Festering Wounds

The Festering Wounds 2012 Summer campaign got underway Tuesday. Our home is still at the CBL, where all the cool people go, and the Festering Wounds go too.

We are back in Nickel this season, so we all have to immediately lower our expectations for the win column. That’s not too hard to do since a lot of us have been lowering our expectations of ourselves most of our lives.

We have a new captain this year–Maverik. This is his first night to run the ship. We’re confident he’ll keep us away from the rocks, and other Navy-type stuff like that.

There is electricity in the air as the 801 kicks off. Scoring starts a little slow, kinda brassy-like really. After a half-eternity and everyone having their chances, Mav takes out the double one. That’s good leadership if ever I saw it. It’s 1-0 for the good guys.

We texted Ace before the game but he must have got the wrong schedule cuz he texted and said he was in Virginia.

The 501′s start with Lefty and Bubba paired up. Coming down medium and steady. On a good out now–the D4. Lefty gets it! Go Lefty! 2-0.

Skip and Bubba are up next. This is 3 games in a row for Bubba and it’s the longest he’s ever gone playing darts without playing CCR on the jukebox. So he gives Lefty a sawbuck to go punch up the songs. Unfortunately Lefty gets tricked by the name of their famous cover band and we have to listen to CC Revisited instead of CC Revival. Lefty wisely switches to all Johnny Cash after that.

Skip and Bubba are coming down and falling a little behind. Bubba has a chance on his third dart on the double bull but misses it, but luckily hits the 14 and leaves Skip 36, and Skip takes it out on his 2nd try. 3-0 us.

The third 501 has Skip and Mav paired up. Skip opens the fest pointing. Hurrah! A sloppy girlfriend. Was there any doubt, I mean really? On the next visit Mav gets the OGD. Good, the ice is broken. We get to 16, they are at 32. Now 16-8. 4-8. 4-2. Seems to be converging to 2-2. But they take out the D1. We’re up 3-1 at this point.

Lefty and Mav are in the last 501. Close game. Ooh, ooh, Bubba is chalking and takes a Lefty bounce out in the foot. Merely a flesh wound! Mav hits the D2 to win it. 4-1 us now.

The 301′s start with Lefty. I wasn’t watching and it was over too fast. 4-2 now.

Bubba’s up next. It took forever for both players to get in. Bubba is behind, but has a nice comeback to catch up. On 122 Bubba hit T20, S10, and S20 to leave 32, and he took it out on the next visit. We are up 5-2 now.

Skip’s up next. He gets in early. Nice. He has 56 left. He hit D8, and then missed tops by ever so little. I’d say by about a nanometer. Actually, I think a single wavelength of blue light could not have passed between the dart and the wire. Skip is at 10 now. Too late, they hit the D2. We’re still up 5-3.

Mav is finishing the 301′s. The other guy gets 102 in and 115 on his next visit. Wow. But Mav keeps swimming and catches up. At the end it’s anybody’s game. Mav needs D2 and they need D5. They hit the D5. 5-4 now.

Cricket time. Mav and Bubba are up first. We had a good comeback. Mav had two 5-counts. We win and now we’re up 6-4.

In cricket 2 it’s Bubba and Skip. We got the hurt put on us. We needed more triples, followed by more triples. Too much to ask. We still lead 6-5.

Lefty and Skip are up next. Skip’s opening salvo is T20, T19, and S19. A 7-count. Woah!! To quote Skip from a famous quote from last year, “That was effective.” The numbers are closed and we’re up in the score 57 to 50. In a battle if you have a machine gun that’s what you use to fire at the enemy. In this game Lefty is a machine gun, and there is a big target on the 16-19 segment. We’re up 76 to 50, but are going for more points. Now it’s 108-50, with us needing 2 bulls to close. Skip hits one. Then he hits the DB to finish. Game shot! We’re up 7-5.

That last game was amazing. Lefty pointing 19′s and 16′s. Skip with his 7-count and closing the numbers. What a team. Better than Abbott and Costello. Better than Keith and Mick.

In the last cricket game it’s Mav and Lefty. Opened nicely–closed the 20′s and 19′s. OK, we’ve definitely established a Lefty strategy–hit the 16′s and 19′s. But they take the lead 19-36. Mav gets us to 38-36. Tense, tense. Jukebox is playing Oh Sherrie by Steve Perry. None of us selected that. They’re pointing the 18′s. Dang, we’re down 57-126. Now 191-198, so it’s close. Now 191-252. They hit that dang T18 again. They take the game.

So we finished the night 7-6. Overall a good match.

I bought new darts late last Summer and have only now started practicing with them a lot. They’re lighter and I expect they’ll be better for me in the long run. So last night after about 45 minutes of practice I was doing fairly well. When I was finished I set them down and picked up my old darts, and I thought, “I’ll just try a few visits with my old darts and probably do really bad and they’ll feel funny.” On my first visit with my old darts, aiming at 20′s, I hit a 180.

Does this mean I should bring both sets, warm up with my new ones, and then use my old ones in league play?

I was practicing my doubles, D20 thru D1, in order, and no slop. Finished them in near record time. It included 3 in one visit: D11, D10, and D9. Later I was practicing Cricket numbers, and thought I was doing decent with two per visit. Then I got to the bulls and had a 6 count in my second visit. I doubt if I’ll ever do that again but it was a good feeling. Was drinking lemon-lime flavored soda water at the time.

On the darting front, it has been a grueling campaign and it was a tight vote, but I believe I have won the Captainship of the Festering Wounds. To anyone challenging this, I must cite Bush v. Gore as precedent. I will try to guide the team to the best beer and darts since the Rich Durbin era. Indeed, my actions as Captain (notice the capital C) will be guided by the principle, “What would Rich do?” I will also try to spell all or most team members names correctly on the score sheet.

Whiskey is good.

Just had a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale-12 ounces of happiness.

Mav, Lefty, Bubba, and ex-Cap’n went out for some darts practice at F&H Tuesday. Ex-Cap’n and Lefty had a brilliant game of Cricket that went on and on and finished with a climactic DB by Ex-Cap’n. Mav came all the way back in an ’01 game where he was way behind and had a nice 2-dart out to win it. Bubba distracted Lefty in the middle of a game by bringing up the subject of WWII movies, after which Lefty had trouble hitting the board. By the way, the movie we talked about is called The Train starring Burt Lancaster. It was about a train in WWII. There were no darts in it.

I had a 10 dart 301: D20, T20, S20, T20, T20, S15, S13, S1, S16, D8.

Without planning it this way, I took out a 5 with D1, S1, D1. Then I took out 6 with D2, D1. I guess my darts had their own plans.

My practice board is in my basement where it is sometimes cold in the Winter. The other night when I was throwing my darts were all over the place. It was frustrating. After some time I realized it might be because I was wearing a sweater and a thick shirt. I took off one of the layers and my darts improved immediately. I need to keep my basement warmer so my practicing will go better. I wonder what the ice-age cavemen dart players did.