Wednesday, July 19, 2006 | 7:40 a.m.
As Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" roars on the jukebox, Stacy Bromberg gently rubs an Oakland Raiders pendant that hangs from her necklace and insists that they will return. Don't get her started about silver-and-black glory days. Over the twang of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "That Smell," she explains how law school taught her to despise the legal profession. "Mexican Radio" jangles as she details the ever-expanding open aviary behind her Summerlin home. The weird lady with the birds, neighbors call Bromberg.
The country's top female darts thrower marvels about flying over Ayer's Rock in the middle of Australia en route to a tournament as Marvin Gaye serenades the smoky lounge with "What's Goin' On?"
Four hours after a weekly recreational league started, CD's Lounge has nearly emptied. Bromberg sits on a barstool for more than five minutes for the first time all night.
The music stops.
She revealed how a tumor - larger than an orange, smaller than a grapefruit - in the middle of her back makes sleeping difficult. Flying in an airplane is rarely comfortable. On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain she usually feels is a 5.
"Some days, it's 11," she says. "Doctors say there's one chance in 10,000 that it's not benign. I'll take those odds."
It was first detected in 1986. She underwent an operation, "but they didn't do a very good job," she says. It began growing again 10 years ago.
Tending to the mass hasn't been a priority because she has had bull's-eyes to hit and fundraisers to organize. At the recent Las Vegas Desert Classic, Bromberg was a dervish for three days at Mandalay Bay.
She coordinated, sometimes begged, the top darts throwers in the world to drop by CD's, if only for 10 minutes, to participate in her annual Make-A-Wish event.
Thirteen-time world champion Phil "The Power" Taylor, the Englishman considered the best darts thrower ever, headlined the record turnout of 120.
Bromberg won a tournament in Tucson over the weekend, and she is now competing in an America's Cup event in Barbados.
"If you don't play darts with passion, you don't reap the rewards," she says. "I give it my heart and soul, and I've gotten a lifetime of experiences and friendships. I love the hours.
"And my boss is great - me."
Ron Dove's first words to Bromberg, when she was throwing darts in a Los Angeles bar in 1989, encouraged her to perfect her skill.
Dove (pronounced Doe-VAY), a semipro golfer and now Bromberg's husband, said her grit allows her to battle through the constant back pain and throw her 26-gram darts at such a high level.
"She hasn't had to change her throw or her stance," he said. "Mentally, she's overcome it."
Four years after throwing her first dart, Bromberg won her first American Darts Organization women's points title in 1991. She successfully defended it, and she has claimed that title every year since 1996.
Various injuries and ailments sidetracked her in the mid-1990s.
"She was never off because she played bad," said Dove, 65. "They were all personal reasons."
In 1998, she defeated Canadian two-time world champion John Part in an exhibition game of "501" at a tournament in Montreal. He missed three chances at double-14 to close out the match.
Bromberg nailed her first shot at double-20 to end it.
"They're graceful when they win and when they lose," Jill Bailes, a former pro from England, said of Part and her good friend Bromberg. "That distinguishes you."
Bailes saw Bromberg at her best when she won the Las Vegas Desert Classic in 2003.
"It was good for her and good for Las Vegas," Bailes said while watching Bromberg throw last week in the rec league. "It wasn't good for Britain. She beat a Brit."
Bromberg's rough exterior apparently masks her soft interior.
"You have to be hard (outside) to be that good," Bailes said.
Bromberg makes no apologies for being politically incorrect. She will never compete in France, since that country distanced itself from the U.S. in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedies.
She bristles as she recalls a perceived personal attack.
"Do not ever call me a liar, cheater or thief," Bromberg says. "I will destroy you as a human being."
At CD's, she was quick with a smile and a high-five for every fellow darts thrower who entered and left the lounge.
Exchanging letters with sick children, planning visits to hospitals and coordinating fundraisers, "that's the soft part," Bailes said of the woman known as "The Wish Granter."
In 1997, a $100-an-ace endeavor by former tennis champion Pete Sampras inspired Bromberg to start a $5-per-180 (triple-20 on all three darts, a perfect throw) program that has morphed into something much bigger.
She has raised about $80,000, including $10,000 at the event that packed CD's a few weeks ago, for Make-A-Wish.
Bromberg spent $1,000 to install mirrors on an entire living-room wall, centered with six Make-A-Wish thank-you trophies shelved in the shape of a pyramid.
"My crown jewels," she says, "my personal claim to fame."
CD's will be the site of Bromberg's "surprise" birthday party July 28. She turns a milestone age the previous day - think points for a bull's-eye - but she already knows about the bash.
She promises that it will be a rum fest.
Bromberg also vows to address her medical situation very soon, mainly because slipping in and out of her white 1997 Mustang GT, with the eight cylinders and super sound system, has become so challenging.
When she washes the rig, she sees to it that even the inside of the wheel wells get cleaned. The top of the license plate frame reads, "I'm America's," the plate is "A1DARTR" and the bottom of the frame reads, "Want to play?"
"I'll get rid of the tumor," Bromberg says, "before the car."
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