The Gentle Art & Sport of Horseshoes

(Page 2 of 6)

July/August 1988
By Terry Krautwurst 
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For the next century and a half, the game was played with real just-off-the-animal horseshoes. If you ever get a chance to try doing the same, don't, for your hand's sake. Throwing the real thing, complete with burrs and nail holes, is akin to tossing around a particularly nasty scratching, biting rodent. The other trouble with real shoes is that they, like the horses that wear them, come in different sizes. There is no fun in throwing Shetland pony shoes against an opponent pitching Clydesdales.

Mercifully, along about 1920 sporting goods manufacturers started making standard-size, smooth-surface pitching horseshoes. The current regulation maximum dimensions specify a length of 7 5/8 inches, a width at the opening of 3 1/2 inches and a weight of two pounds, 10 ounces. Today you can choose from more than a dozen different brands of pitching shoes, and at least three dozen NHPA-approved styles, each offering a different combination of grip, hardness of steel, hook design and overall "feel." Serious players will try most of them and pay up to $75 a pair for the ones they like. But even discount-store "picnic" shoes (about $20 for a set of four, with stakes) are nicely balanced and more than adequate for the casual pitcher.

If you have the space and intend to pitch shoes regularly, you may want to build a permanent court, like the one in the accompanying sidebar, "MOTHER'S Old-Fashioned Horseshoe Court." But for a Sunday afternoon game, all you really need are the horseshoes, a couple of one-inchdiameter steel stakes and a place to poke them in the ground 40 feet apart. (An area 50 or 60 feet long and six or seven feet wide will give you lots of room.) Just loosen the dirt down to six or more inches deep around each stake so the shoes won't bounce too much. The peg should be in the approximate center of the pit and should stick up 12 to 14 inches above ground, with a slight slant toward the opposite stake. If you want to get fussy, make the pit three feet wide and anywhere from four to six feet long, and mark a foul line three feet in front of the stake. Women, and kids 17 and under, get to pitch from just 30 feet stake to stake, so if you need to, mark another set of foul lines 10 feet in from the others.

Rules and Scoring

It's easy to grasp the fundamentals here: One player throws two shoes at the stake at the opposite end. Then the other player throws two shoes at the same stake. That's an inning. Now you both walk to the far side, figure the score, pick up your shoes and throw them back again. And so on till one of you reaches an agreed-upon winning score.

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