Back before I ever played a video game, I used to play baseball darts with my best friend in his basement. The premise was simple, you threw darts at the dartboard and if you hit the “1” your team got a single, a “2” your team got a double, etc. You can see from the board below [a picture I took at my mom's house last night] that you could also hit stolen base, double play, and so on.
I can still see my friend’s basement. We hung the dartboard on an old grey wooden door that led out to his back yard. We didn’t always hit the dartboard, so the door had plenty of holes in it. We spent hours down there playing that game. He had a notebook and kept track of every hit, out, or run we scored. He could go back for months and recount previous games we played.
We even took it a step further. He was a big Dodgers fan and I was a Royals fan (some things never change). So, in his notebook, we would fill out our favorite team’s line up and then work our way down the line up, as if each at bat belonged to someone on our favorite team. The funny thing was, George Brett seemed to have just as much of a knack for doubling in the dart game as he did in real life, even though I was the one throwing the darts. Maybe I tried harder when I glanced over at the notebook and saw that he was up. We also played the part of a pitcher on our favorite teams.
It’s amazing how much fun a couple of kids can have with a little imagination. If I told this story to a 13-year-old today, he would probably think I was nuts, given his opportunities to play X-box or PlayStation 3. I’m not knocking technology. If my friend and I would have had it back then we would have been immersed in video games. But I’m not sorry that we came along before all of that.
