family. The patriarch is Earl Hagg, 85, who has been slinging darts for 70 years. When his daughter, Lori Dewyre, retired, she decided to join the team.
“It was another way to spend time with my dad,” Dewyre said.
And she was followed by her daughter, Katie Moenter. A fourth generation may be on the way, with Dewyre’s 3-year-old grandson reportedly practicing with a magnet dartboard at home.
Hagg, who is currently sidelined by shoulder surgery, will occasionally give his descendants some tips.
“Once in a while, we get a stern talking to,” Dewyre said with a grin. “Some players are die-hards.”
As one of the few women on the dartball teams, Dewyre said she has always felt welcome joining the league.
“Some of the teams really struggle to get players. They’re happy to find somebody to play,” she said.
Besides, good natured teasing is an unwritten rule of dartball.
“I love to see how the guys interact with each other,” said Tom Lemmerbrock, who started out playing with the Cloverdale church team and is now part of St. Mark’s. “They love razzing each other.”
Some serious players bring their own darts, many with ornate metal handles and razor straight feathers. Other players are at the mercy of picking from the array of wooden darts available.
Andrew Janes, with the Trinity United Methodist team, is this year’s president of the Wood County Dartball League. At almost 50 years old, Janes is noticeably younger than many other players, though he has been playing for about 20 years.
It’s not only the aging out of players, but also the shrinking memberships at some of the smaller churches that is thinning out the teams.
“A lot of these churches are losing population,” Janes said.
But there is something about dartball that keeps them coming back, year after year. And it’s not that they want to get away from their wives, Janes whispered.
The youngest player Monday evening was 10-year-old Jace Main, who plays with the Cloverdale team. During the second game, he scored a home run, then went back to eating handfuls of popcorn.
“I just do it for the fun of it,” Jace said.
No players would admit to superstitions like wearing a lucky shirt or pair of socks. It’s not that they are above that, but ….
“We haven’t found one that’s consistent,” Dewyre said.
Lemmerbrock suspects that after a really good game, some players may be superstitious enough to eat the same dinner each week before games to try to repeat their success. “Some of the guys do, but they won’t admit it.”
Though the darts are quite sharp, the players assured that no umpires have been punctured doing their duty. However, full disclosure … “I stabbed myself in the leg once when I dropped a dart,” Jones confessed.
