The World Series will have come to an end before this chapter reaches publication – though at time of writing, I know not which team will win game 7. Either way, it’s been a nail-biter, and to whoever takes the game, my congratulations. However, for purposes of this article series, we still have a couple of extra-innings to get in, and should wrap up next week. So, call this installment part of the post-game show, if you will.
We’ll pick up this week with some vintage and more recent baseball tales from Fox’s “Animation Domination” block, then close with a quartet of Hanna-Barbera related leftovers not previously reviewed.
We’ll begin with a run-down of several baseball themed stories from “Family Guy”. As this show has a reputation for being considerably off-color, I’ll stick to plot points that are more generally suitable for family-friendly print – giving you a somewhat sanitized idea of what the storylines were about.
A Hero Sits Next Door (5/2/99) – This early episode introduces show regular Joe (Patrick Worburton) as Peter’s new next door neighbor. Peter is quite disinterested in being introduced to any new neighbors, as his experience is that neighbors always borrow things and impose themselves on you. But Peter faces a problem at work, where a new softball team has been organized, with one muscular star athlete on the squad, whom Peter accidentally knocks out of commission with the ball. Peter must find a substitute before the weekend game, or faces being fired. He first lays eyes on Joe seated in the driver’s seat of a family van, where he can only be seen from the waist-up, and overhears him talking about having been a star baseball player in college. Peter instantly proposes Joe join their team (seemingly ignoring any possible rules requiring company affiliation to join), and Joe accepts. Imagine Peter’s (and everyone else’s) surprise when Joe turns up at the game in a wheelchair. However, Joe is everything he claimed to be as far as baseball talent, wheels be darned, and hits, fields, and rolls the bases like a pro. Joe practically wins the game single-handed, and receives a hero’s carry off the field (leaving Stewie to attempt to calculate the hidden powers behind his wheeled apparatus, thnking Joe to be an android). Joe, a cop, recounts how he wound up in the wheelchair, being pushed off a snowy roof while making a bust upon the Grinch stealing Christmas. All of Peter’s neighbors, and the entire Griffin family (save Peter), cluster around Joe from then on, at backyard barbecues and the like, as a real hero and the life of the party. Peter is the only one not swept up in admiration of Joe, and develops a personal jealousy of his attention-getting, even among his own family. So Peter monitors police radio broadcasts on a home short-wave set, until he hears of a bank robbery in progress, and shows up at the scene, attempting to foil the robbery single-handed and become a hero himself. Things get confusing, as Peter for a time gets the robbers and bank customers to play along, telling them that he just wants to look the hero in front of his family – but one of the robbers pulls a fast one on Peter and gets back his own gun, pitting Peter in a hostage situation. Joe ultimately has to make the rescue of all, taking in the criminals and proving himself a hero again, while Peter remains unnoticed as the last to leave the bank. Only Lois and the family can console Peter, by informing him that acts of bravery aren’t needed – a Dad is always the personal hero in his family’s eyes.
Save the Clam (5/5/13) begins with some softball action. A team captained by Peter, consisting of customers and personnel of the Drunken Clam, prepares to face off against a rival team from the local pharmacy. Peter makes sure before they start that all the players are thoroughly drunk, and haven’t warmed up – all prerequisites of adult softball. He also reminds everyone to throw like a cannon, as it is also expected of softball players that they throw their arm out on every play. Finally, in answer to Joe’s inquiry, Peter advises that all environmentally unfriendly foam coolers must be left behind at the park after the game, with sufficient damage so that the park workers have to chase the crumbling foam bits in the wind around the park.
Quagmire razzes the pharmaceutical team, asking for a prescription for a common digestive order, because the Clam team is going to all get the runs. But the pharmacy squad has acquired a ringer – a cool athletic black dude named Jerome, new to the neighborhood. Quagmire knows they’re (BLEEP)ed.
Peter goes to bat nervously, having promised a kid in a hospital to hit a home run. Instead, in a fast-forward cutaway, he is seen back at the hospital, telling a boy that he struck out looking. Then, he realizes the kid he is speaking to is not the boy he made the promise to, and is told by the child that the other boy passed away. Peter breathes a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to disappoint anyone. This isn’t the only fatalistic event of the day, as we return to the game in progress, where Jerome belts a pitch from the owner/bartender of the Clam, and smacks him right between the eyes, instantly killing him in a freak accident.
