 After a Getzein victory over the Kansas City Cowboys in 1886, the Detroit Free Press wrote: "The Pretzel is all right. He went into the box to-day and pitched one of his finest, his curves circling around in the form of the delicious pastry from which Getz takes his sobriquet." However, the editor of the Grand Rapids World opined that Getzein's "curved ball" was a fiction. He wrote:
