More to Dartoid...by Jay Tomlinson

Who Really Is Dartoid?

As published in Bulls-Eye News Magazine December 1998, www.bullseyenews.com", by Jay Tomlinson

Have you ever seen the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Its a classic. Remember the part where Butch and Sundance cant shake their trackers and they keep asking, Who are those guys? Well, thats the question that comes to mind time and again when I read Dartoids World. Who is this guy?

Paul Seigel is his name, but that doesnt really tell me much. His picture is in Bulls-Eye News and stories of his adventures in search of a dartboard and a game in all corners of the world fascinate me. Sometimes, Im in stitches, almost as if I was there living the experience. But in the end, who is this guy?

So when the chance to meet him in Columbus, Ohio, afforded itself one November around Ohio State/Michigan time (time in Columbus is measured so many days before or after the Ohio State/Michigan game), we agreed to meet at Brewsters for a couple of games and a couple of beers. Ill never forget it but to make a long story short, we agreed to meet again at the Virginia Beach Classic in March for an interview to find out just who the man behind Dartoids World is.

The story begins a half dozen years prior to the early 80s when Paul Seigel was a fund-raiser for the Missouri Republican Party. He worked out of St. Louis, but was headquartered in Jefferson City. He raised funds for both the Republican Party and for then governor Christopher Bond, who is currently a United States Senator. He also worked for the Republican National Committee for a handful of years. He moved to Columbus, Ohio in the very early 80s until the late 80s to raise money for the Ohio Republican Party and for Governor James Rhodes. He vocation was fund-raising.

In the late 80s Seigel stopped working for the Republican Party. According to his wife, Mary Lou, it was because of her influence he left. He met Mary Lou when he was in high school. Her sister was a classmate of Seigels and for a while they dated. Explaining, Seigel said, I met Mary Lou when I would go over to her house when her sister was babysitting Mary Lous daughter, Jamie. Jamie is now my daughter and is 29 and was just married in Jamaica last Christmas. What a tangled web we weave. Did you get that?

He changed jobs in Ohio as a result of the politics. Politics is a rough and tumble business, said Seigel. I did that for about 15 years and finally realized its a young mans game. Late night phone calls and early morning meetings were not fun anymore. Fifteen years is a long time to be in politics. You either end up president or in jail. These days, it could be both.

He and Marylou made the decision to move on. Fund raising was Seigels business, so he put his ear to the ground, and ended up in a position outside of politics. That position was with a not-for-profit organization involved with protecting the endangered animals of the world, International Fund For Animal Welfare. The move became a funny story in the Seigel family. His father used to kid him that he went from the dogs to the animals.

When Seigel joined the International Fund For Animal Welfare in 1988, it was based out of Cape Cod, but had offices all over the world. The organization had about 30 employees and was raising maybe $8 million a year. When I left the organization, which was just this past September, the organization had more than 150 employees and had offices in 16 other countries, he said. We were now raising more than $50 million a year. It had gone from a sleepy mom and pop sort of outfit that was very focused on what it was all about to a somewhat bureaucratic, sluggish, less enjoyable kind of organization. For me it was time to move out and look for something else. Besides, darts intervened.

In a way, darts had been in Seigels life since high school. He had a paperwound board with the baseball game on the back hanging on the door in his bedroom. He would throw the 15 darts that came with those boards, one after another, all at the bull. He didnt know he was supposed to hold only three darts. Eventually, he got to where all 15 of those darts would be grouped in one big jam with six or seven of them in the bull. He had no idea what that meant, but he whiled away hours in his room thumping that board when he probably should have been doing homework. Occasionally, his father would come up to his room and tell him to do some homework or go play basketball or anything but thump that board.

As an adult it wasnt until he and Marylou moved to Cape Cod and were waiting for a table in a restaurant that they wandered into the bar. There, they found two couples playing Cricket. The winning team asked if he and Marylou wanted to take them on. At the time, he remembers thinking youve got to be kidding. I dont know anything about darts. But they took the challenge. They dont remember who won, but the bartender asked if he knew there was a dart league in town. To make a long story short, about a month later, Seigel stopped by one league night to watch his new friends team play and ended up playing. They went through the ranks, moving through the C to B to A to AA divisions. Then, the two of them became partners and started playing in tournaments together. The rest is history.

