Darts nothing new in town

AC/DC’s “Back in Black” shot out of speakers, signaling that 7 p.m. was approaching. Players streamed into the back room of the Fraternal Order of Eagles on Wednesday night where 10 numbered dart boards lined two walls and were mounted on Budweiser and Bud Light framed displays.

The Columbia Darts Association’s league games were about to begin.

The players milled about, greeting each other, stepping to the line and firing darts to warm up, lining up to buy cold beers at the bar and clouding the room with their first cigarettes of the evening.

Darts is related to bowling, billiards, poker and baseball before John Kruk retired — sports that feature beer drinking as an integral part of training. Darts has finally joined its brothers’ status by surfacing on television. ESPN2 aired the 2006 World Series of Darts, and the Outdoor Life Network broadcast the 2006 Holstein Premier League Darts.

Darts has roots in Columbia, where throwers have competed for 30 years. Ten teams gather every Wednesday night at the Fraternal Order of Eagles and Hoot-n-Anny’s for their weekly CDA games. The city also claims one of the founding fathers of American organized darts and one of the sport’s leading writers.

The players

Jason Snodgrass, 27, has enough experience to captain his darts team and run the CDA. He has thrown darts since he was 14.

“It’s a family deal,” he said.

His father, Owen Snodgrass, played, and his older brother, David Snodgrass, got him to start throwing. His nephew Codie Snodgrass has also joined them.

The CDA has about 75 players on 10 teams with names like the Slammers, Intoxicators and Misfits. Six teams are in the top group, Division A, and four are in Division B.

Snodgrass usually competes with his brother, but they amicably decided to split up because some old players were rejoining the league.

Rick Cole, 55, Karl Rhey Gilpin, 43, and Bruce Shock, 46, all joked with each other that they were coming out of retirement. All three were talented, but they hadn’t played competitive darts in a while. Cole and Gilpin had not played in 8 years, and Shock in four.

They used to play all the time, starting in the 1980s. They became friends and traveled together to tournaments in Wichita, Joplin, Jefferson City and St. Louis.

Shock and Gilpin once finished second in Missouri at 501, one of the popular darts games. Gilpin and Cole were once considered the best doubles team in Columbia. They said their opponents would get angry with them because they were so calm and confident.

Gilpin even got recognition once for his skills. He was in St. Louis for a Cardinals game. He got in an elevator in a parking garage and noticed a fellow passenger wearing a tournament darts T-shirt. He started to introduce himself to the man.

“I know who you are,” he replied.

“That was the greatest feeling ever,” Gilpin said, “someone knowing me for something good.”

They stopped playing for different reasons. Shock was burned out, and Gilpin and Cole had children at home.

The time was right for them to come back this year. Shock was eager, and he knew that Gilpin and Cole’s children had grown up.

They said they were happy to be back again with longtime friends.

“It’s a nice outlet,” Cole said, “but it’d be nice to have some younger people around.”

They enjoy the mental aspect of the game.

“It’s you and your three darts,” Cole said.

As they competed for the Biggins team Wednesday night, they enjoyed joking around.

“We should have been called the has-beens,” Gilpin told Shock.

The former tournament participants will have a chance to compete next year in Columbia. Snodgrass plans on resuming a darts competition. The last one was in 2001, he said. The Columbia Open Dart Tournament will take place in September 2007, and it will be sanctioned by the American Darts Organization, which was founded by a Columbia native.

The founder

Some well-known athletes have called Columbia home including NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, poker player Dutch Boyd and many MU stars.

Another person belongs on the shortlist — Tom Fleetwood.

Fleetwood was the Pete Rozelle of American darts.

“He was very instrumental in getting the sport organized in America,” said Jay Tomlinson, publisher of “Bull’s-Eye News,” the bi-monthly, leading American darts publication.

Fleetwood graduated from Hickman in 1953 and Culver-Stockton College in 1958. His first sport was not darts, his widow, Della Fleetwood, said. The Green Bay Packers signed him after he graduated, but Fleetwood suffered a double hernia during preseason practice. His shortlived football career was over.

Fleetwood worked in radio in Iowa but eventually settled in New York. He got a role in a Broadway musical adaptation of “The Yearling,” but like his football career, the work did not last long. The musical closed after three performances.

After he met and married his wife, Della in New York City, the couple moved to Culver City, Calif., in 1968. He pursued an acting career, and she taught music in elementary school.

Tom Fleetwood also worked at Sid’s Place, a pub near the couple’s house. He and his friends hung a dart board and started to play.