With no one left to run it, the Clam is taken over by the bank for back debt, and ordered permanently closed. Peter, Quagmire, and Joe try other bars, and even Peter’s living room, but they just can’t recapture the spirit and atmosphere of their old drinking haunt. Passing by the old place, Peter proposes that they, by their decades of loyalty to the establishment, have as much of a right to the Clam as the bank does, and find that no one has locked a rear window, and the booze is still inside. They enter in the dead of night, and binge drink until dawn, awakening with the worst of hangovers. But their imbibing is not the only thing making their heads pound. A rumble from the street outside reveals a trio of bulldozers, ordered by the bank to level the place. Peter grabs Joe’s police gun, and holds the construction team in a standoff, as the three guzzlers step back in and lock themselves inside. Joe, being a cop, won’t remain to participate in Peter’s desperate move when the police arrive outside, and rolls out a back entrance, joining the other members of the force, and leaving Peter and Quagmire weaponless. Joe is ordered by his sergeant to take the two protesters. Joe follows orders in making an entrance through the front way, but can’t bring himself to cross his friends, and himself turns his firearm at the police to hold back their convergence upon the Clam. It looks like Joe’s career will be history, but the day is saved by the surprise appearance of Jerome, who felt such regret for the accident and the closing of the Clam, that he has invested his savings in purchasing the establishment, and has now become its new owner. The Clam reopens with Jerome as bartender, and everything seems back to normal – except that a group of black dudes has taken occupancy of Peter’s usual booth, leaving our trio to carry on their drinking in a crouch on the floor toward the back of the bar, next to the trash cans.
Bookie of the Year (10/2/16) – A split-story, with the baseball plot taking up only about half the show. The Griffins notice Chris taking out some unexpected anger on a Sopranos-themed Whack-a Mole machine at an Italian festival, and blame it on the influence of the “Violence in movies” they always sing about in the opening theme. To release Chris’s pent-up anger, Peter takes Chris out for an afternoon of hurling rotten apples at passing cars. One bulls-eye by Chris hits the car of his high-school baseball coach – an activity Chris has never tried out for or shown an interest in. At the coach’s suggestion, Chris suits up for a tryout as pitcher in the next day’s game. A dad in the stands next to Peter gets angry at the coach for bringing in a fat slob of a kid like Chris at a crucial moment in play. Peter, countering the insult, says he’ll bet that Chris strikes the next batter out. The wager becomes $100. Chris surprisingly strikes out the batter with ease on three straight pitches. Chris spots the jubilation on his father’s face as he wins the game – not noticing that Peter’s happiness is over the bill with Ben Franklin’s face on it he now holds in his hand.
Peter discusses his good fortune with his drinking buddies in the Drunken Clam. Quagmire suggests that there are probably a lot of dads out there who would think Chris couldn’t pitch, and there might be an opportunity for some real money-making were Peter to make bets against all such comers. The Clam crew thus organizes at the next game, scouring the bleachers to find suckers to bet against, and rake in the dough when Chris wins again. The boys see a green future, so long as Chris’s hidden talent remains generally hidden. However, a newscast on the Clam’s TV set announces the high school team has made the state playoffs, thanks to the throwing of their star-pitcher, Chris. The secret is out, via public broadcast, and now the boys can’t find anyone willing to engage in the sucker-bet. Joe remarks that he’s heard the odds are shooing sky-high on the high school to win the championship, such that the only way to make a financial killing would be for someone to win on a bet that the team would lose. The thought flashes across all their faces in an instant – bet against the school team, and get Chris to take a dive.
