Bobo, Stretch and The Big Red Machine

I'm in San Francisco this week with Mrs. Large and my folks, and last night we went to this Italian place in North Beach called Trattoria Contadina. It was one of those pictures-of-celebrities-on-the-wall type places, all the usual suspects, Deano, Lena Horne, Cosby (I swear to God, Cosby has eaten in every restaurant in the U.S.). But it was the above row of autographed shots that caught my eye, particularly the arrangement. You got a great lambchop shot of Joe Morgan, a young McCovey, Charlie Hustle, a very young Johnny Bench, and then... AND THEN... over on the far left sits none other than the great Carl "Bobo" Olson, a middleweight title-holder of the mid-50's who fought most of his career out of S.F. Olson is best remembered for having fought Sugar Ray Robinson four times, losing all four, three by KO. But Olson fought most of the greats of his era, and once beat Randy Turpin, Kid Gavilan and Rocky Castellani in the space of a single year. In the dream infield above, however, it seems that Olson would be forced to play shortstop. Maybe the Trattoria Contadina knows something about ole Bobo that we don't.