How to Play Dartball: Baseball on a Wall
Bottom of the ninth in a church basement, two ghost runners on, and the batter steps up holding a dart instead of a bat. One clean throw at a wooden board wins the whole night. That's dartball — baseball reborn as a dart game.
What Is Dartball?
Dartball is baseball played on a wall. Two teams bat through a lineup, run up innings, and chase runs — except every swing is a dart thrown at a big wooden board painted like a baseball field.
It's a genuine team sport, not a pub novelty. Church basements and league halls across Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have been running dartball leagues for roughly a century, most of them through the winter months.
The Board and the Darts
The board is the first shock: a wooden square around four feet across, painted with a diamond and carved up into scoring zones. Singles, doubles, triples, and home runs share the surface with outs, strikes, and balls.
The darts are the second shock. Dartball uses the same family of equipment as American darts — chunky wooden bodies, steel points, and real feather flights, nothing like the tungsten slivers on a pub board.
Then there's the distance. Depending on the league you'll throw from roughly 20 to 25 feet away, several times the standard steel-tip throw line — see how that compares in our guide to dartboard height and distance.
For a feel of what that distance does to a throw, watch the pros try scoring from just double their normal line:
How an Inning Works
Both teams set a batting order, just like baseball. Each batter throws darts one at a time, and every throw is a pitch: the zone it lands in says whether you singled, struck, walked, or flied out.
Three outs retire the side, and nine innings make a game. Tied after nine? Extra innings, same as the real thing.
Reading the Board
Every zone on the board is a baseball outcome:
- Single, double, triple, home run — the hit zones. Land one and your ghost runner takes its bases.
- Out zones — fly outs, ground outs, and friends. One dart, one out.
- Strike — three of them and you've struck out.
- Ball — four of them and you walk.
The hit zones sit small and the out zones crowd them, which is the entire game: aim greedy and you fly out, aim safe and you leave runners stranded.
This is what betting on a tiny target looks like when it pays off:
Ghost Runners and the Scoresheet
Nobody sprints to first in a church basement. Runners live on the scoresheet, advancing station to station as the batters behind them land hits.
A single moves every runner up one base; extra-base hits move them further. Somebody keeps book each half-inning, so the scorekeeper matters as much as the cleanup batter.
- Purpose-made layout tracks Cricket and 01 games at a glance
- Smooth surface works with any dry erase marker, and one comes included
- Mounting hardware is included for easy setup on a wall or cabinet door
League Rules Vary
Dartball never got a single world rulebook, and the boards prove it — regional patterns differ in layout, zone sizes, and the extra squares some add for sacrifices, steals, or double plays.
Throwing distance, team size, and season length all shift league to league too. Before your first night, ask for the house rules — every hall has them.
Dartball vs Baseball Darts
Don't confuse dartball with baseball darts, which plays nine innings on a standard sisal dartboard. Baseball darts borrows the scorecard; dartball rebuilds the entire sport, board and all.
If a league runs anywhere near you, take the invite. Cheap darts, a painted board, and a full nine innings — it's the closest a dart game gets to a team sport.
