Osprey Media - The Kingston Whig-Standard - Print Version

Perth Road ringer; Horseshoes not the pits for former racer

Kennedy, Patrick

Monday, April 30, 2007 - 00:00

Local News
Source: http://www.thewhig.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=508270&catname=Local+News&classif=

Tedd Hosler, at 77, is the oldest member of the Sunbury Horseshoe Club.
Photo: Michael Lea

- Stock-car driving, the hobby to which Tedd Hosler was happily enslaved for the better part of a quarter-century, was a rousing but risky avocation.

Hosler almost bought the farm on a couple of occasions, including one night in Cornwall when, seconds from claiming a checkered flag, his No. 97 car, Little Jewel, flew off the track and tore through a dense thicket.

"When the car stopped," Hosler recalled, "I had a broken nose, one eyebrow missing and a piece of tree in the car with me, with the other end sticking out of the rad."

While still driving stocks, the lively old-timer discovered a less nerve-pounding pastime, a game that's been around in one form or another for the past 40 or 50 centuries, gave or take a few decades: horseshoes, aka barnyard golf or pasture pool.

One might say Hosler went from one pit to another.

"It's great fun and you very seldom get hurt," said the animated septuagenarian who raced 23 seasons at tracks in Kingston, Brockville and New York State, at never less than hell-bent-for-leather speed.

At 77, Hosler is the oldest member of the Sunbury Horseshoe Club, a thriving throng of throwers with a membership of 43, a nine-pit venue at Sunbury Park and expansion plans for both.

"Four of us pretty much got it started about three years ago," said club treasurer Audrey Bertrim. "We used to play over in Harrowsmith until that club just got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared."

"At the time, our [Storrington] township people didn't have any money to help us," Bertrim said. "So, the four of us each put up $250 to get the pits built and get everything going."

As word spread, the number of players increased. The club grew and modestly prospered, enough at any rate to eventually make good on the $1,000 start-up loan and stash some loot away for an annual club bash. Opening night this year is May 8 and matches will be held every Tuesday until the end of August.

Players arrive at Sunbury Park a few hours before dusk, in small groups or in pairs or solo. There is no pecking order; those first on the scene grab rakes and begin preparing the sand pits for that night's slate of games.

Many players bring their own horseshoes, some transporting them in specially designed carrying cases such as the one Horseshoe Hosler uses to cart any of his four different pairs. Like a dead-eye darts marksman or a pool-room shark, high-end horseshoe pitchers prefer their own equipment.

"Not using your own shoes is like using someone else's rifle," Hosler reasoned. "You notice a difference right away."

Added Bertrim's brother, Lloyd Peters, who pitches in a 22-team league west of Belleville with twin brother Floyd: "You get used to the feel and the weight, just like a bowler."

On game nights, club players are divided into A and B flights according to skill level, with two-man teams comprised of an A and B player. Each team plays three games. The average turnout is 32, enough to keep eight pits working. League standings are kept. A champion is crowned and prizes handed out at the wind-up gig.

One prize no one covets is the skunk award.

"We gave out six last year," secretary Bertrim said of the trophy topped with a Pepe LePew lookalike. Skunks are awarded to victims of a shutout.

In case you've forgotten how to score, a ringer, or mucker - any shot that encircles the 14-inch-high stake - is worth three points. A leaner - a shoe left leaning against the peg - is worth two points (one point at the pro level). And, yes, just like hand grenades, close does count in horseshoes. The nearest shoe to the peg (six inches or less) scores one point.

The first team to score 21 points wins.

"I love it because it's sociable, it's outside and it's good exercise," reasoned Hosler, an A-flight flinger who backed up the latter point with this suggestion: "Try throwing a two-and-a-half-pound horseshoe some 40 feet and doing that over and over about 75, 80 times."

Though he learned to play as a youngster on Adelaide Street, Hosler never played competitively until he joined his first club in the mid-1960s. He has since competed in two world championships.

In the basement of his home hard by Perth Road Village - the property's been in his family since 1786 - are mementoes of those hair-raising days behind the wheel and hundreds of pieces of horseshoe hardware. "Must be 500, 600 trophies," he crowed.

While Hosler is among the club's better pitchers, he's nowhere near the best. That distinction unofficially belongs to Jan Boyle, according to Bertrim and others.

"How many ringers would Boyle throw in three attempts?" the club secretary is asked. "One, two?"

"Try three," she answered.

"Everyone wants to be her partner," Bertrim continued. "I was lucky enough to be her partner when we played against my husband and my brother. We skunked them, and those two haven't heard the end of it since."

The late Elmer Hohl is widely hailed as the game's greatest performer, a humble, thinner version of billiards legend Minnesota Fats, complete with the same unerring game and truckload of trick shots.

Before he pitched his last, the laconic Ontario farmer rattled off 25 provincial titles, 19 Canadian crowns and six world championships. He perfected the one-and-three-quarter-turn delivery, this despite his disdain for practice.

He posted a 32-3 mark in 1965 to earn, at age 46, his first world crown. A dozen years later, and pushing 60, he went 25-3 en route to his sixth and final title.

Of course, if you're over 40, Hohl is best remembered as the star of a beautiful beer commercial from the early 1970s. In it, the native of Wellesley, a right-handed player who once tossed a record 59 straight ringers, airmails a shoe that lands safely around a bottle of icy O'Keefe.

"He actually did it three out of five," Hohl's son, Steve, once recalled.

A trick shot? Not on your life. Just an example of the man's matchless ability to throw a horse's footwear.

Hosler once played Hohl a quick exhibition game at a tournament in Packenham. "He spotted me two points and beat me 21-2," the loser remembered.

At that same event, Hosler and a friend were asked to hold a large sheet over the throwing lane a few metres in front of the pit, thereby blocking a shooter's view of the stake.

Elmer coolly pitched a pair of shoes around the peg.

"Someone tied two balloons high on the stake," said Tedd, running with the story. "Elmer came in low for one ringer and then announced he was going to take out both balloons with the other shoe."

Jaws dropped as the master popped both balloons with a shoe that spun around the stake before coming to rest atop the first shoe.

pkennedy@thewhig.com
ID- 508270