Every Tuesday night, the men at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lombard push the altar in the basement aside and open the wooden doors behind it to reveal their treasure and their torment: a dartboard shaped like a baseball diamond.
The focus in the room turns from Christian prayer to Christian fellowship, talk of RBIs, strikes, balls and outs, razzing, hand-wringing and high-fiving. And don’t forget the coffee and cake between games.
Before the night is over and the altar is back in place, three games of baseball darts will be won or lost.
All of it, of course, is just for fun.
“C’mon, Al. C’mon, Al. Do it, baby. Do it, now.”
“No heroics, Al. All we need is a single. C’mon, Al.”
The team cheers on Al Wagner, who is up to bat with three darts in his hand and a dartboard 20 feet in front of him. But on the other side of the room, the opponents use their only defense: Distraction.
“Oooooh, yeah? Can he hit it? Can he hit it?”
Christian kindness turns momentarily to obnoxious chiding as Wagner’s opponents make noise to throw him off. But he shows them. He hits a single anyway.
“The more noise you make sometimes, the better,” explains John Haffner of Glen Ellyn, Al’s teammate who batted .433 last year for one of St. John’s two teams, the B Team. “You can holler all you want, but you can’t wave your arms or throw a firecracker or anything.”
For 64 years, hundreds of men all over DuPage and Cook County have spent their Tuesday nights gathered in Lutheran Church basements with the Lutheran Dart League, a men-only league that is fostered in tradition, filled with fathers and sons, grandfathers, uncles and friends.
From Labor Day through March, 28 teams in four divisions meet to play three games of darts on a 4-by-4-foot board shaped like a baseball diamond, with thin metal strips dividing balls, outs, bases, strike zones and foul ball territory.
The batter stands with one foot on the mat, 20 feet back, tossing 7-inch handmade weighted darts underhand.
“It is easiest to go for first and third base,” says Haffner.
Batters take whatever they can get, but most aim for first. An umpire from each team braves wayward throws, standing alongside the board and making the calls. Team captains keep player statistics in the back of the room, and players keep score on a chalkboard designed just like a baseball scorecard.
If the batter throws three darts into the gray strike zone, he’s out. If he hits the orange, an automatic out, he sits down. If he hits first base, the next batter up will aim for a triple to drive him in.
It is the top of the ninth and the game between St. John’s Evangelical of Lombard and St. John’s Lutheran Church of Wheaton is tied 4-4. John Happel of Oswego, a church elder and member of the Lombard team, decides it’s time to use the loud voice he saves for that crucial ninth inning, when the tension and the noise mounts.
He takes a seat near the opposing batter and starts his defense, unmercifully badgering the batter: “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. OOOOOH!” he hollers, timing the pitch of his voice with the batter’s toss. Sure enough, the batter strikes out.
Within a few minutes Happel resumes his usual demeanor and the Christian part of this fellowship takes over. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I know how you feel, man. Last time I did the same thing,” he calls from his seat.
Happel’s team wins, 5-4, in the 11th inning.
Born out of the Depression with 12 teams in 1932, the league has always been committed to inexpensive entertainment, fellowship, sportsmanship, meeting and making friends, and just having fun, says league president Norbert Golchert, 61, of Woodridge.
Although the original 12 teams were centered in Berwyn, Cicero, Chicago and Oak Park, the league has moved west with the population over time, says Golchert. Now, most of the 28 teams are affiliated with churches in Wheaton, Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Woodridge and Westmont.
Although Lutheran Church members are welcome to join the league at age 14, the average age of the men in the league is between 55 and 60, says Golchert. Many are retirees like 73-year-old Wagner of Lombard, who has missed only one season since 1941. That was two years ago when he broke his shoulder.
“I’m not as good as I used to be,” Wagner says to the noise of his teammates. “My best year was 1953, when I had a batting average of .565 and 165 RBIs. Some things you never forget.”
Golchert, who grew up with a dartboard in his basement in Chicago and keeps one in the garage now, says the league is concerned about losing players to old age, Florida sunshine and illness. But it is not all seniors here. Otto Osterland of LaGrange meets up with his two young sons, Steve of Naperville and Bob of Glendale Heights, each Tuesday to play for Golchert’s team from the Bethel Lutheran Church in Westmont where the cabinet in the church basement is stocked with dart trophies dating back to the 1930s.
In Lombard, Roger Smith is hoping for the Rookie of the Year award this year. He is one of four young recruits added to Haffner’s team this season. “It’s fun,” says Smith. “And it’s not as easy as it looks. It’s actually pretty challenging.”
Most of the men in the league have played for years or met up with it through family, says Golchert, who started in 1951, played 7 years, then moved out of the area. About 20 years ago, he moved back and started up again.
“There’s no real defense other than distraction with your voice,” says Golchert. “You just have to be better than them. Practice helps.”
There are mid-season tournaments, all-star games and end-of-the-season championship tournaments followed by a year-end banquet to which the wives or girlfriends may come.
Back in the ’50s and early ’60s, the banquet was a formal dinner with entertainment. Women also came and cheered their husbands on, bringing along sandwiches, potato salad and desserts. Last year about 275 people came for the year-end banquet, but it is a casual dinner now, says Golchert. “We are just glad to get together.”
Last year’s league members voted down a move to make the league co-ed, says Golchert. The guys like their night out away from wives and children. And as Golchert says with a laugh, “Many of these guys are retired. They are home with their wives all day. The ladies are glad to get them out of the house for a while.”
Some players, like Golchert and Haffner, practice at home on boards they get from the maker, Holmes Manufacturing in Ripon, Wis. Others rely on their once-a-week games to keep them in shape.
“It’s all eye and hand coordination,” says Golchert. “It’s like bowling and golf. It’s all in the playing and the practice.”
It requires good eyesight, but it is not a sport that takes physical strength. Players have come to bat in a wheelchair, on crutches or with one arm in a sling. A hearing loss may even be a benefit in this game. In fact, some of the older guys have been known to turn their hearing aids off to cut down on the defense.
But the hardest part of the game is coping with pressure–not the pressure the team puts on you but the pressure you put on yourself, says Haffner. “If you get up there and miss the first couple of times, it’s worse. It seems like those bases get smaller and smaller. When the game is on the line and you’re up to bat, you certainly feel it. One dart you throw can lose the game or win it. Just a little tilt of the dart makes the difference.”
But nobody cares for long. One Tuesday night, Golchert’s team met up with a new team from Countryside. It wasn’t long before the Countryside men knew they would have to face the music. With each strikeout, Golchert’s teammates began their traditional rendition of “One, two, three strikes you’re out . . .” and the crowd burst into laughter.
There is no guarantee that if you strike out once, you’ll do it again, or that one good hit deserves another. The first time Bruce Christensen of LaGrange got up to bat for the Countryside team, he missed the dartboard and hit the wall, an automatic out that brought a gale of laughter from the men. A fast thrower some players claimed to have clocked at 93 m.p.h., he tolerated the guys hooting and hollering and promising not to let him forget his misfortune the rest of the night.
And they didn’t. “I practiced all summer and look at that,” Christensen said on the way back to his seat.
But then in the next inning, he batted again. His opponents chided him by scooting their chairs back. They warned the umpires to steer clear of the board.
“He’s wild. Watch out!” they hollered, trying to distract him.
But he showed them. Christensen, last year’s winner of the Rookie of the Year award for the league, threw a single, and another, and another, practically every time he got up to bat.
“That’s what makes it fun. You never know,” says Golchert.