He was a big man, 6-foot-4 and 400 pounds. Della Fleetwood said she got a kick out of him playing darts.

“The incongruity of that man holding a 26-gram dart just made me laugh,” she said.

Della Fleetwood went along with her husband’s new hobby.

“The next thing I knew,” she said, “I was on a team and playing, too.”

Tom Fleetwood was falling for darts. He put up a board at home and practiced. He put together a team and joined the Southern California Darts Association. He joined the SCDA Board of Directors and helped organize the first North American Open Dart Tournament in 1970, which became one of the nation’s major darts tournaments.

Della Fleetwood pitched in as the SCDA’s recording secretary. She compiled statistics.

“I was up to my knees along with him,” she said.

Tom Fleetwood got to know many of the sport’s luminaries, and he was soon offered a job in the sport. In 1974, General Sportcraft, one of the nation’s top darts manufacturers, asked him to be its darts consultant. He promoted the sport across the country, setting up leagues and organizing tournaments.

He soon realized the multiple leagues needed a governing body. He and his friend Ed McDevitt decided to form the American Darts Organization. Their idea finally came together at the Michigan Open Dart Tournament outside of Detroit in the fall of 1975. He and McDevitt sat down over 10-cent draft beers, laid out the paperwork on a pool table and wrote the bylaws. League members gathered the next day and passed them.

The ADO started operations on Jan. 1, 1976. Today, the ADO includes more than 250 clubs and 50,000 members, according to its Web site.

Once Tom Fleetwood had organized darts in America, he took on the world of the darts. He helped to form the World Darts Federation and served as its treasurer. He and his wife flew across the globe to various WDF tournaments. They went to South Africa, Australia, Japan and England, among many places.

Though they traveled the world, Tom and Della Fleetwood never forgot about their home state.

“He looked for any opportunity to stop off in Missouri,” Della Fleetwood said.

They attended his 50th Hickman High School reunion in 2003 before he Tom Fleetwood died on April 25, 2004.

Della Fleetwood stays in touch with his classmates. She even organized their class directory. The 55th reunion is coming soon.

“I’ve already been warned that I must be present,” she said.

He was always amazed at the role darts played in his life.

“Who would have ever thought that the sport of darts would take this farm boy from Missouri to so many places around the world?” he asked in article in the January/February 2003 issue of “Bull’s-Eye News.” “Certainly not me.”

The Historian

For Columbia’s Dan Peek, darts was more than just a sport. It was a story that took him across the country.

Peek spent six years researching and writing “To the Point: The Story of Darts in America,” but he almost didn’t get to tell it.

Darts first captivated Peek in 1994 while he was living in Boston. He learned about the Minute Man Dart League from his friends. He discovered that 10,000 people compete in the league every Tuesday night in Boston. He followed the Sports Connection Bar & Grill team from south Boston and planned to write a feature-length magazine article about it.

“For four months every Tuesday night, I sat at the bar, drank beer and watched these men and women play darts,” Peek said.

He said he loved the sport, especially how it cut across all demographics. He met homeless people playing darts on Tuesday nights as well as fishermen, CPAs and surgeons.

The story had hooked him, but he knew there was more. He knew it was more than a magazine piece. He knew it had more characters and plots. He pored over books, magazines and microfiches in the Boston Public Library and then set out across the country.

Peek was seeking the story of American-style darts. British-style darts is the standard in bars and tournaments. Its board has 20 wedges fanning out from the bull’s eye with a triple ring in the middle and double ring on the outer edge. Americans modified the traditional board to mimic the country’s real pastime — baseball.

Peek traveled to Philadelphia, Albany, Cleveland and Milwaukee to uncover the history of American-style darts, or dartball. He scoured sources at the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress. He interviewed preeminent figures in the world of darts including “Primrose Pete” Polinsky, one of America’s legendary darts shooters, and Julie Nicoll, one of the best female American shooters.

The story was coming together, but Peek’s heart was slowing down. Heart disease ran in his family. His father died at 52. Peek underwent quadruple bypass surgery in November 1995. He was still sluggish, but after his successful angioplasty in 1998, his health improved.

But his surgeries had taken him away from darts.

“It broke my concentration,” he said.

He reacquainted himself with the story and completed it. Pebble Publishing, a small firm in Rocheport, released the book in 2001.

Though his large project is finished, Peek still writes about darts. He contributes articles to “Bull’s- Eye News.”

Peek appeared on local television to talk about his book, and he said some people still recognize him, though inaccurately.

“I’ll be in the supermarket,” Peek said, “and somebody will say, ‘Didn’t you write that book about pool?’”