Perfect Game

by Player 4

Chapter 6

Author's Note:

A quick release for y'all! I had a big burst of inspiration 🙂

It's now the next day, and Shoe Stadium is receiving a great influx of spectators, and players, for the first stadium match of horseshoes under the new rules. Per the EHA's declaration, getting a perfect game is what they will be aiming for.

Despite today being Tuesday, a work day, there was still a good turnout in the stadium. Not everypony could make it, but it seems that they had spontaneously decided to extend the "extra day off" to an extra two days. And luckily, not a lot of must-do-now work was going on at the moment. The fact that this whole thing happened outside of applebuck season seems to have benefited.

With a big game upon the horizon, the announcer starts speaking.

"Welcome, everypony, welcome! We are about to play the very first official, organized competition of horseshoes under this new bronze, silver, and gold scheme! A total of 24 players will be competing today; they will go at the stakes one at a time for that perfect 90 score. Will any of them be able to do it today? Claim the trophy right at the beginning?"

The crowd finds that very ambitious, but they cheer nonetheless.

"Alrighty then! Please welcome Contestant #1!"

Contestant #1, the first to go at it, is Autumn Apple. It was originally going to be Shoeshine, the inventor, but she decided to be a co-announcer instead. She's up high in the booth with the main announcer. So Autumn, the only other member of the inaugural group who was available today, was going to be the debut.

Despite not believing it was really possible that a perfect game would happen this early, let alone by her, as her best score so far was 42, Autumn's mind starts to swirl as she walks up towards the stake. The initial cheering had died down and now the large crowd was watching closely at the brown-coated mare, holding out hope she would get perfect. Autumn wasn't used to having that much pressure on her.

But she knows she wants to do this; why would anypony pass on the opportunity to be the debut player in the very first official game under brand new rules?

Autumn looks up at the crowd, who now seem more encouraging, rather than pressuring. She can notice it from their faces; they seemed to have noticed that Autumn was feeling a bit anxious.

The smiling faces make it happen. Overpowering her nerves, Autumn picks up the starting golden horseshoe and prepares to throw. The shoe firmly secured in her mouth, here comes the beginning bang.

Turning her head to side and giving the gold horseshoe a powerful release, the first stadium shoe just barely nicks the top of the stake in order to produce a ringer. Nine points, and on track!

The crowd cheers at Contestant #1, with the first throw having become one that is getting them where they need to go.

Autumn gets to throw another gold, and continues giving it her all.

On the second throw, if you were to slow down the footage, the horseshoe appears to be in prime ringer position, but ultimately, the opening part just barely missed and a stake hit ensued. Six points.

The crowd reacts in kind, a perfect game already gone. Yes, it was the very beginning, but a perfect game is what ponies had come to see. It was their goal. They give Autumn the sports treatment, and it gets to her. She hangs her head down in shame.

"Goodness, I didn't think it would become this intense this quick.", the main announcer said.

"Well, it is sports, after all.", Shoeshine adds.

"Sports are really harsh on the ones that cause them to exist, aren't they?"

"Yup."

But Autumn won't let this take her down. Invoking her resilience, she keeps going and throws the next frames. It was predicted by the ponies following this story that it would eventually get to a point where as soon as a gold ringer did not happen, the player would start over, to save time. If you're serious about going for perfect, no need to continue on after you've already failed it.

But at this early stage, they wanted to see how many points they could get right now; how close they were to getting to perfect before they actually got there. An average score of 65 today, rather than 45, would show better progress, and likely a more-soon perfect game.

Next, Autumn hits two consecutive silver-shoe stakes for four points each, bringing her score to 23 after four throws. That isn't bad at all. She continues on an impressive streak of mostly ringers and stake hits, with only one ground hit, for a final score of 56.

"I mean, that's the highest we've seen so far, isn't it?", the main announcer asks.

"From what I've witnessed, yes.", the helper Shoeshine says.

The crowd cheers at Autumn for her currently-exceptional score. It was far away from 90, but this was the very first big game, and nopony had yet seen this number until now. They hadn't even seen a score higher than in the 40s!

Autumn walks off the field, and the next contestant steps up to play. The pink-coated mare starts off with three consecutive gold ringers, earning her a big roar from the crowd.

But her fourth throw... didn't quite make it. A stake hit came there.

So there goes the perfect. But still, she's in great position to break Autumn's record already. She hits a ringer with the silver horseshoe to upgrade back to gold, where she gets another nine-pointer. She then continues on a streak of 6s and 9s, with the lone stand-out being a 4.

At the end, her final score tallied 70! Now that was something!

"Wow! Like everypony else here, I was figuring we'd be taking baby steps here at the beginning, but it seems we have made a lot of progress in just these three days!", the announcer exclaims.

"It sure does!", Shoeshine says.

Still with 22 more contestants to go, the crowd starts to feel they might end up seeing a perfect score today after all!

With the ponies celebrating Contestant #2's astonishing score and, as a result of the quickly rising numbers, thinking somepony might get to that 90 on this day, the stadium is really feeling the heat!

But... the thermometer then starts to go down after none of the next four contestants are able to crack 65 points. Their scores (in order) were 55, 49, 51, and 61.

"Uh, well... There is such a thing as speaking too soon; everypony does it.", the announcer says, trying to make the earlier prediction sound less ridiculous.

"Well, hold up. It's too early to know if we've spoken too soon", Shoeshine says. "We still have 18 more players to go."

Upon hearing Shoeshine's words over the microphone, the crowd starts to regain their perfect game energy. But then they lose it again. Out of the next six, one of them bumps up to 67 points, but most of the other players hovered in the 50s.

"Maybe we'd be seeing better results here if Contestant #2 got to play again. So far she has been the best.", the main announcer says.

"I was thinking that too.", Shoeshine says.

"Still believing in it, though. We're only halfway through.", the primary announcer responds.

They indeed are still only halfway through; 12 contestants down and 12 to go, the ponies still hold out hope, but ultimately, nopony was able to break #2's score of 70, and thus, they're still 20 away from perfect at best.

All the players having played, the game is over.

---

"I don't get it; we jumped straight from the 40s to 56 to 70! We were soaring! Where did it all go?"

"Totally beats me."

"As the announcer said, maybe Contestant #2 is the best player. Had she been allowed to go again, we might have broke 70."

"She will get a chance to go again next game. Although, I'm not sure when the next game will be, given that there's a lot of urgent work that needs to be done tomorrow, and... now that I think of it, on Thursday too..."

This was true. Based on what Appleloosa was going to be up to tomorrow and Thursday, it seemed unlikely that there would be another stadium game until Friday at the least.

"Well, some gaps were bound to happen eventually", a stallion says. "The initial shock wave of this new game wasn't going to last forever; eventually we'll have to stop doing it every day."

"But then that will make it take longer to get perfect!", a mare responds.

The stallion rethinks. "Okay, maybe the shock wave hasn't died yet."

---

Maybe it's receding, but it definitely isn't dead. Some of the contestants begin talking on the streets about holding an organized meeting where they try to analyze the game, figure out what they did wrong, try to improve. Practice does make perfect, after all.

And they might be getting some added help too.