Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110028
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
There are a few ol' boys down Dublin way who might agree. One of their number, the late Larry "Bo" Breeden of Plum Creek, is silent, simple proof.
"His family, if they wanted him, they could find him at the horseshoe pit," said Leo Workman, pitchin' friends with Breeden until the latter was shot and killed during an argument in 1989.
Breeden, a construction worker whose widest fame probably came as one of 900-odd pitchers at a horseshoe world championship some 15 years ago in Huntsville, Ala., breathes a little bit atop a rise overlooking the New River Valley Fairgrounds in Dublin.
There, two doormat-sized wooden plaques hang on the wire fence behind two of the 12 horseshoe courts Breeden helped build for the Big Oak Horseshoe Club of Dublin.
In club founder Earl Linkous' burned-in, loopy script, they read:
"In Memory Of Our Larry `Bo' Breeden
With All Our Love
By - Wife & Children"
and
"In Memory Of Larry `Bo' Breeden
Died In '89
We Love You - Family"
"He was a heck of a good fellow," said Terry Linkous, Earl's son. "He was a good horseshoe pitcher."
On Saturday and Sunday, there were several of those about as the 17-year-old club hosted the Commonwealth Games of Virginia's horseshoe competition. Present was the come-as-you-are friendliness that existed when Workman and Breeden hooked up in the late 1970s (they won the club's doubles title in 1978) and the understated pride in the club's hangout.
Club members built their pitching grounds on a sliver of land Earl Linkous was allowed to use by the folks who run the fairgrounds. Linkous and friends built everything - a dozen 50-foot-long courts, their 18-inch-deep pits filled with red clay trucked in from West Virginia and piled onto a railroad crosstie, which supports the metal stake aimed for by pitchers; the wood and wire fence; the lights atop utility poles the club happened onto; and a pavilion with handmade picnic tables.
They even built two rest rooms, attaching them to the side of a fairgrounds building a 100-plus yards away.
Breeden worked on it, as did Earl and Terry Linkous, Workman, Millard Wyatt and Troy Akers. Wyatt won a class C gold medal Saturday, Akers a silver and Workman a bronze.
Akers, a 70-year-old retired construction worker from Radford, didn't compete Sunday but hung around just because. His history with horseshoes goes back maybe 60 years.
He's been tossing the metal U's since he was in grade school, growing up with cattle, sheep and hogs on his family's Floyd County farm.
"And they were horseshoes," he said. "They were off horses.
"Their shoes'd get worn, and you'd change their shoes."
And then you'd pitch 'em, "a whole lot on Sundays," Akers said.
Nowadays, Thursday is league night in Dublin, and if the boys aren't pitching for gold, silver and bronze medals, it might be a quarter a game or more.
Oceans did not separate Akers from this pastime. A U.S. Marine anti-aircraft gunner attached to the 1st Division from 1943-47, he survived a deadly but victorious American assault on Okinawa, Japan in '45.
"We'd find old shoes on the island that weren't the same size," he said. "We'd set up pegs and pitch 'em. There was just a [few] of us on our gun crew, and we'd pitch 'em when we had time. Some of [the shoes] were just real small, like they were off ponies."
These days, the shoes are factory-made and all the same size, although the backyard equipment differs from "professional" shoes, mostly in weight and how the shoe is balanced.
And there is such a thing as a tournament-regulation facility; it's a 12-court minimum. Earl Linkous' club, which began with pits in the frontyard of his Dublin house, is the only regulation site in Virginia south of Grottoes and west of Crozet, its members said.
The courts still hold pitchers tight until midnight or 1 a.m. on league nights, Workman said. "Most of all, we have a lot of fun," Wyatt said.
And, as the Commonwealth Games' competition proved, you can still wander over and hear a story or two, of Bo Breeden or The War or something else.
Used to be, though, folks would be pitching from noon to night even on a Sunday, Workman said. Now, even guys like Breeden's nephew Billy, by all accounts a star pitcher, hasn't been at the pits in a time.
"Things have changed," said Workman, whose day-old beard shows a little gray. "We're all just about growed up. We've got our own kids now, and we've gotta chase them. So we don't pitch as much. [But] we still get here every Thursday night."
by CNB