Darts is like the strongest drug I know, said Seigel. I think I was addicted to darts back in high school and became hooked again when I played in that first league match.

Seigel traveled all over the world constantly with his work and in the evenings, with his new found interest, he would seek out any local establishments with a dartboard hung and play anyone who wanted a game. If no one knew how to play, he would teach them. Traveling constantly is a lonely gig, but a dartboard could always produce enjoyment and a new friend or two. When he would return to that country, he would always try to look up the friends he made on the trip before and return to the dart pub for a few more games and beverages.

It was how I survived the many lonely hours during the weeks and weeks away from home, he said. Then, I met a guy who has been in the dart business for years and years, Rick Osgood. I was telling him about my travels and what I did to occupy the lonely times, and he suggested that I write a short story about each place I visit and he would put it on his web page. When I was in Beijing, I wrote this story, not a very good story, but I sent it off to Rick. That was the beginning of Dartoids World. I guess I owe it all to Osgood. It wasnt Dartoids World at the time, it was just writing about the experience, the camaraderie, in the international language of darts.

Later, he began to think up angles for his new column. I have a friend who lives in South Africa who happens to have a large PR firm, he explained. I told him that I was writing these articles and that I wanted to package them so that it was more than just a column. We sat down and put our heads together and came up with the idea of Dartoids World. The foundation of it all is this whimsical character who travels the world and shoots darts with the strangest of the strange in the strangest of the strange places. We have a lot of plans for the future.

Moving on for Seigel meant finding a new job, but one that would still afford him the chance to live out some of his dreams. The best thing about my new job is that it still provides me the opportunity to travel around the world and to get out and throw darts in the evenings when Im not working. Thats what I enjoy most, he said. Im Vice President of Development and Marketing for an international health related organization called Operation Smile. I took this job back in March of this year and Marylou and I relocated from Cape Cod to Chesapeake, Va. Our companys main headquarters is in Norfolk, Va. Operation Smile has been around for 15 years. We put together teams of plastic surgeons and orthodontists to travel to developing countries to perform facial reconstructive surgery on children who have cleft lips or cleft palates or other disfiguring and dysfunctional features. My job is to raise the money and to ensure that the public profile of the organization is positive. I head up all fund-raising efforts, all marketing efforts, all public relations and communications efforts. There are some 25 chapters of our organization throughout the United States and in 20 or more countries.

Marylou lives vicariously through her husbands adventures as he travels all around the world. She feels its exciting, but sometimes dangerous. She finds out what he does when he travels only when she edits his Dartoids World columns and sometimes she has had concerns regarding what her husband does to get a game of darts. For instance, when he rafted down the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe and didnt tell her about it until after he did it, she threatened to kill him herself. He came back with a videotape of the entire experience so she got to see first hand the danger he was actually in. It was really great, she said. I got to see him fall out of the raft in dangerous rapids and he had to be pulled back in. It does concern me when hes so far from civilization.

In the past, Seigel has been undercover in the rain forest of Vietnam posing as a buyer of gibbons, an endangered animal. In the Congo, he was trying to track elephant poachers up the Congo River. I have done the same sort of things floating through the back swamps of Bashwana, says Seigel. I think its fun. But this new job is much more civilized. I work with doctors and hospitals and multinational corporations in developing countries. And, I travel to a lot of countries I havent been to, and I know there will be dartboards, or Ill pull one out of my bag.

When Seigel is in town, he is usually up early and into the office and comes home late, around 7 p.m. After dinner, he often spends several hours in his office working on Dartoid things. Its a comfortable routine both he and Marylou like. When he is traveling, hes usually up early to a breakfast meeting, and depending on the itinerary, hes either continuing meetings or negotiations dressed in suits or out in the jungles dressed in jungle garb. In the evenings, Im out where theyre shooting darts, literally wherever Im at, he says. Its usually in a bar. When Im home, Ill throw league, and once or twice a week I might shoot in a draw doubles. When Marylou travels with him, she goes out to with him to shoot darts. She doesnt usually go out with him when theyre home unless its something big like the Virginia Beach Classic.

