NEWSLINE STORY
published May-June 2015
Three Selected for 2015 Hall of Fame Induction
by Vicki Winston, Hall of Fame Committee Chairperson
The NHPA Hall of Fame Committee has elected three individuals who will make up the Class of 2015 and who will be inducted into the NHPA Hall of Fame at the 50th Annual NHPA Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet to be held on Sunday evening, July 19, in Topeka, Kansas.
Elected from the Player category is Jim Walters of Johnstown, Ohio. Jim is the son of Ken and the late Mary Walters and was born into a horseshoe-pitching family. It is not surprising that he began pitching horseshoes when he was eight years old. While in the Junior Division, he won five consecutive Junior Boys World Championships from 1989 to 1993 and did not lose a single game in any of those tournaments. During the years of 1994 through 2014, Jim has played in the Men’s Championship Finals of the World Tournament 15 times and has finished in the top five in 11 of those tournaments. Jim is still a young man, and you will no doubt continue to see his name among the top contenders for many years to come.
The inductee from the Promoter/Organizer category is Lorraine Sternberg of Richfield, Wisconsin. Lorraine served the NHPA as 3rd Vice President for 12 years before stepping down to devote more time to her grandchildren. She served as the NHPA Sanctioned League Director during all of her years as an NHPA officer, while also holding down a full-time day job. During her first year as the Sanctioned League Director, she rewrote the red League Handbook and condensed it so it would be less costly to print. During her years as a NHPA officer, Lorraine started the NHPA Sanctioned League Tournament and served as the tournament director for that event as long as she remained in her NHPA position. This tournament continues to be held annually in October. Lorraine was also the NHPA Junior Promotions Director from 1997-2000. For her years of dedication and hard work, Lorraine received the NHPA Stokes Award in 2007.
The first person to be inducted from the newly formed Historic Era Player category is Harold Anthony of Ohio. Nominees in this category are all pitchers who played in their last World Tournament Championship Finals 35 or more years ago. Harold was born in 1915 and lived to be over 90 years of age, but is now deceased. Harold pitched qualifying shoes for 12 World Tournaments during the 1960s and 1970s, making it into the Men’s Championship Class nine times. His career ringer average for those nine events was 75.36 percent. This was during the time of onsite qualifying. The Championship Class consisted of 36 men most years and they played 50-point games. Harold was involved in the longest game of three different World Tournaments. Those games went 164, 150 and 144 shoes and he won two of them, averaging 79.8, 84.6 and 80.4 percent. Harold pitched over 3,000 shoes in two of his Championship Finals and over 2,900 shoes in two others. By comparison, in the 2014 World Tournament, only two men in the Men’s Championship Finals pitched over 900 shoes and several pitched less than 800 shoes. The male participants definitely had to work harder in those days than they do now.
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