Peter figures Chris to be easy to influence, and pops the suggestion to him in Spanish while Chris is doing his language homework. Chris doesn’t immediately grasp the remark, but responds at last with the opens-jawed Spanish equivalent of “WHAAAAAAAA…..” Unfortunately for Peter, Lois learns of Peter’s request before the game, and talks Chris out of it, telling him to play his best – though Peter is already in hock up to his ears with the bets he’s placed for Chris to lose. Peter’s pals are in the same boat, all on the verge of losing a bundle with the failure of their plan. Peter moans at how he will face ruination, all because of his son having such a good right arm. Quagmire responds in a sinister, unnerving fashion: “So, it’s not Chris that’s the problem…It’s his arm.” Joe and Cleveland begin to take on the same mood as Quagmire, all of them indicating they hear Peter – loud and clear. Peter doesn’t get it, and makes a quick exit from the bar, stating the guys are creeping him out. Just before gametime, Peter’s pals show up in the locker room of the stadium, confront Chris, and shatter his right arm in several places.
Peter discovers the foul deed as his pals inform him of their solution to their mutual problem inside the stadium. Peter rushes outside to find Chris sitting in a wheelchair in an ambulance, with his right arm in a sling. Chris makes reference to the compound fractures and the considerable pain, but is forgiving as his Dad wails about his gambling destroying his son’s pitching career. “Not necessarily”, says Chris, revealing that, when his arm had been getting tired, he had been secretly practicing with his other arm to also become a lefty. Still in his sling, Chris makes his way to the mound to start for the home team. He winds up with his free arm, and lets one fly – straight into the bleachers, where it breaks Quagmire’s arm in two. Chris’s next throw is equally erratic, if at least a little less physically devastating. Chris’s pitching, despite giving his best, leads the high school team to its most devastating and embarrassing loss ever – played honest, but leaving everyone happy, as Peter and his pals rake in the dough again instead of leaving the country to escape their creditors.
Peter’s Lost Youth (3/26/17) – Peter wins a charity raffle, and a prize of two passes and accommodations to Red Sox fantasy baseball camp – with a chance for an actual at bat in a real game as a climax extra. His friends vie for the chance to use the second ticket, but Peter wants this to be his big moment – something he’s dreamed of since he was a kid – and doesn’t want any of the other guys stealing his thunder by playing better than he does. So he takes Lois instead, who he presumes will have no interest in baseball. Lois accompanies Peter as far as the clubhouse, and is turning to leave, when the team manager spots Lois. Realizing she’s on the reservation list, he invites her to join in the training camp. To Peter’s dismay, Lois accepts the offer – and proves to be a far better player than Peter. Peter can get no attention, and the whole team and other fantasy members want to sit with Lois as their favorite at dinner. In an emotional outburst during training, Peter causes an injury to Lois’s leg, putting her out of commission for play. Lois forgives him, and remains his rooter in the stands when Peter gets his big chance to actually bat with the Red Sox. Peter hasn’t learned much from his week of training, and chokes up as the ball approaches him, holding out the bat as if a shield. He inadvertently lays down a fair bunt, and Lois shouts for him to run. A cutaway to the inner workings of Peter’s body shows us a little man in a construction outfit, in charge of Peter’s muscular system. Days out in the sun, with no fluid intake except those within the hot dogs, plus Peter’s general lack of conditioning, lead the little man to call for a complete muscular shutdown, pulling a red switch. Peter collapses on his face two steps away from the plate. Lois shouts again for Peter to get up. Slowly, Peter staggers to find his footing, and begins to stumble his way as best as his legs will carry him toward first base. The baseman seems to already be in position to make a tag, and Peter goes into a slow-motion slide. But the baseman never makes the tag, his attention seemingly distracted. Peter keeps on slowly running around the bags, unhampered. The reason? Some fielder handling Peter’s nubber has collapsed in a freak case of cardiac arrest, and all eyes and the attention of paramedics are upon him, with no one having bothered to call time. Peter successfully rounds the bases in quadruple the time it should have taken anyone to traverse them, and scores a run, making his personal triumph complete. (Of course, he narrates that he crashed the car on the Massachusetts Turnpike during the family’s celebration on the ride home – but that’s baseball.)
