Pitcairn keeps dartball tradition alive
Bill Farbarik stepped to the line and sized up the board about 25 feet away.
He unleashed his allotment of darts at a board designed to resemble a baseball diamond, with different spaces on the board targeted to collect stats as one would do in a baseball game.
His tosses were successful and helped Center Avenue United Methodist in Pitcairn establish an early lead against one of Greensburg United Church of Christ's two teams.
The longstanding Greater Irwin Church Dartball League continues in the area for the 2014-15 season, and 11 teams, including Center Avenue, have completed the first half of the schedule and are looking forward to the second half in January.
“There are good times and good fellowship,” Pitcairn's Farbarik said.
“It's great to meet guys from other churches and other teams.”
Players from veterans to rookies — with a minimum age of 12 — make up the league.
You don't have to be a member of one of the 10 churches to play on one of the 11 teams.
“If not for nonmembers, the league wouldn't exist,” Pitcairn's Larry Farbarik said.
Larry Farbarik said the league has lost some teams from past seasons because of lack of interest, but the league rolls on.
In 2013, Center Avenue's roof structure was at risk, and a number of church functions had to be moved elsewhere, including the meeting spot for the home dartball games.
Last year, Center Avenue played half of its fall home games at Pitcairn and the other half at Suburban Community Church in Irwin.
It played all of the second-half games at Suburban.
This year, Center Avenue's home games are at Circleville United Methodist in North Huntingdon.
“Circleville was nice enough to take us on and let us use their church as our home field,” Larry Farbarik said.
Center Avenue concluded the 2013-14 season by winning the round-robin tournament played by the remaining nine teams after the two World Series squads are determined.
The league is broken into two divisions — National and American. If one team takes both halves of the regular-season schedule, it is the automatic division champion and will advance to the World Series.
If two teams from a division each win a half of the regular-season slate, a playoff is used to determine the division representative.
Things are going well for Center Avenue so far, as it leads the American League with an 18-12 record.
The teams play three games on each of the 10 Monday play dates throughout the fall and winter/spring sessions.
Harrison City United Methodist is 20-10 and leads the National League.
Bill Farbarik said Pitcairn has nine members and six are used for each game's lineup.
End-of-season awards will be given to the players with the highest percentage of hits in singles, doubles, triples and home runs. An award also is up for grabs in overall batting average.
A minimum of 150 at-bats is required to be eligible for the awards, and only regular-season games will be used for totaling end-of-season team and individual awards.
Any interested players can join Center Avenue or one of the league's other teams at any time.
The second half of the 2014-15 season begins on Jan. 5 and runs to March 16.
For more information on the league or to join the Center Avenue team, contact Bill Farbarik at 412-736-9497 or email trivettewalker@hotmail.com.
Information, including league standings and a schedule, rules of the game and league by-laws, is at dartball.homestead.com.
Michael Love is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him at 412-388-5825 or at mlove@tribweb.com.
