Boxing column:  Square Ring not the same with passing of 'Pinhead'  Nathan Dominitz @ Pensacola News Journal.com  To many, he was just "Pinhead."  Others knew him by his real name, James Norris.  But around the Square Ring Gym, he simply was "Pin," or on formal occasions, "Mr. Pin."  "If you stick with Pin, you'll always win." boxing trainer Alton Merkerson recited while reminiscing about Norris, who died  at age 78 last month in Pensacola.  Pinhead stuck around the gym for about eight years, since Roy Jones and the stable of Square Ring fighters set up shop at the corner of Spring and LaRua streets--not far from Norris' apartment on Palafox Street.  He was one of those colorful characters that are standard equipment for any self-respecting gym, like heavy bags, medicine balls and jump ropes.  These gentlemen are usually older, usually retired, with the time to sit and watch raw, awkward young athletes bloom into prizefighters.  Pin was a former boxer.  He said he had nine pro fights as a 154-pounder.  "I lost them all,"  Pinhead said in a September 1999 interview--and countless times before and since.  "The reason was I couldn't get my knife open with my boxing gloves on."  Pinhead cracked that one-liner during his introduction  to Eric Esch, better known as ultra-heavyweight "ButterBean."  That day at the Square Ring Gym might have been the only time in recorded history that a Pinhead and a ButterBean carried on a coherent conversation.  Oh, Pinhead had a lot of sayings accumulated over 78 years of hanging around boxing gyms, arcades (where he actually got his nickname for working in his pinball machine business) and a few familiar haunts.  If you couldn't find Pinhead at the gym, check Oscar's Restaurant or the Blue Dot Barbeque, all with the same "432" prefix as his home telephone number.  "He used to day he wasn't going to tell the truth,"  Merkerson recalled.  "The last time he told the truth, he went to jail."  It was hard to know exactly where the truth stopped and the joke began with Pinhead, and that was part of his charm.  "You play around, you lose your wife," boxer Ezra Sellers quoted Pinhead.  "Ypu play too long, you lose your life."  Merkerson knew a couple more.  "First your money, then your clothes.  That's the way it goes," Merkerson said.  "I don't know what's worse:  Not having enough money to pay for the food or not enough teeth to eat it."  Pinhead, apparently, grew up poor in Alabama but had money for part of his life in Pensacola.  Maybe he was even a millionaire.  His final years were a much more meager existance.  "He was giving it away: he never spent on himself," said Ted Ciano, the prominent Pensacola car dealer.  "People took advantage of him."  Ciano helped him, as did Jones, Merkerson and another prominent Pensacolian, attorney Fred Levin.  "I've known him since the day I came to  Pensacola (35 years age),"  Ciano said.  "He's somebody you've just got to like.  He's never had a whole lot.  We became friends.  I gave him a car."  Pinhead had a glass business, leading him to meet and know a lot of people aroung the area.  Among the many examples of Jones' generosity is the story Pinhead liked to tell about how he couldn't afford to buy one the champion's pay-per-view fights.  Jones gave him money for the purchase.  "Roy made a statement that (Pinhead) is the only person in his whole boxing career that he had to pay to see him fight,"  Merkerson said.  "All of us here at Square Ring really miss him like part of the family.  His friends did not know of any of Pinhead's relatives.  His funeral duting a rainstorm the day before Christmas was attended by about a dozen people, including Ciano, Levin, Merkerson, Sellers and Ralph Metrano, who works with Square Ring.  Pin requested, they said, that he not be cremated and that he be buried next to his first wife.  "He didn't do anything special for me," Ciano said.  "I just liked him."  Assistant sports editor Nathan Dominitz covers boxing for the News Journal.