The Movement (3/8/20) – Lois’s rich dad buys a minor league baseball team, and appoints Peter as a coach. In his first appearance on the field during the National Anthem, Peter gets a severe case of a digestive disorder, and is not allowed by Dad to run to the bathroom during the anthem. To hold it in, Peter bends down on one knee during the tune – and is instantly mistaken for displaying his political activism. Dad is furious at him for making a mockery of the Anthem, but Cleveland and a secret underground society of the black community of Quahog think Peter is in support of their cause. Peter doesn’t know how to satisfy either side, and finally comes clean about the incident in a public announcement at the next game. He proposes that there’s really no reason to have such a solemn song at sporting events anyway, as they’re “not a state funeral or something”, and suggests his own idea of an alternative anthem with the use of a music upload from his cell-phone – playing the entirely non-controversial scat-sung Roger Miller composition, “Whistle Stop” from Disney’s “Robin Hood”! As it plays, Peter maneuvers his way down the line of standing players – making his way toward the bathroom again.
Pitch Imperfect (3/30/25) – A late episode, suffering from traditional inconsistency with previous stories (so much so that the writers even point if out, with Peter’s bar buddies making reference back to Peter’s experience at fantasy baseball camp from “Peter’s Lost Youth”). Peter is caught in embarrassing video footage attempting to toss a baseball at a carnival booth toward a stack of milk bottles – with the ball dropping flat about two feet from Peter’s place of stance, looking like Mr. Burns’ pitch in “Dancin’ Homer”. Peter gets the reputation for throwing like a girl, and can’t live it down. He explains to his pals that his father never taught him to throw, and the only practice he ever got was as a child with a friendly yard raccoon. He throws well for a raccoon, but not a human. Yet, Peter can’t resist an offer for some quick cash to throw out the first pitch as a novelty at the next Quahog baseball game. Peter comes to regret accepting the offer, realizing he will just humiliate himself before thousands of new people. Meg shows up in the shadows, and, still faithful to her dad after all his years of ignoring her (including his entire ignorance that she knows anything about sports), offers Dad secret pitching training. Peter ultimately makes his appearance on the mound, and, despite entirely wrenching his arm out until it looks like a hanging twisted mass of blacks and blues, Peter throws a half-way decent perfect strike. Peter’s friends come out onto the field to congratulate him, and Peter states it’s no disgrace to throw like a girl – when it’s Meg they’re talking about. Peter does a victory run along the baseline in celebration – skipping along in an effeminate manner. Peter’s pals look to Meg for an explanation, and she covers with the remark, “We’re working on that.”
Take Me Out Of the Ball Game (Film Roman, King of the Hill, 5/11/99) – This title is becoming second runner-up to “Play Ball” as the most reused title in baseball cartoon history. Strickland Propane is forming its own softball team, joining a circuit of local business teams in an informal league of commercial rivalry. Hank Hill is appointed coach. His first job is coming up with a team lineup, and he learns the league requires a female in the spot of pitcher. Immediate family are permitted to play, so Hank immediately thinks of his wife Peggy, who pitches already for a local girls’ team. However, Hank hasn’t exactly been supportive of Peggy’s pastime, having never attended any of her games (Tuesdays being one of his regular beer-drinking nights with the guys behind the fence). Peggy turns the offer down coldly, stating she is already pitching for a good team, though Hank touts the new team as “a chance to play against the big boys” – i.e. guys. Even coaxing Peggy down to the field on excuse of helping carry the equipment does nothing to sway her to join. Only the trash talk of a rival businessman on the sidelines, checking out the Strickland team, changes her mind, as she hears him badmouthing about how girls don’t know how to pitch. Determined to prove him wrong, Peggy strides to the mound, and tells Hank, “I’m in.”
As for filing in other positions, at least one position fills itself. Dale is upset that he can’t form a company team, since his exterminator business has an entire personnel of one. He asks Hank if he can play on the Strickland team, and Hank informs him that you either need to be a member of an employee’s family or on the payroll. Dale finds a loophole, realizing he once did an extermination job for Mr. Strickland, and received a check – thus part of Strickland’s payroll. Hank doesn’t have the heart to turn him down.
Peggy performs like a pro at her first game, and racks up an impressive streak of strikeouts. At the end of the game, some of the team bring out a barrel of Gatorade for the traditional dousing of the game hero. Hank expects to receive the bath for his coaching – but Peggy gets it instead, and Hank has to settle for a consolation cup of Gatorade thrown into his face by Dale. At a pizza parlor celebration that evening, Hank gives a speech, congratulating the fine effort of several players, but deliberately leaving out all mention of Peggy. The battle of egos has begun, and even carries over to the breakfast table, as Hank and Peggy do spatula battle over a griddle of pancakes to see who knows best about when to turn them over.
