The Gentle Art & Sport of Horseshoes

(Page 5 of 6)

July/August 1988
By Terry Krautwurst 
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Levels of Perfection

Pitching horseshoes is, of course, a game of accuracy, and as they say, practice makes perfect. There's only so much fun, though, in practice for practice's sake. Sooner or later, the urge to beat the pants off somebody takes hold.

This explains in part why there are so many horseshoe leagues from coast to coast, with teams from factories, town halls, neighborhood associations, youth groups and just about everywhere else pitching shoes in serious (or at least semiserious) competition. This phenomenon is currently burgeoning. Elaborate, multiple-court horseshoe facilities—many of them indoors, and complete with snack bars, pro shops and fulltime instructors—are springing up in virtually ev ery state. In just the past two or three years, membership in the NHPA, which is the international governing body of horseshoe pitching and the organization that sanctions official tournaments, has more than doubled.

One reason for the sudden growth is relatively recent rule changes that—in keeping with the traditional democratic spirit of the game—allow virtually anyone who wants to play in a tournament, even a major championship, to compete at some level. You'd better watch out, though; the better you get at the game, the higher the level you'll play in, and pretty soon you may find yourself rubbing elbows with really serious players, dead-accurate pitchers who toss 70%, 80% and (gasp!) 90% or more ringers. These are the elite; grim-faced, machinelike, merciless. (Thank heaven I'll never have to worry about playing them.)

Personally, I prefer my horseshoes the old-fashioned way, played outdoors in a yard or park, with others who aren't all that great at pitching either. I like the lively conversation, the jests and joking (strictly forbidden during official tournament play), the general casualness of it all. I guess I even like not knowing exactly where the shoe's going to land when I throw it. The game just seems more interesting that way.

Take the time I was playing my brother, Seth, in the front yard. I pitched a shoe that hit the stake solidly, twirled around it three or four times and then jumped off the peg and leaped up, landing—believe it or not—balanced on the end of the stake, with the shoe's arms hanging down on both sides of the peg and swinging back and forth slightly. Dumbstruck, we stopped the game, sat down next to the swaying shoe, being careful not to do anything that might jar it, and stared in silence. "This has to be worth some extra points," I finally whispered, astonished. Barely, almost imperceptibly, the shoe rocked, back and forth, back and forth. "Let's just quit," Seth answered, equally awestruck. "I don't want to be the one to knock that shoe off" And so the magic horseshoe hung there, teetering on the peg, for two days and nights until a windstorm blew through and toppled it.

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