81-year-old Herbert Hayden of Florida recently copped a plea bargain for a shuffleboard-related incident back in September. The feisty senior citizen who lives in a St. Petersburg mobile home takes his shuffleboard VERY seriously. If you don’t believe me, just ask James Sutton. Via The Smoking Gun, here’s how everything went down at the Pinellas Park Senior Center’s open-air shuffleboard pavilion on that fateful fall afternoon.
Hayden and victim James Sutton “had a verbal argument that escalated into a physical altercation,” police reported. After the 6’, 200-pound Hayden slugged Sutton, he “hit him with his shuffleboard cue causing damage to both cues.” Sutton suffered a pair of four-inch scratches on his face during the scuffle.
A no contact order bars Hayden from coming within 500 feet of Sutton’s residence or vehicle. Hayden is also barred from calling or texting Sutton. The order also prohibits any contact via Facebook or Twitter, though the elderly Hayden does not appear to have any social media accounts.
After pleading no contest to the misdemeanor battery charge, Hayden was ordered to pay roughly $800 in fines, fees, service charges, and court costs. While that clearly isn’t chump change, that investment will pay off big time in the long run because the intimation factor Hayden will hold over opponents is immeasurable.
The fear of taking a shuffleboard cue to the domepiece is going to serve as a huge competitive advantage for Hayden. People are going to be so petrified of his crazy ass that they will be way off their game. He’s pretty much the Bill Laimbeer of senior citizen shuffleboard. Bad boy for life.