Peggy begins to deliberately disobey Hank’s coaching instructions – pitching a strikeout to a heavy hitter instead of walking the batter to get at a weak one next in line. The quarreling gets visible enough that Strickland pressures the two to work together. Hank tells Peggy to give a batter a little “chin music” to keep him from crowding the plate. Peggy reluctantly nods approval, and attempts to brush the batter back – but instead smacks him right in the jaw. Peggy, for whom this kind of maneuver has never been her style, is shocked at what she has done, as the batter is carted off the field. Her next throw is far off the plate to the right. Then to the left. Then above everyone, hitting the backstop. Then into the stands, hitting Mr. Strickland. Peggy’s fear of repeating the beaning has made her unable to find the strike zone.
A rival businessman (the same one who was jawing about females being unable to pitch) has his team scheduled for the season’s final and toughest game. And it promises to be tough – considering that he has intentionally hired on staff the wife of former Texas Rangers third baseman Kurt Bevacqua – just so Kurt can play for him as part of immediate family. Peggy is still in her case of jitters, but knows she has to try, so stays up all night, pitching at a small rectangle on the wall, and seems to be finding her strike zone again. But can she do it with a live opponent? As the big game commences, Hank tries to give his best coaching advice, for her to keep tucking her elbow in. It does little good, as Peggy whacks the first batter right in the arm, and narrowly avoids attack as someone intercepts the batter charging her at the mound. Peggy somehow manages to get it sort-of together, to get through several innings, but without her usual strikeouts, and the last inning finds Strickland only one run ahead, with two of the opponent’s men on base. Hank calls some more pitching advice to Peggy, in a rather confusing manner, and Peggy, following instructions, hits another batter, loading the bases. Up comes Bevacqua (just a note: though he allows his name to be used, Kurt never speaks in the episode, so does not technically receive a screen credit). Strickland calls from the stands for Hank to do something – not as a coach, but “with your wife”. Hank reads between the lines, and realizes that family loyalty means more than mere coaching. Hank calls time, and signals for another player to take his own position – taking himself out of the game to sit on the sidelines, and for the first time watch his wife play her own kind of game. Peggy bears down, and for the first time all day, begins throwing dead-on strikes, raising the ire of Bevacqua with each pitch. Peggy’s third and final ball looks just as good as the first two – but Bevacqua gets a hold of it, and sends it sailing toward the fence. Dale, playing outfield, but unknown for having any talent at catching, nervously backs up closer and closer toward the fence, then begins climbing it. He loses his catching glove in the process. Though Dale has been criticized by Hank during the season for never running fast enough for fear of his hat coming off and exposing his bald spot, Dale does the unthinkable, and removes his cap, extending it as far over the fence as he can reach with one arm. The ball lands squarely within it, for a miracle catch that ends the game. Hank and Peggy share a Gatorade dousing, and walk off the field together, finally in harmony – though Hank points out that if Dale hadn’t made that miracle catch, it’d have been a home run. Peggy dismisses her opponent’s talent, stating that he always corked his bat – always has, always will. Hank interjects that he was using an aluminum bat. Peggy closes with, “I didn’t say he was smart – just a cheat.”
• The King of the Hill episode is on Dailymotion – WARNING: a few of the dialog lines are a little much.
We’ll wrap up this week with a few Hanna-Barbera leftovers. Any Sport In a Storm (It’s the Wolf (from “The Cattanooga Cats Show”) – 10/18/69) opens with a short baseball sequence. Lambsey begins at bat, playing a friendly game with Bristle Hound, who pitches his triple twister curve ball. But nothing fools Lambsey, who hits it far into the outfield, and beats the tag as he slides into home plate. Lambsey wins 46 to nothing, and Bristle states that 27 straight innings is his limit. Lambsey takes up the ball, and gets in a little solo pitching practice, when Mildew Wolf appears, posing as a Dodgers scout. Lambsey easily sees through his lie, and makes the call “It’s the wolf!” “So you’re a Dodger scout”, says Bristle, pulling Mildew toward him with his sheepherding crook. Mildew remarks that the way Bristle yanks him around, the dog should be working for the Yankees. The humor has no effect upon Bristle, who tosses Mildew over the mountain as usual. The rest of the film is pretty formula (as were most episodes of this series, with gags on basketball, football, tennis, and midget car racing. One of the few unusual switches has Mildew briefly yell in Lambsey fashion, “Ir’s the dog! It’s the dog!”
