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You never quite know what to expect when you pick up a book about darts.
Well, actually you pretty much do. That’s the unfortunate thing.
There is a boring, monotonous, similarity -- a predictable, formulaic, uniformity -- to many of the darts books in the marketplace. There’s a chapter about history. A bit about equipment. Another bit about how to hang a board. A bit about technique. A bit about practice. A bit about out shots. A bit about different games. A bit about the lingo of the sport. UGH!
Yep, it’s usually the same old, same old. A whole lot of bits about NOTHING.
Disconnected.
Unexciting.
Forgettable.
So as Delta flight 2002 edged its way out of the gate at Tampa International Airport I wasn’t expecting much as I leaned back in my seat and opened the cover of the newest addition to my collection of books about our sport.
Off I flew.
And so did time...
Five hours later, as what’s left of Mount St. Helens appeared outside my window and the 747 began its descent towards Seattle I was pleasantly surprised to find myself turning the final page of George Silberzahn’s newest offering: “How to Master the Sport of Darts.”
Silberzahn has produced a winner here. He’s figured out a fresh way to present old but important subjects in a very readable fashion. And then, for extra and extremely effective measure, he reinforces his main messages by yielding more than half of the space between the covers of his manuscript to first-person bits of wisdom from some of the legends of the sport of darts in America.
Silberzahn has a way with words. He paints pictures. And his pictures work.
Here are just two examples:
“It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in the all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Sampson’s chest in his sleep.”
Oops. Sorry. That was from Moby Dick. Talk about getting stuck with a really big dart…
Here’s Silberzahn on concentration and aiming: “There is a difference between focusing your concentration and trying to aim: focusing helps and aiming hurts. You can’t aim a dart anymore than you can aim a ball you throw. You can focus your concentration, thus the landing point of your dart. Picture a laser beam from your eyes to a spot within the bulls-eye. Got the picture? Okay, what you are going to do to “aim” the dart is to draw the dart back toward your eye along the laser beam, pause ever so briefly and thrust it forward along the laser beam, directly toward the spot at the other end, reaching into that spot.”
On spot shooting in particular: “Spot shooting requires locating a shadow, tuft, indentation or something of the like that catches your eye. Locating this spot requires concentration. If you shoot a dart at the whole board without looking at any specific part of it, your margin of error is the whole board. If you look at the whole frame, your margin of error is the whole frame and half of the adjoining ones. If you look at the whole triple, your margin of error is the whole triple and the area adjacent to the triple. If you look at only a very small spot, your margin of error is reduced to its lowest and your accuracy increases.”
Okay, Silberzahn’s no Melville. And I’m no Dave Barry.
But this is darts, damnit. Not the classics. Not Pulitzer humor.
Silberzahn’s prose gets the job done damn well! Even if mine doesn’t.
What Silberzahn has done -- and he’s pegged it smack in the triple twenty -- is take his pen and create crystal clear images that will impart a lasting message to any level of darter. In chapter after chapter Silberzahn steps to the lectern and shares his knowledge in a manner the reader can almost touch and feel.
(And make no mistake about it: Silberzahn has the knowledge. This is an expert darter who averaged more than fifty on an American board and, once he switched to a bristle board, at one time or another put the whoop-ass on everybody in the very next paragraph.)
Then, as if to say “Hey, if you still don’t get it, don’t take it from me -- listen to these guys,” he hands a big, fat pad of paper and a brand new pen to nine of the most accomplished darters ever to step to the line in America: Joe Baltadonis, Conrad Daniels, Frank Ennis, Ray Fisher, Bob Theide, Jerry Umberger, Danny Valletto, Helen Scheerbaum and Julie Nicoll-Jennings.
Sadly, many of these names are unfamiliar to the mass of those involved in darts today. But not one of them is unknown to the likes of Eric Bristow, Cliff Lazarenko, Dennis Priestley, Phil Taylor, John Part and so many others. In their day every single one of these American darters has taken the best anybody in the world has had to offer -- and come out on top. Some of them are still winning today.
