The Sunday Funnies

Another tale from Kirby Higbe's "The High Hard One":

Toward the end of the 1942 season, when the Cardinals were closing in on us, this guy got a chorus girl and sent her to Philadelphia, where the Cardinals were playing while we were battling Cincinnati in Brooklyn. There was hardly no way the the Phillies could beat the Cardinals, especially when one of their aces was pitching. So this girl was told to get a date with one of the Cardinal pitchers the night before he was going to pitch, and she did. Next day he shut the Phillies out on two hits.

When the girl came back, she was told she'd done a lousy job.

"A lousy job! He drank two quarts of liquor and I guarantee he didn't sleep a wink all night."

The Cardinals were coming to Brooklyn next, and the girl was given another chance.

The pitcher was due to pitch the second game, and she made a date with him.  She called in the morning and said she had been with him all night and she was dead tired and didn't see how he could be good for anything that day. But he shut us out on three hits and beat us 2-0.

That looked like pretty good medicine for a pitcher, and I asked why they didn't try it out on me.