In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
Wolverine of the X-Men has a habit of appearing in comics he technically isn’t supposed to be in, simply because he’s popular. Well, Cal Ripken is the Wolverine of Baseball Comic Books. He’s joined forces with Batman, led the Shortstop Squad, and been the subject of a bio-comic. Also, like Wolverine, Cal Ripken seemed to be able to recover from any injury, no matter how severe. But, it’s the first similarity that I’m focusing on, because, in the comic I will be looking at today, Cal Ripken appears in a story about the 2001 New York Yankees being Superheroes.
Let that sink in. The New York Yankees, in a comic that they themselves ordered and gave away, still had Cal Ripken in their comic and had him on the cover too.
Entitled “Championship Challenge” and given out September 28, 2001, it stars, as you can see, four of the greatest stars the Yankees had that season. Mariano Rivera! Tino Martinez! Jorge Posada! And, of course, the Once and Future Captain, Derek Jeter himself. But, of course, we also see Cal RIpken on the cover, letting everybody know that the Iron Man will be there! With such Ultimate Sports Force stalwarts as Rick Licht writing and Brian Kong doing the art, this was partially made as part of the Ripken farewell celebration, and it becomes even more obvious when you realize that originally Ripken’s final series would have been at Yankee Stadium if not for the schedule reshuffling that MLB did after the 9/11 attacks.
Anyway, go below the jump to read about the story:
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
The “Dick Cole” story in Blue Bolt (Volume 9) #1 is one of the most pedestrian stories I’ve ever featured here. There are no superheroes, science fiction elements, cartoon elements, or unintentionally hilarious outdated views on concussions. And yet, it is also just like a ton of other stories, in that it’s about somebody trying to fix a amateur game of baseball. So, in search of any way to make this interesting whatsoever, I’m going to look at this from various perspectives, trying to find any sort of meaning in it.
Here’s what I mean:
Back in college, we learned all about stuff like close reading and literary criticism, and more-or-else I realized that anybody can find anybody if they look closely enough. A Marxist, looking at Wizard of Oz close enough, will be able to find enough things to make him or her claim that it’s a Marxist work. Feminists looking at the same thing can also find something that will make them claim it is a feminist work. Still others can find meaning by looking at something psychoanalytically. There are countless others as well. Symbolism! Biography! Deconstructionism! Post-Modernism!
So, surely some sort of meaning in this story can be found by looking at it from various ways… right?
Right?
In the public domain, it is the first story here. So, from June 1948 and Novelty Press, it’s the Dick Cole story from Blue Bolt (Volume 9) #1.
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
As I write this, America is in the grasp of the Every Simpsons Ever Marathon on FXX. To be more exact, we’re currently on Day 10 of 12. Maybe Day 11 of 12. Depends on when this goes up (probably Day 11). But, don’t let FXX lie to you: They don’t have everySimpsons ever. No, they are lacking the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts, the Butterfingers commercials, at least one other short, at least two music videos, and, of course, countless comics.
The Simpsons has long been a staple of Bongo Comics, the publishing group co-founded by Matt Groening to produce comics based on his TV shows, and this time on Bizarre Baseball Culture, I look at Bongo Comics’ Simpsons Comics #120, which tells the tale of Homer, Bart, and a record-setting baseball.
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
There is a special type of baseball culture that I haven’t really covered yet… the baseball biography comic. Whether authorized or unauthorized, the baseball bio-comic is it’s own small subgenre of weird.
Take Baseball SuperstarsComics‘ bio-comic on Cal Ripken, Jr. from 1992. A black-and-white comic from the now long-defunct “Revolutionary Comics” and seventh in a series of baseball bio-comics, it’s like a fever-dream of a look into the life and times of the Orioles great up through the 1991 season. The art is disturbing, the writing wooden, and the facts sometimes feel wrong.
That said, it’s not all bad. It’s got a so-bad-it’s-good quality at times, and any comic that features two pages devoted to the longest game ever is going to get my attention.