Sure, there’s a book or two (or three) out there by John Lowe. Jocky Wilson’s got a story on the shelves. So does the late Leighton Rees. And Bristow. Even Phil Taylor is due to publish soon. But nowhere in darts literature can a reader find between the covers of just one book the array of advice -- and vivid career reminiscings -- the likes of which Silberzahn has assembled.
To the extent Silberzahn has a way with words so, it turns out, do each and every one of the legends he features. I count several of them as friends and was struck with how alive their writings were. I was mesmerized. As I turned the pages and shared their memories and emotions, war stories and regrets, and absorbed their advice, I felt as if we were sitting across from each other, sipping a beer and contemplating a game.
Lessons I’ve already learned made even more sense.
From Nicoll-Jennings, on the advantage of weighted darts: “If you throw a ball of paper into a trash can, if you don’t throw it hard enough it either won’t make it to the trash can or it will float from left to right, but if you throw a little pebble towards the trash can it will go exactly where you throw, it does not float, and that’s the difference between light and heavy darts.”
Daniels on technique: “I watched basketball players shooting fouls and thought about the comparison to my dart stroke. I wondered why a great basketball player would stand at the line and bounce the ball a few times before he shoots it? These are the guys that are the best, the ones who do that. The ones who just go up there and throw it aren’t. I started a rhythm to my stroke by pumping my hand, slowly so I was already in my rhythm by the time I started to draw the dart back, rather than hold the dart out there and watch my hand shake. I saw that the biggest mistake that most dart players made was not enough extension of the arm, not enough follow through. I made sure my arm and hand ended up pointing at the target. When you watch a great basketball player that is exactly the way they do.”
Fisher on losing: “Whenever I’d lose I thought of it as a learning experience, a way to improve my game. I would get mad but I didn’t let it get to me. Losing made me mad but I didn’t say anything to my opponent. I’d go sit and get over it. You know, it happened, so it happened, you can’t worry about things like that because it won’t do any good.”
And Umberger on perhaps the most important lesson of all: “One thing I tell people about darts, is don’t do what I did, do what I say: practice. I was never ready for a tournament and if I had it to do over again I would have been. I won, but if I’d practiced I could have won more.”
Yep, George Silberzahn’s “How to Master the Sport of Darts” is crammed to the gills with the usual -- but every message is presented in a uniquely refreshing and memorable way.
The book’s a whole lot of bits about SOMETHING.
You’ll find it impossible to put down.
Pae-por
A famous author once observed…
“The heartland of Southeast Asia has always been on the edges of civilization. The great empires, such as the Pagan in Burma, Sukhothai in Thailand and Angkor in Cambodia, were built in the plains, where rice grows easily and there are trade routes to the sea. For the rulers of the time -- as well as for the governments of today -- the writ of law petered out in the jumble of limestone hills and teak forests of the north. From the Tibetan Plateau, of the Himalayas, several great ranges of mountains flow out in a big curve, first east, then sweeping southward. Lying between them are the upper reaches of three great Asian rivers -- the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween. Where these rivers diverge, the hill country spills out in a disorganized mass, around the borders of Burma (now Myanmar), China, Laos and Thailand.”
This is the exotic Golden Triangle, where the poppies grow and my little friend lives…
“The roads are pathetically inadequate and trails winding from ridge to ridge are the normal means of contact and transport. Dusty in the dry season, slippery with mud when wet, they link hamlet to hamlet across hundreds of miles of broken terrain. Little wonder that these hills have long had a reputation for lawlessness and intrigue, from the fiercely independent princes of Burma’s Shan States to roving mercenary armies. Their remoteness has also made them the stronghold of mainland Asia’s last ethnic minorities – the hill tribes.”
Her name is Pae-por. She is eleven years old…
Pae-por’s a member of the Karen hill tribe (known to the Thais as Karieng and Yang). No one knows for sure from where her people arrived. It’s possible that they came originally from Southwest China or Tibet, but there’s no hard evidence. Probably they arrived from the west, along the lower Salween River in Burma.
Pae-por was orphaned when she was only three. Her mother died of malaria and her father was killed in a bizarre accident while working in the fields. He was trampled by an elephant.