The premiere episode of “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-a-Lympics”. The Swiss Alps and Japan (9/10/77), features a batting contest from Tokyo’s Transistor Stadium. Pitching-batting matchups include Hong Kong Phooey against Quick Draw McGraw, the Dred Baron vs. Captain Caveman, and Scooby-Dum vs. Suey Pig. Quick Draw faces Hong Kong Phooey with his own reputation of being “the fastest batter in the West.” Holding two bats as if positioned with his six-guns for a showdown, he tells Phooey to “Make your move”. Phooey lets fly with a karate-styled pitch he calls the “triple wanton whammy”. The ball hits one of Quick Draw’s bats, spinning him around like a top and facing him backward. Foul ball – strike 1. The next pitch hits the other bat, again going foul, but drilling Quick Draw into the ground with his spinning feet. Quick Draw isn’t even above ground as the third strike sails by, leaving him with a score of zero. The Dred Baron faces Captain Caveman with a weapon that acts like a gatling gun but shoots baseballs. Using his oversize club for a bat, Captain Caveman returns all the balls back onto the field for 37 clean hits, several of which almost bean the Baron, zipping under his helmet. Scooby-Dum’s pitching is interrupted by a flashback, in which he receives some advance-game pointers from, of all people, Fred Flintstone. (Interesting how these prehistoric folks freely show up in the modern age, without the need for a Jetsons’ time machine.) Fred, in what may possibly have been some of the last vocal work by Alan Reed, tries to give Scooby-Dum a demonstration of how he pitched in the little league – but instantly throws out his arm and gets frozen in a painful wind-up pose, having to be carried off by Barney, who remarks that he thought he never recalled Fred playing in the little league. Back in the present, Scooby-Dum pitches a wild curve that Snagglepuss describes as exiting the stadium stage left, re-entering stage right, then heading right over the plate. The ball dodges a couple of bat swings, then drills a hole through the stick, which Snagglepuss describes as a hole in one. Captain Caveman’s team wins, as the only team to score any runs.
Battered Up (Droopy and Dripple (from “The Tom and Jerry Kids Show” – 11/21/92) finds MGM’s mumble-mouthed mutt on the mound, pitching for the home-town Corn Dogs as Molasses Droopy. At bat for the opposing City Slicks is Thunderbolt McWolf. Miss Vavoom (the series’ equivalent of Red) acts as umpire. Droopy has one pitch which is his super-specialty – his own “molasses ball” – a super slow ball, though not nearly as slow as Popeye’s in “Battery Up” or Chester’s in Woody Woodpecker’s “Kiddie League”. Still, the pitch has a confounding effect upon McWolf – especially when Dripple as catcher interjects remarks to distract his attention at the crucial moment when McWolf should be swinging. In the best line of the film, McWolf even at one point resorts to running out halfway to the mound, to get behind the ball and blow upon it and fan his hands at it to prod it along, remarking, “C’mon, c’mon already! This is only a six-minute cartoon.” On one pitch, the wolf takes the opportunity while waiting for the ball to run into town, get a quick shave and haircut in a local barber shop, race back to the batter’s box, and take a little time to chew bubble gum – blowing a bubble that pops asll over his eyes, just as the ball crosses the plate, resulting in another strike.
