Nothing Gets The Crowd Going Quite Like A Perfect Nine-Darter. Nothing
A walk off home run in game 7 of the World Series. A goal in overtime of game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. A game winning hail mary as time expires in the Super Bowl. All of these things are incredible moments in sports which elicit reactions worthy to the moment itself. Yet none of the reactions from the crowd in any of those scenarios come even close to matching the reaction of the crowd when a perfect nine-darter is thrown. An eruption so loud and so powerful that shakes and moves the ground on which these fans stand. They say you could harness the energy produced by the crowd after a nine-darter and you could power a small European nation for an entire year with it. All because Gary Anderson got 501 on 9 darts.
Now a couple of things here. 1) If you’re like me and really have no idea what you’re watching here, luckily I did some Googling for all of us. In this game, you start off with 501 points and you need work your way down to 0 without going over. So on his first 2 legs, Anderson hits the inner ring on the 20 with all three darts. That inner ring counts as a triple so that is 3×20 for all 3 darts, which comes out to 180. Not a big deal or anything but I did that math myself without a calculator. So he gets 360 on his first 2 legs to bring him down to 141. So in order to get back down to 0 from 141, Gary Anderson needs to hit another triple on 20.
Then he needs a triple on 19.
And then lastly, he needs to finish it off by hitting the outer ring for a double on 12.
IT’S A DARTY PARTY!!!!! AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!!
Now the 2nd thing here is that while the dart throwing is obviously impressive here, I don’t think it’s the sole reason why the crowd is a goddamn volcano. Obviously booze has a ton to do with it as well but the real party starter here? The man who really gets the engines running? This fucking guy right here.
Every time my man screams out “OoooooooooooooonnnnnnneeeeEIGHTY”, I feel like I was ready for war. This dude could announce something as boring as somebody doing their taxes and just his voice alone would still get me jumping out of my seat and going bananas. His name is Russ Bray and he is nothing short of a living legend. Without that voice, this is just a bunch of dudes throwing sharp objects onto a cork board. But when Russ Bray gets those pipes in the mix? It is the greatest sporting spectacle known to man.
P.S. – Can’t blog about darts without shouting out the GOAT Michael van Gerwen.