St Joseph, Mo. ? The old ash trees throw shadows over the horseshoe courts as they do every summer Thursday evening.

Players shuffle around under their shade at Noyes Field – it’s league night, and they come ready with heavy horseshoes.

While a few practice their pitching, Dean Jameson, 79, and Eugene “Gene” Newkirk, 75, mill around a picnic table.

Nearby, Central High School’s freshman, sophomore and JV football teams play each other in a scrimmage, and distant sounds of cheers, an announcer’s voice and clapping hands float over the pitch.

Neither Jameson nor Newkirk has ever known the glory of a home game with cheering fans. Neither ever earned a letter. Neither wore his school’s letter jacket.

But horseshoes – well, there’s something for them here.

“Hey, front and center,” shouts Dennis Walker. “Gather those shoes.”

Members of the Pony Express Horseshoe League join him around the table, shoes in hand. League director Richard Pistole, 71, asks his players if they want to pitch with new partners tonight, or stick with their old ones.

They stick with the old ones. “OK,” he says. “I guess we’re ready to get started.”

And that suits Jameson and Newkirk just fine. The partners, both in blue, have known each other for years.

They sense most every move the other will make. The two head for the second stretch of concrete while Greg Canchola pulls up a plastic chair to keep score.

Newkirk, of Maysville, steps up to a painted yellow line and watches the metal ringer ahead through tinted glasses. He swings his arm back and releases his first shoe from a gloved hand. It splatters into the wet gray square of clay.

His second shoe hits the ringer with a clang. He can’t remember his first toss, but Newkirk was a child, and it was at one of the get-togethers his family had every summer weekend.

Jameson steps up. He swings his arm back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, releasing the heavy horseshoe from his open hand.

It turns over in a slow arc on its flight down toward the wet, gray clay, sinking in with a muffled slurp. He throws his second shoe.

Jameson got involved in the early 1980s after watching his son pitch. It was a chance to exercise, get out of the house and his normally shy habits. He even remembers when the old elms here were once young and small.

The two pace together toward the other side, and Jameson calls out the score to Canchola as he passes. “Two-three,” he says. Cheers continue drifting over from the nearby game. Jameson throws.

His knees ache if he doesn’t put on a little sports cream before pitching, which he does several times a week. Newkirk throws.

His knees ache, too, but he takes two pills every morning and every night for that.

They lift their muddy shoes, scrape them off. They pace back to the other side.

“One-three,” Jameson tells Canchola. Back and forth they throw and go, 25 times while summer sounds of buzzing bugs grow loud.

“One-four.” “Two-six.” “Three-four.” “Ah,” Newkirk tells Jameson as they stroll toward the other side, “you cheated me out of both of ’em.”

Newkirk has little to complain about, though – a room full of trophies that spill onto the top of his television, a wall nearly half full of plaques.

“Four-zero,” Jameson tells Canchola.

In a desk in his bedroom, Jameson has manila envelopes full of plaques, certificates and horseshoe awards. He saves the programs and handouts from all his tournaments.

If his health holds up, next year Jameson will attend the world horseshoe championship in Gillette, Wyo.

His eyes sparkle a little when he talks about it later. Just once in his life, he says, he wants to go.

He steps up to the yellow line and his pitch clanks perfectly around the pole, sinking fast into the clay.

His next misses.

“Almost,” Newkirk tells Jameson. “Almost.” Jameson never played many sports, just baseball for a little while. And Newkirk was always too small for football, his hands too small for basketball.

But later this evening, they’ll take first in league play.

The two partners trade places and somewhere, a marching band rumbles – horns squawking, drums pounding – as if it were cheering just for horseshoes.