Keene Evening Sentinel  Monday, August 5, 1968

Elmer Hohl Pitches His First Perfect Game As Horseshoe Tourney Enters Final Days
By Tom Blake

Elmer Hohl, the pride of Canada on the horseshoe courts, pitched the first perfect game in his life during Saturday's play and only the second ever recorded in the history of the National Horseshoe Pitcher's Association.

The 1968 World Horseshoe Tournament enters its 10th day of competition today at Wheelock Park with all divisions and classes completed except the men's 36-man Class A flight.

Games 25 through 30 are scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. and each could help decide the men's title.  The event ends tomorrow with five final contests.

Hohl threw 30 straight ringers to beat Wes Kuchcinski of Erie, Pa., 51-0 on Court 8.  Official scorer Harvey Hookway counted 13 ringers for Kuchcinski in the quick contest.

"It's not nice to do that to a fellow," Hohl said with a smile.  He recalled nearly achieving the feat in a previous tournament but missed when a shoe spun off the pin.

Guy Zimmerman of Danville, Calif., world champion in 1954, was the first to pitch a perfect game and he did it in 1948.  The shortest game on record is 22 shoes set by Roland Kraft of Lecompton, Kansas, in 1941.

Hohl, who set an all-time record qualifying round score of 572 points in this tournament, had another perfect game going with 42 straight ringers against Paul Focht.

Focht, the former world titlist from Dayton, Ohio, trailed 27-0 before he was able to sneak in four points.  Hohl won the game 52-10 and in the 86 shoes pitched he had 84 ringers and 40 doubles.  Focht made 67 ringers and 27 doubles.  (It is obvious that this is a misprint of the actual number of ringers thrown.  Elmer had 81 ringers in 86 shoes for 94.2%.)

Leo McGrath, veteran judge at the world event, said yesterday morning that he had kept ringer percentages on Hohl for 48 straight tourney games, dating from the Eastern National through Saturday's play, and that the 1965 world champion had a mark of 88.7%.

Hohl said he wants to keep his ringer percentage up in an effort to break another all-time record, that of Casey Jones who scored 87.5 ringers for 31 games in 1948.

After 23 games Hohl counted 88.7 but he slipped in his last game Sunday for an overall average of 88.6 for 1628 ringers out of 1838 shoes.

Danny Kuchcinski's sheet tallied 1707 ringers out of 2082 shoes for an 82.0 percentage.

Frank Stinson is a pitcher noted for spoiling win streaks.  He handed the champion his only loss of the tourney by a 50-44 score.

Kuchcinski reeled off 10 points to trail by one until Stinson made it 42-35.  The champ go a three-pointer but his opponent spurted into a critical 47-38 lead.  Both players pitched six consecutive ringers before Dan was able to gain a point.  At 47-44 Stinson slipped on a pair to Danny's single and won the game.

Stinson remembered that in the 1966 world playoff he pinned a loss on defending champion Elmer Hohl after the Canadian had strung several wins.  Hohl eventually finished in 5th place.