New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1921-07-06
PITCH QUO|TS?
HARDING DOES ] !: 5
President Fond Of 0ld-Fasfioned
Game Of Horseshoes.
HOPE FOR new POPULARITY

sSA vi VIII VI OLH1llI ]
National Association Of Horseshoe
Pitchers Expect Revival Of the
Sport Because of Presidents Inter
est-Executlve May Indulge in
Pastime In White House Yard to
Recuperate From Strain of Running
the Country. x
The reports having gone forth that
President Harding is very fond of the
game of quoits, or horseshoe pitching,
that he has Joined national organi-
cation of horseshoe pitchers, and that
he may pitch horseshoes in the White
House yard to recuperate from the
strain Of running the country, the
friends Of this fine old American game
hope that it may achieve new popu-
larity.
There Is a tendency In this country
to follow the lead Of the President in
matters of sport. Mr., Roosevelt I'M
doubtedly did much to popularize the
study of birds, and also he helped
probably by his example to swell the
army of American hunters. II
Although the game is played In
England and Scotland it is indigenous
to the United States and may be re-
garded as 100 per cent American.
Furthermore, 1t smacks strongly of
that America Of yesterday, to the
spirit of which we are trying to re-
turn-the America of peace, content
ment, normalcy-an America supreme
ly self-satisfied in the belief that it
is the greatest and most perfect ma
ton on earth. America doing in the
warm sun of prosperity untroubled by
its relations with the rest of the
world.
A Sport of Rural Districts.
Horseshoe pitching had its origin in
thousand little crossroad towns,
where, on summer evenings, well-fed
farmers gather under the tree in front
OF the blacksmith shop. For the most
part they sit and smoke and talk.
They are not restless men. They
never play tennis or golf or anything,
else strenuous, because, they get plen-
ty of exercise pitching hay and digging
potatoes. But now and again the spir-
it Of play strikes them in mild and
friendly form. Old horseshoes are
lying all about. Two, pegs are driven
into the ground, and soon a game is
+ r. "a fry
easy-going game. Contested points
are decided finally, by an umpire
armed with a straw. There is no
hard feeling, no perspiratiOn, no ex-
citement. It is the typical sport Of
well-fed, easy-going, colnplacent folk.
One can imagine a man with revolu-
tionary thoughts in his head playing
a fiery game of tennis, but one cannot
imagine him playing quoits. It is not,
in fact, game calculated to appeal
to any man who is leading an excit;,
ing life, whether its excitements are
chiefly intellectual or chiefly physical.
Its pleasing but monotonous move
.ments and mild crisis are diverting
only by contrast with daily tasks even
more monotonous. 1t belongs in the
same school Of things with the old
swimming hole, the country fair, the
church sociable. ,e p
It traces its ancestry even further
back to the days Of husking bees and
quilting frolics. It is associated with
the smell Of wet black earth and
growing corn, with the long still coun-
try evenings when frogs and crickets
sing, with simple tasks and neighbor-
ly feelings, with friedl chicken din
ner on Sunday and good soothing
sermon and a long nap in the ham
mock on the front porch. 1t belongs
to the good old American school of
philosophy which holds that God is in
his heaven and all is right with the
world, that civilization began after the
revolutionary war, that every Ameri-
can boy has chance to be president
If he will just lie prone In front Of
the fire and study as earnestly as Abe
Lincoln did.
Such is the environment that pro-
duced the game Of horseshoes and 1T
flourishes still in what Is left Of that
environment. You do not see it played.
much in New York or Chicago, or any
other big city. It does not fit in with
the subway rush, the roar Of lower.
Broadway and the elevated. Men and
women who struggle with straining
nerves for life and love and money,
who shimmy in jazz-racked cabarets
and pack the follies and the movies
are not horseshoe pitchers. They would
vote horseshoe pitching a deadly bore.
Nor is it in tune with the mental life
of the new metropolitan America,
which is so self conscious and worried
the America that reads main Street"
and patronizes British high throw lee
turers and tries hard to guess what
is going on in Russia. Antebellum,
horseshoe pitching America barely had,
heard Of Russia, regarded Main street
as the best place this side Of heaven
and gave to all foreigners rich and
condescending pity. Can America be
led back to the sweet and placid con-
tentment, the beautiful faith and ignor-
ance of the early horseshoe pitching