So, on his 54th birthday, here’s a look at the Baseball Superstars comic on Cal Ripken Jr…. after the jump:
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
Nothing is going to beat Mr. Go. It just can’t be done. But, I’ll give it my best shot by bringing to you a comic from 1977 in which DC’s Captain Marvel and his talking anthropomorphic tiger mascot Tawky Tawny join the Detroit Tigers to defeat a team of alien All-Stars.
It’ll have to do.
So, here’s Shazam! number 32, from late 1977. I covered most of Captain Marvel’s complicated history (and why most people think he’s called Shazam) way back in May 2012, so if you want to know that, go there. However, an update is in order: DC has more or less given up calling him “Captain Marvel” and now is referring to him as “Shazam”. This is partly because everyone who doesn’t read comic books calls him that anyway, and also partly because Marvel has recently given the title of “Captain Marvel” to a character named Carol Danvers (who appeared as “Ms. Marvel” back in one of the AAA baseball comics) to great success, to the point where it’s thought they might make a movie starring her, likely with the name “Captain Marvel”.
Personally, the Shazam Captain Marvel will always be the real Captain Marvel to me, but, hey, you can’t beat copyright/trademark law, I guess.
(Also, all characters, images and panels from the comic are trademarked and copyrighted to their owners and rights holders, all pictures here are are being used under fair use doctrine and are meant merely to support and enhance the opinions and facts stated in this post.)
But enough Captain Marvel background, go below the jump for an analysis/review of this comic!
Yes, Mr. Go. A film much beloved by people throughout the baseball internet for the sheer curiosity factor of those blog posts at places like Big League Stew last year, but rarely actually seen by it. I, however, was able to procure a copy of the film, in the form of a DVD from Hong Kong, acquired from a Canadian seller on eBay. All for you, the readership of the Baseball Continuum (and anybody who found this link).
So, buckle up, because below the jump, we dive deep on Mr. Go. Prepare yourself, because gorilla baseball, MLB cameos, banana-shaped thunderstix, pizza commercials, a bullpen-cart chase and other madness awaits you:
But, of course, when most baseball fans think of Godzilla, they think of Hideki Matsui, the great Japanese slugger who had it as his nickname.
Did you know, however, that “Godzilla” actually once had a cameo in a Godzilla movie? In 2002’s Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, he made this cameo (shown below in dubbed form):
Actually, he made two cameos: Later in the movie he shows up again practicing his swing indoors while the lights go out since Mechagodzilla is drawing upon Tokyo’s power-grid, if memory serves.
So, there you go: Hideki Matsui’s Godzilla cameo.
…Okay, so I guess you probably wish there was more here, so, without further ado, here are other connections between Godzilla and Baseball (I would like to thank the internet for basically giving me all of this information):
Shea Stadium was destroyed during a monster fight in Godzilla: The Series, the cartoon series that came out after the horrible 1998 movie that claimed to feature Godzilla but just featured an imposter that had his name.
Oscar-Nominated Actor Nick Adams, who ended up starring in Invasion of Astro-Monster (AKA Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) in 1966 (hey, he needed money), at one point turned down a offer from the St. Louis Cardinals to play minor league ball, mainly because he didn’t like the low pay offered.
David Straithairn, who plays a military leader in the new Godzilla film, was Eddie Cicotte in Eight Men Out and also had a role as Ira Lowenstein in A League of Their Own.
Thomas Tull, the CEO of Legendary Films and producer of the new film, tried out to be a replacement player for the Braves during the 1994-95 strike, and also made a failed bid to buy the Padres in 2012.
There are probably others that I’m missing, but those are the ones I found relatively quickly.
NEXT TIME ON BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE: …I’m not sure yet.
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
Earlier this week, the season finale of the second year of Arrow aired. And, to belatedly honor that, here’s a look at the time that Green Arrow and the Elongated Man fought a guy dressed as a calculator during the World Series.
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