He has been contacted by many of the folks who throw darts in the Tidewater Darts Association and plans to join a team, probably with Shane Meeks. To me the work world is kind of a necessary evil. You have to pay the mortgage. You have to pay the bills. But to me, the real world is what Im doing with Dartoid. These are real people and there is a special camaraderie. You can go anywhere in the world and walk into a bar and if you both know the rules to the same game, it doesnt matter if you cant speak the same language. You can still have an exceptional time, Seigel said. If we won the lottery tomorrow, Id be having more exceptional times.

Marylou used to throw darts, but got to the point she would become quite ill after three or four hours in a bar due to the smoke. Theyve talked about the stereotypic view of the guy who throws darts with the beer belly and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the beer in his other hand and the obstacles that stereotype presents for the sport and its progress to gain televised events and so forth. I happen to agree that the stereotype is an obstacle, he explained. However, the flip side of that is that the breeding ground for darts is the pubs, taverns and bars. If there arent the people getting hooked into playing darts in bars who then begin to make the connection that darts is a sport, darts may only go so far. If darts doesnt receive that level of respectability required to be considered a sport by people who dont already know that it is a sport, theres a problem. Its a quandary.

Marylou is a writer by trade. She has completed two novels and is working on finishing her third. My first novel is residing in a drawer in my desk because I didnt feel it was quite up to my standards. My second, The Clinic, is with an agent in New York. Its about a medical clinic and a woman doctor. With the help of some friends, she found a solution to a huge problem in the world, that of child molesters who are convicted of a crime and are then released from prison to commit the crime again. Its a mystery and a thriller, she said. Ive heard some positive things from my agent concerning publishing this novel and Im crossing my fingers that we hear good news very soon. I considered writing under the pen name of Mrs. Dartoid, but decided it didnt quite have the right ring to it, so I stuck with Marylou Seigel.

Actually, Marylous writing might be my route to the real world, Seigel said. Once her books are on the best seller list, we wouldnt have to win the lottery and I could throw darts anytime, anywhere.

One thing more, I simply didnt appreciate the connection that it appears that this little whimsical traveling Dartoid character has made with people out there who dont just throw bar darts. Im talking about the people who read the ADO newsletter and Bulls-Eye News, and people who are touring pros. I have been reading these magazines for years and reading about Roger Carters exploits and Jim Widmayer and Stacy Bromberg and all these people who throw darts for a living. Ive thrown in places like the Congo at a board on a tree and they throw at the Embassy and the North American Open. I was looking forward to meeting many of these people and moving to the Tidewater Area has opened up that opportunity a bit.

Over the past couple of days, I was just tickled that these people were interested in meeting me. Ive had a great time here at the Virginia Beach Classic. Tidewater puts on a heck of a great tournament and pretty much everybody who is anybody in the United States dart scene is here. Now, theyre not just people who Ive been reading about in the magazine, but people who have been reading what Ive been writing, and now we know each other. Thats been special for me.

This is what I like to do. I like to be around people who like to throw darts. I like to throw darts. I like to try to share with others the excitement I feel for the sport. I want to addict others to the game. I want to continue to write the column. Id like to see Dartoid shirts, Dartoid posters, and why not Dartoids Pub and Dartoids Pizza joints, and franchise those. Who knows whether that will ever happen, but I think big!

Last of all, Ive thrown in a lot of odd places and met a lot of people doing it. I want to throw in Mongolia or maybe in Antarctica. Ive already thrown in six of the continents. Id like to be the first to throw darts in outer space, maybe on the moon. But I like to think I add some color to the game. Perhaps not on the line, but I think I can share what its all about with my pen. I can bring it to life. The day that darts achieves that level where you can see darts on ESPN or Wide World of Sports as regularly as you see auto racing, Id like to think that someday I could provide some of the color commentary, not the technical aspects or the strategy, but whats going on in this guys head. This is where hes from. Im a darts humorist, I guess. The Will Rogers of Darts.

Im out!

Article reprinted with permission from Jay Tomlinson of Bullseye News. Check out Bullseye News online and buy a subscription today at Bullseye News. Tell him the Passionate Darter sent you...

As always, good luck and see you at the line.