Approaching 60th year, local dartball league still a draw for players of all ages

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- As a former member of the Southeast Missouri State baseball program and current player with the Plaza Tire Capahas, Chad Bogenpohl has been in a few pressure situations.

He delivered in another one Tuesday night. Bogenpohl had a triple for Friedheim in the eighth inning to tie its game against New Wells in the postseason tournament for the Cape-Perry Lutheran Laymen's League of Dartball. And he was driven in to give Friedheim, the league's regular-season champion, the lead in a pivotal postseason tournament game.

But New Wells had an answer in the bottom of the ninth inning to deliver a crushing blow to Friedheim, which finished the night 0-3 and is 2-4 in the playoffs.

"In the final week of the regular season, with first place on the line, we scored 26 runs in three games. We've scored 14 runs in five [tournament] games," Bogenpohl said before his team was shut out in Tuesday's finale. "That's not very good. In the last two years, it seems like when we get to the tournament, we don't do as well as we did in the regular season."

Friedheim probably shouldn't expect much sympathy from the rest of the league. It has won more than half of the league's regular-season titles dating back to the 1988-89 season -- including four straight from 1989 to 1992 and four more since that streak. Friedheim's most recent crown before this year came in 2003-04.

And after Tuesday, Friedheim is a long shot to win the tournament this time.

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With players from Apple Creek on the left and Friedheim on the right, a player took his turn at-bat during Tuesday's play in the Cape-Perry LLL Dartball tournament.

The Cape-Perry LLL can trace its champions back to 1947.

This season, it will track the stats of each player -- Bogenpohl led Friedheim in the regular season with a .442 batting average -- for annual postseason awards in batting average, RBI and slugging percentage.

As far as recreational gatherings go, the Cape-Perry dartball league boasts a lot of tradition.

It's a game that's passed down generation to generation, with current players ranging in ages from 13 to 80. The tournament-leading Perryville team has three generations of Stueves with Paul, sons Adam and Brian and grandson Caleb.

"All my family plays," said Caleb Stueve, 15. "It's getting to where there's more younger people playing. But it's neat to have older people depending on you."

League president Lowell Mangels, Friedheim's manager, said he has been involved since 1975 "just for the enjoyment of it."

His players, while competitive, have more on their minds than just winning.

"They just all love it," said Mangels, who estimated 95 percent of the league's players return from year to year. "They just come to have a good time."

Added Bogenpohl: "It's something to do on winter nights. It's good fun with everyone getting together."

Bogenpohl sported a Southeast baseball T-shirt on Tuesday night. Others wore some Cardinals shirts.

Dartball is, after all, scored much like baseball. It can be as fickle, as evidenced by Friedheim's postseason struggles after its regular-season dominance. It can be as dramatic, with many of the games going down to the final inning, the final batter, the final strike.

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The darts for dartball are larger than traditional darts with a wood body and metal tips.

Dartball can be traced not too much before the beginning of the Cape-Perry league, to the early 1940s in Wisconsin.

The manufacturer of Dartball products, Wisconsin-based Davis Manufacturing, also has distributors in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. The sport, according to a sampling from Internet searches, is a popular activity among churches and is considered a Midwest phenomenon.

Teams in the Cape-Perry league are church congregations -- Lutheran and Catholic -- and players must be church members to be on the teams. Men and women are welcome, but the league currently is all men and has had just one woman player in the recent memories of some of the players.

The game is played similar to baseball, with teams of up to nine players taking turns at-bat. Time is measured in innings, and the outcomes are similar to baseball -- with balls and strikes, hits and outs. To determine these outcomes, players throw slightly oversized darts underhand at a distance of about 20 feet toward a 4-foot-by-4-foot board until their at-bat is completed. There is risk-and-reward: The target for a single is larger than the target for a home run, which also is surrounded by the greater chance for making an out.

The official dartball board

"It's a tough game to master," said Bogenpohl, a baseball pitcher who said he never threw traditional darts. "One night it seems easy and the next night you might be so close, but it's just not there."

Paul Stueve said his advice for his grandson included, "You don't get real good all at once."

The strategy is to play for singles and triples as the easiest way to move runners around the bases.

A game can be played in 30 to 40 minutes.

During the regular season, teams in the 12-team Cape-Perry league played tripleheaders against one opponent each Tuesday for 11 weeks. Friedheim finished that portion 25-8, beating Shawneetown by four games with Altenburg Immanuel, Uniontown and Apple Creek tied at 20-13.

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But the postseason tournament is a completely different ballgame, and the regular season has no impact.

The teams started at 0-0 last week and will play each team once in the course of four weeks. After two weeks, Perryville leads at 5-1. It capped Tuesday's 2-1 night with a 5-0 win against Friedheim.

That made Caleb Stueve, a second-year player who practiced on a board in his basement, pretty happy.

"I like competition, and I like winning, obviously," he said. "But it's just nice to be around a bunch of guys and talk."

Crosstown and Shawneetown, who both entered Tuesday 3-0 with Perryville, came out of the night 4-2. Crosstown, last year's regular-season champ but just 10-23 this season, won a 9-8 thriller against Shawneetown to begin the night. Apple Creek and Frohna put together 3-0 nights to catch Crosstown and Shawneetown at 4-2.

Friedheim came out of the night three games back with five to play and a lot of teams to hurdle.

Its playoff hopes hinged on that second game, against New Wells. After the regular-season champ had broken out of its offensive slump to take a 5-3 lead, New Wells came back with three runs in the ninth. Down to the final strike, New Wells' Tim School had a two-run triple to tie the game. Terry Wachter followed with a single to win it.

"This is a lot like any sport," Bogenpohl said. "You want to your best and try to win. It's fun but it can be real competitive.

"The difference from baseball? I don't know if you have to be in quite as good a shape."