When Droopy bats, McWolf delivers a fast ball which he whizzes to catch himself at he plate. The fireball disintegrates to cinders in his mitt. McWolf also pitches a curve ball that admires the curves of Miss Vavoom, whistling at her. But Droopy keeps whacking home runs, chalking up a score of 190 for the Corn Dogs. When McWolf finally gets a hit, Droop extends his left arm like a telescope, catching the ball 100 feet in the air above him, and calls it part of the “7th inning stretch”. McWolf has had enough, and crates Droopy up in a box, tossing him on board a ship at the docks, which sets out for the open sea. McWolf returns to the field, declaring that Droopy has forfeited the game. Bit Dripple insists the game isn’t over yet. “What are you waiting for, the relief pitcher?” laughs the Wolf. “No – the wave”, responds Dripple, a a tidal wave appears from the ocean, engulfing the stadium, and returning Droopy back, riding on a surfboard and stating in typical underplay, “Cowabunga.” The Wolf cracks up, and goes berserk. He starts grabbing baseballs, pitching to himself, and whacks each ball out of the park, rounding the bases 191 times. Somehow, each hit is officially scored, and McWolf wins the championship. Vavoom announces that not only has he won, but he also gets a chance to play in the major leagues. The Wolf victoriously declares “I’m the king!” – and the best thing is, he’ll never have to see that little runt pitcher again. “Not!”, responds Vavoom – “Meet your new coach.” Droopy appears in a business suit, revealing his second career. ‘See you in the morning for practice”, he orders the Wolf. McWolf isn’t sticking around to face this fate. He loads himself into a pitching machine, and launches himself over the corn stalks in the outfield. In a curtain line that it is quite surprising passed the censors, Vavoom states to Droopy and Dripple. “All right, let’s hit the showers, guys.” Droopy and Dripple suggestively snicker between themselves, leaving the definite possibility of an anticipated shared stall, for the iris out.
• “Battered Up” is on ok.ru
And finally, another Scooby-Doo mystery – The Unnatural (What’s New, Scooby Doo?, 3/22/03). A new specter, believed to be the ghost of a past home-run king, has appeared to bug a new contender to the title. on the verge of breaking his record. The spook threatens vengeance on the player and on the fans if anyone messes with his record, and makes a convincing showing of menace amidst the smoke of his appearance, by throwing a couple of literally flaming fast-balls that narrowly miss the batter during his batting practice. Having initially been the only witness to the event, the contending batter pretends to go into a slump, leaving only two games left to play in the season. On the second-to last game, the spook decides his warnings need a little more reinforcement to ensure his record stands, and appears again in public, while the Scooby gang is in attendance (Fred having won a contest to meet the batting contender). The spook not only throws his fireballs at the gang, but performs another trick by shorting out banks of lights high above the crowd, then disappears in his veil of smoke.
The gang are filled-in on the details by the contender. Several possible suspects present themselves, including a haughty female publicity agent for the contender who seems to be avidly capitalizing on the event, and a team mascot who was an ex-player cut from the team. The gamg also meet the stadium’s radio announcer, who also was a player, back in the days of the original champ who now seems to haunt the field.
The investigation reveals a web of catacomb tunnels under the stadium, the result of building the present stadium over a previous 100 year-old stadium which suffered structural collapse and sunk into the ground. Within the catacombs is discovered an old pickle barrel, but which is currently filled with baseballs soaking in kerosene – thus, the flaming baseballs of the specter. In the rafters of the stadium near the light banks is found a small generator – sufficient to provide power to overload the electric circuits. And, of course, the spook himself turns up, for a typical wild chase. The gang appears on the field as substitute players for the final game, when several of the regular roster refuse to play, and Scooby substitutes in the mascot costume. With the aid of the stadium sprinklers (to put out the fireballs), a high-speed batting machine to trip up the spook on scattered baseballs, and a cannon from which the mascot was to be shot, the spook is finally captured, and unmasked on the big screen. It is the announcer, who was best friends with the old batting champ, and wanted his record to stand forever (with the usual giveaway clue of throwing with the opposite hand than the old champ). Daphne had been sure it was the publicist, who claimed to have re-entered the stadium on a rainy night but with bone-dry suede shoes. However, the publicist reveals that she had two pairs of them – something Daphne thought she was the only one to ever think of. The contender finally breaks the batting record, and Scooby congratulates him from the big-screen with his usual “Scooby-dooby-doo!”
NEXT UP: Botton of the ninth next week – and the bases will be loaded.