Fall 2011

Dave,
Did you put a team in for the fall or are you playing in a local league?

We did NOT put in a team for the MMDL for the first time in 8 years, and only the 3rd time in the last 20 years. We have decided to head back to the PDL and give them a try. The matches are all within 5-15 minutes of our place, the level of competition is there, and you actually get to play more darts. In the end, I just couldn't trust ABA to keep us out of the Super A division in the MMDL. Unlike his predecessor Suzanne who held a GROUP scheduling meeting with a number of captains where I was able to hand pick which division I played in, and the teams I was going to play against, ABA decided that he wanted to be the MASTER controller of things and he alone would be the one who decided who and where we would play. I couldn't take the risk of putting in for A division and having him fuck us over because of some personal issues that he may have. I did not want to run the risk of getting stuck in a division wasting our time for 14 weeks, and inevitably I would end up doing SOMETHING that pissed off SOMEBODY along the way (like going with 4 guys to an away match that didn't count for shit anyway.) I just cannot have any fun if I'm not winning. It may sound petty and childish, but it's the truth. I NEED to win to enjoy myself. Plain and simple. We may not win the Championship or even the division in A every year, but we are ALWAYS in the mix, and we ALWAYS have a CHANCE to win. That chance just does not exist at the Super A level. We're a team who EXPECTS to be in the playoffs every single year. (I believe we've only missed the playoffs 2 or 3 times EVER in our 20 year history). Our team morale DEPENDS on that. If we're not winning, then people stop showing. That's just the way it is. Our lives do not revolve around darts. Pretty much every single guy on the team doesn't even throw a dart until 8PM on a Tuesday night. We don't need to play the best, nor do we even desire it. I'd rather beat your WORST guy throwing terrible darts than lose to your BEST guy while throwing the darts of my life. And unfortunately, even the WORST guys in the Super A division are still really really good. So we're heading back to the top division of the PDL. We'll see how it goes. I'm pretty confident that we should be able to compete in that division, and like I said, the games are 5 minutes away as opposed to 45. We'll definitely miss playing against Death Row, the Vega, and the Bimbos, but in all likelihood, we wouldn't be playing against those teams in the Fall anyway. We leave on good terms with the MMDL, and I'm not ruling out that we will never return, but for now, we're going to try something a little different and see how it goes.

If you recall, I DID also have the group meeting my first season as AD. Then I tried just doing it myself the next season to see what worked better. For different reasons, it seemed to go better the second way. I always appreciate input from people, but when you have a group of 8-10 people and some of those expect special treatment it just becomes counter-productive in a way.

I wish you and your team nothing but the best of luck in the future, be it in MMDL, PDL, or anywhere else. You have shirts at the Polish Club for summer league right now, and I will have the MMDL shirts at the 2nd meeting on the 29th hopefully.

You know what - you may drive some people nuts, but honestly, i appreciate your honesty. My team as well plays for fun, BUT, once you start losing the team morale suffers. That happened this past season to DR - I developed a bad case of dartitis, still cant throw darts, we had a death on the team, we lost a couple weeks, then nobody was into it. It was by far the worst dart season i have ever had. I am typically a 10 win guy in singles - this season - 1 WIN!! haha - are you freakin kidding me. 15 yrs of my life and i get 1 win. IDK - but in any case, we will miss the camrederie we had with you, I always enjoyed going to your place, and i am sure i will be back regardless of darts. Dont know what happens after this season - if i cant cure the dartitis thing, this will be my last season.
Some people may get rubbed the wrong way by your thoughts and posts, etc, but there honest and there aren't a lot of people that would actually say them. Kudos to you. Good luck to you and your team in the PDL, I looked this AM, there seems to be 3 div, what happens come playoffs - you will miss that part. I know you hate travelling, but that is part of the allure of the playoffs in the MMDL.
For the record, and i hate losing, I would always prefer to play the best shooter, win/lose/draw. Personally, if i play someone inferior, MY darts suffer.

Yes, the playoff thing lacks some drama. That was the main reason we left after our 2nd season in 2003. We won the highest division Championship and felt that there was really no other place to go from there. Since then the old league was blown up and reformatted as well as a bunch of new teams. If nothing else, the freshness of some new places and new faces with a new format should keep us interested for at least a season or two. After that, who knows. Like I said before, weare not leaving the MMDL with any ill-will. We enjoyed our relationship over the past 20 years, but we just don't like the direction that we seem to be getting FORCED into. When you combine that with the fact that there are NO teams even CLOSE to us travel wise in the division that they want to force us into, it really starts to put a bad taste in your mouth. In order for us to compete at that level, we would need to add AT LEAST ONE, if not TWO legit Super A players to compliment Brian and Nemeskal. The rest of us are merely high end A players who can contribute, but can't carry a team. That's what makes us such a good A squad. We don't really have any 'holes' that can be exploited. Top to bottom, every one of our guys can beat anyone else from the A division, and any pairing that I come up with is a solid A team. That can't be said for the Super A division (which I have learned from this summer). One of the reasons our summer team has really picked it up over the past 5 weeks is that midway through the season I decided to change the way I made the lineups. No longer did I try to put together 'balanced' teams. I just took my best guys and paired them together from top to bottom, which also meant that our worst guys got matched. I then tried to make sure our worst teams faced the opposition's best as a 'sacrifice' and then hopefully win the other 2 games. It has seemed to work. We are undefeated in our last 5 weeks going 2-0-3. However, if you ask the 'sacrifice' team how they like getting killed every week how they like it, I'm sure they are not having the funnest season in the world. In fact, we REALLY could go with 4 every week and have the same results, and be done in HALF the time. I don't necissarily like having to do it that way, but it was the only way to get the team to start winning some matches.

Can't argue with your "logic" A chance to win it all,makes a 14 week season much more palatable.No fun for me to play guys that don't want to play me or my team.