When did I first meet Pinch, you say? Well, that is a question. I think it was 1919 or so, but don't hold me to that. Yes, I'm not sure when it was, but I can tell you where it was--Rochester, New York, of all places.
We were playing a few games in the area, and a couple of us headed to Rochester to see a motion picture, and this fella with a weird gimp comes up to us on the sidewalk outside the theater and tells us he knows we're ballplayers and that he'll take any of us on in a footrace and he'll beat us!
It was me and Schmitty Parker and Goldie Weston and Joe Brennan, and here we are, getting challenged to a footrace by this young feller with a gimp in his leg!
Well, Goldie Weston--you remember him, the pitcher from Cincinnati--well, Goldie says to this kid with the gimp, "Sure, I'll race ya. Loser buys the other a steak dinner."
Well, suffice to say, that night Goldie Weston bought a steak dinner for this kid with the gimp! You should've seen this kid--Pinch--ordering a steak with all the trimmings at the hotel restaurant! Just about the funniest thing I ever saw! Poor Goldie just sat there, looking redder than a California beet!
Anyways, we got him a tryout with a team in Albany that next week, and well, you know what Pinch did from there: hit 16 homeruns in 1923, had 36 doubles in 1926, stole more bases in 1928 than you could shake a stick at!
A shame he killed that man in '31.
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