Pitchin' Shoes
(excerpts from Sports Illustrated, 9/24/84,
by Bill Gilbert)

THERE ARE THREE honest-to-God, might-as-well, where's-it-at American games which, if not technically endemic, have flourished in our space and culture as they have no place else. They are, of course, rodeo, baseball and pitching horseshoes.

The last is the most exotic in origin, dating from the invention of the horseshoe more than 2,000 years ago. It has been the most common, in the class sense and also in terms of distribution and accessibility.

It is a game of dirt and iron, suited to our hot, humid, continental summers, rooted in vacant lots adjacent to field or factory, and played in side yards where grass will never grow anyway because of the maple roots, behind the store and station, alongside corral, groundhog sawmill and tree-shaded garage.

It's the Sunday-afternoon, family-reunion, company-picnic, for when you need relief from standing around doing nothing.

It is structured to be a social game, allowing for talk and stories, for listening to the Tigers on the radio, for keeping an eye on the kids. A solitary game, for when you want to be alone and sink into yourself.

Also a grimly competitive game, in which the concentration makes your jaw ache. You can pitch badly and not be humiliated, or very well and never be entirely satisfied. It can be fun for an hour, or a passion for life.

In the early days, for ordinary people, everyday life was exhausting and exciting, often excessively so. When they could recreate, they wanted to relax, come down rather that go up, and horseshoes was ideal for the purpose.

Now we have a lot more people, who have the gentry's leisure and resources and their theory about athletics has come to be the ordinary one- that lack of stimulation is a kind of disease, common and dangerous, which, if it cannot be prevented, must be treated like obesity, vitamin deficiency or neurosis. Engaging regularly in some vigorous sport, as either a participant or observer, is thought to be an excellent specific for this affliction. It's difficult, if not impossible, to push horseshoes as such a remedy.

In a time when we use sports as amphetamines, it has the therapeutic effect of a glass of warm milk. Even so, there are the 30 million horseshoe pitchers among us, and their existence probably indicates that, though it sounds too wimpy and unfashionable to admit it now, there is still a large demand for warm-milk games, ones that soothe rather than stimulate.

Horseshoes is a very good thing to do when you have no need or desire to pretend to be heroic.