LEONARD GATES is the new star of the World Darts Championships – but he was so nearly a baseball player.
Gates – from Texas – is coming off 3-1 victory over Cameron Menzies in the first round at Ally Pally.
And he has gone viral for his hilarious dancing and celebrating – quickly becoming a fans’ favourite.
But Gates admitted darts was not his initial passion and instead grew up a promising baseball player.
He told talkSPORT: “Oh my god, I love the game. I still do some activities with baseball. Baseball is my first love.
“I played high school, played in college, got a scholarship to go to college.
“When I got over to college, the scouts were like, ‘This guy can hit, he has all the tools to play this and that.'”
Gates’ baseballs dreams were thrown a curveball in 1994 when Major League Baseball (MLB) stars went on strike over plans of a salary cap.
It was so serious that the then-MLB commissioner Bud Selig cancelled the World Series that season.
The strike lasted 232 days and 938 regular-season games were lost across the 1994 and 1995 seasons as scouts looked for new players.
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Gates revealed: “After college, they had a strike going on. I was like, ‘OK, there will be a replacement player thing.’
“But they were like, ‘We don’t want you as a replacement player,’ they wanted me in their organisation.
“So the [Philadelphia] Phillies got me. The [Atlanta] Braves were looking at me, there was a lot of pro teams looking at me.
“But their thing was, ‘We don’t know what to do with him because I played so many positions, and I was good at all of them.”
Gates never made an appearance for the Phillies but did spend time with a handful of minor league franchises.
He played for the Abilene Prairie Dogs, Massachusetts Mad Dogs, Catskill Cougars and the Nashua Pride from 1995 to 1998.
But during his off-season, his hobby of throwing darts soon took over.
Gates said: “When I was between seasons of baseball, some buddies of mine were playing darts at a pub we hung out at.
“I was like, ‘Hey, man, what y’all doing?’ I grabbed the darts, tried it and I’m like, ‘You know what, I can do this.’
“It’s less stress on the knees, it’s short distance. I started then and here I am doing it now.”
Gates began playing in the World Darts Federation in 2007 and got to the last 16 of the World Series Finals in 2022.
He now plays Nathan Aspinall in the second round of the World Darts Championships.