Since her parent’s death, Pae-por has been in the care of her aunt and uncle. They are also poor crop farmers who earn barely enough to feed their own four children. Their living conditions are very poor. They have no plumbing and must use the nearby forest as a toilet and dumping ground for garbage. They survive on less than a dollar a day.
The moment I learned about Pae-por’s situation I knew I had to help her. I wanted to meet her. I knew that although she was attending school, little girls where she is from are at high-risk for dropping out. I knew that if she quit school chances were that she’d eventually migrate to the city in search of work to help support her family. Young girls like Pae-por are often overlooked for regular jobs. Instead, they are lured into the dangerous world of child prostitution.
So I raised some money.
I wrote to a list of people who I knew cared…
“Pae-por’s dreams are no different than any other little child’s dream. In almost every way, just like children who play together in the yards in your own neighborhood, Pae-por has the same simple aspirations. She wants to play and have fun. She wants to go to school and do well and someday have a family of her own. The difference between Pae-por and the children we know here at home is very basic -- but huge. Pae-por was born into circumstances that she had no control over. She was born poor. And then her parents died. All in a country notorious for child prostitution, child malnutrition and child injustice.”
With a check in hand I traveled to Bangkok where arrangements had been made for Pae-por and I to meet. She was shy at first but warmed up. With the help of a translator we talked for almost two hours.
I asked her what was different about Bangkok compared to where she lived. With out hesitation, she replied: “the crowds, traffic and tall buildings.” She told me about her dog, friends, a baby elephant that lived in her village and the waterfall where she played. She invited me to visit her home. I told her I would.
Before I returned to my home in Pennsylvania I arranged for her uncle to receive $1,000 so he could start a small chili pepper farm. I also arranged for Pae-por to receive the funds she needed for books, pencils and a school uniform.
Four months then passed. We exchanged a few letters and photographs. She sent me pictures of everything she was going to show me when I came back. I sent her a large picture book about America with lots of colorful photographs of famous sites like the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty. I sent her snapshots of my wife and dog. I told her I would be bringing a special gift.
It was in the heart of the rainy season that I ventured my way to the middle of nowhere, in northern Thailand, just a few clicks west of the Myanmar boarder, near the frontier town of Mae Sot. The dartboard and darts where packed safely in my bag.
I was swarmed when I finally arrived. Nearly the entire village of some two-hundred people came to great me.
The women gave me gifts -- brightly colored traditional weavings and beaded jewelry. The village leader, Peo-por’s uncle and several of the other men invited me up to the crude veranda on one of the stilted log houses to squat with them in a circle and pass around an old Jack Daniel’s bottle filled with home-brewed rice wine.
Later Pae-por and her friends led me on a several kilometer hike through the hills to see her waterfall. Along the way we passed a mahout. Mahouts are among the poorest of the poor in Thailand. Not long ago, when commercial logging was legal, they survived -- though just barely -- by providing the elephant labor to haul the large trees. Today both the mahouts and their elephants are unemployed. They are starving. But where Peo-por’s lives this man, who has nothing but an old elephant, is the wealthiest person in the clan. We had our pictures taken with the elephant.
We slogged on and eventually arrived at a small river. Balanced across it was a long bamboo pole. Pae-por scampered across it in a moment. I was unable to balance -- possibly because of the weight and awkward way the dartboard was stuffed into the pack on my back, more probably because I’m not eleven years old.
Still soaked, hours later I found myself back up the hill and again on the veranda in the trees. Around and around the circle the rice wine traveled. I was served some kind of soup in a dirty bowl. For while we leafed through the book I had sent from home. I explained to Pae-por and her friends what America was like.
Too soon the time came for me to leave. It was time to give Pae-por the gift I had brought -- to nail the board to a tree and show her and her friends how to play. She and her entire village had taken me into their lives and shared the pleasures that were important to them.
But I couldn’t reciprocate.
My gift seemed trivial and unimportant -- insulting in the face of all they had done for me.
Instead, I discretely handed a worn envelope to the village leader. “Help everybody,” I whispered.
I waved goodbye and began the long trek back to civilization, a better person for the experience I’d had -- but just a bit uncertain how I was going to make it home with little but a dartboard to my name.
From the field,
—Dartoid
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