Posted on 08/07/2010 11:17:09 AM PDT by smokingfrog
World Champion horse shoe pitcher.
90% ringers
Alan is amazing. I love to pitch horseshoes, and I pitch every week. The mental strength to pitch 90% is beyond what most of us will ever even realize can exist.
My all time favorite is Ted Allen, who holds the world’s consecutive ringer record (in a sanctioned tournament). And he did it two different times... pitching 72 ringers in a row. :)
My percentage? About 30% officially. My consecutive ringer best? 7 in a row, which I’ve done 4-5 times. I have a mental block about that 8th ringer.
Isn’t today the final day of the world’s championship?
I’ll bet there’s some ‘possum poacher up at the end of some West Virginia holler that’s better.
Hmm, the Tiger Woods of Horseshoes. Now if he could only get his pancake waitress routing down.
I used to be the best kickball player in the world.
tell me about it. I used to be pretty good shooting marbles, but the groupies were my downfall.
Ya gotta be good at something. This man’s passion is horse shoes.
I love it.
I see you guys making light of horseshoes, but I’m telling you that you don’t comprehend just what level of skill and concentration this takes. Try shooting free throws in basketball from 40 feet out and making 90%.
From the free throw line, Alan Francis would be consistently making many hundreds of free throws consecutively between misses. This is the best in the world, from a truly humble man.
How long does it take to become an expert in any given area of human endeavor? Well, recently there was a book by Gladwell called the “Outliers” and in this book he put forth some conventional wisdom; namely that takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything. If this is true then that means you can become an expert bicyclist, yoga instructor, small business coach, teleprompting reading politician, pilot, or even perhaps a mathematician by merely putting in the time to learn that endeavor.
In horseshoes, people that know me consider me to be an expert. I know the rules, I’ve built my own court, I play in tournaments, and I can smoke 99.9% of the people in the country at horseshoes.
But against Alan Francis, I could play him 100 games per day for fifty years and I’d still lose every game. Pitching even 50% at horseshoes is about equivalent to shooting 90% free throws at basketball. And yet Alan Frances is at 90% in horseshoes. It’s hard to realize just what that means without immersing into the sport.
Heh, I just remembered we played horseshoes at the last FReeper picnic up in Fresno. Except that none of the other FReepers played. :( I brought a friend with me, and he and I played a few people who were picnicking nearby the horseshoe courts. For a bunch theoretically old fashioned people, FReepers sure don’t get into what may have been the most popular outdoor game in the country back when many of us old guys were young. :)
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