Edition: U.S. / Global

SPORTS OF THE TIMES; An American Masters the Fine Points

By George Vecsey
Published: December 11, 1987

FOR obvious reasons, darts is not a contact sport. But in one significant way, darts resembles that American schoolyard in-your-face contact sport of basketball: winners stay on.

Sandy Reitman realized that the first time she saw the sport. She was traveling through the Irish countryside almost 10 years ago, visiting the pubs at night.

''The pubs are cozy and space is limited,'' Reitman recalled yesterday before competing in the Challenge of Champions at the Penta Hotel in Manhattan.

''In most of those pubs, there's a fireplace and room for only one board,'' she continued. ''The pub hours are short and if you want to keep playing you have to win. That's what makes them so good.''

It's exactly the same way in every inner-city schoolyard. Even if there is more than one working basket, everybody knows there is only one game that matters. Winners stay on. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Dart throwers from the United Kingdom have dominated the sport, as well they should, since it goes back centuries, even before King Henry VIII gave a set of jeweled darts as a New Year's gift to Ann Boleyn.

But the colonies are catching up, as proven by Sandy Reitman, originally from Duluth, Minn., now from Torrance, Calif., winning the women's world championship in 1983.

Reitman was one of the favorites but was eliminated by Kathy Maloney, 4 games to 3, last night in this season-ending tournament of the Lucky Lights series. (Competitors and judges smoke during competition; drink beer, too; you can take the sport out of the pub but you can't take the pub out of the sport.)

THE tournament concludes today with quarterfinals at 11 A.M., semifinals at 1 P.M. and the finals at 2 P.M. The first prize for the men is $10,000 and for the women it is $5,000 - the kind of inequity Billie Jean King exorcised from the United States Open more than a decade ago. But Reitman has no complaint.

''The prize money in this country is still based mostly on entry fees,'' she said. ''And there are still more men than women.''

The money is getting better in the professional world of darts. With the Japanese recently spending $53 million for a Van Gogh and offering $8 million or $10 million for Dave Righetti of the Yankees, it is no wonder somebody is holding a darts tournament in Japan next year with a $70,000 prize for the men and $21,000 for the women. In Japan, that would almost pay for breakfast and a cab ride to the airport.

Sandy Reitman, age 34, worked at a number of jobs, including in the space industry and for a police department, before first setting eyes on a dart game in Ireland. True to the male world of British pubs, nobody invited her to play. She never touched a dart until she was back in California.

''I met a guy,'' she said with a smile. ''We started playing darts in a bar out there. It was something I could play as well as most people, almost right away. His best buddy had a dart shop, and I started filling in. Later, I opened up my own dart shop.''

She soon discovered there is a world of California bar leagues, home and away matches two times a week. Most of it, she said, was friendly and informal, even in the biggest tournaments.

''You're friends until you toe the oche,'' she said, referring to the line (pronounced OCK-eee), eight feet from the dart board, a measurement dating back to three wooden beer crates manufactured by S. Hockey and Sons of England.

THERE are some vestiges of gamesmanship. A player might just happen to rattle some loose change in a pocket while the opponent is on the line. Or a player just might dawdle back after retrieving the three darts from the board.

In the qualifying rounds yesterday, one woman was not amused when her opponent prevailed upon the scorekeeper to modify her score. The sighs and shaking of heads and violent clacking of darts were almost McEnroevian.

''It's not as carefree as it used to be,'' Reitman admitted, but she has no complaints, since she manages to make a living out of her sport.

She and her husband, Andy Green, an Australian who also competes internationally, own The Dart Shoppe in Anaheim, Calif. They compete in Southern California leagues and travel approximately 40 weekends a year. (''We have plenty of time for my husband's two children because we're around a lot during the day,'' she said.) Willowy and redheaded, Reitman has some resemblance to Nancy Lieberman of basketball fame, but her calm temperament is sometimes compared to that of Chris Evert of the tennis Everts. Reitman has evolved her smooth technique:

''I try to hold the dart in front of me. Once it's behind you, you lose consistency. I hold the dart way up front, with my thumb and middle finger, the index finger just for balance. I don't move my elbow. It's all in your wrist. If you lob it, it never goes the same place twice. And I lean forward on my right foot, knee locked into position. In darts, you want to minimize everything.''

She has not yet become a celebrity like British champions Eric Bristow (known as The Crafty Cockney) and John Lowe, who fired the equivalent of a perfect game - exactly 501 points on the minimum of nine shots - on British television in 1985, qualifying him for an insured prize of $:100,000.

In 1983, Reitman won the world women's championship in Edinburgh. After the tournament, she and some friends went out on a dart-thrower's holiday, to a local pub.

''It's still a man's world over there,'' she said yesterday, ''and they did not take to us playing, particularly when some of the women beat their best men players. But then somebody told them I was the world's champion, and that broke the ice. They even asked for my autograph.'' The main thing was, she got to stay on. In darts, that's the name of the game.

photo of Sandy Reitman