Baseball Episode / Live-Action TV

Take me out to the Holosuite,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some Gagh and Hasperat,
I don't care if I ever get back.

Baseball Episodes in Live-Action TV

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• 30 Rock: In "Cougars", Jack and Tracy coach their own Little Leagues. However, their plot becomes an allegory on the Iraq War.
• 9-1-1: Lone Star: In the episode “Red vs. Blue” (3.07), the 126 firefighter house competes in a baseball game with a group of Austin Police players led by one of their sergeants, Ty O’Brien. It ends up getting cut short due to one of the APD players resorting to cheating and an ensuing brawl.
• The Adventures Of Mc Gee And Me: In the episode "Take Me Out of the Ball Game" Nick learns to trust in God to make him play well, not the other men and the provoking opponents on the field.
• Arrested Development: "Switch Hitter". When the president of a rival company hires Gob in an effort to win the company softball game, Michael asks Gob to throw the game.
• Babylon 5 doesn't have a whole episode, but there are a few scenes where Sheridan and Garibaldi are discussing station issues while facing a pitching machine with a digital umpire.
• Band of Brothers uses a baseball game to wrap up the miniseries, with a voice-over describing what major characters did after the war.
• Bear in the Big Blue House: In "At the Old Bear Game", Pip and Pop idolize a famous baseball player named Ferret Jeeter to the point of collecting his baseball cards. When Bear tells Pip and Pop that he knows Ferret personally, since he and Ferret were classmates and teammates at Hazelnut High, Pip and Pop convince him to invite Ferret over to the Big Blue House. When Ferret arrives, he tells the residents of the Big Blue House about the big baseball game he and Bear had against Acorn High.
• Bones didn't have an actual baseball episode, but "The Rocker in the Rinse Cycle" features Arastoo Vaziri using baseball metaphors incessantly in anticipation of the baseball season starting. The other characters end up telling him to shut up.
• The Brady Bunch: "The Dropout." The legendary sitcom's second season opened with a legendary baseball star: Don Drysdale. It was his simple compliment to Greg about his pitching that drives the eldest Brady boy's ego so wild that he soon thinks he's become baseball's gift to the world. It takes a humiliating – and we do mean humiliating – beating in a Pony League game to shake him out of his fantasy.
• El Chavo del ocho have some examples, apart of multiple references to soccer
  • An episode put Don Ramon and Profesor Jirafales trying the kids to play football and while the boys play miserably, only La Chilindrina (as well as Popis and Paty in the animated version) to be capable to do a touchdown, in celebration, everyone jumps over Don Ramon.
  • Another episode shows Don Ramon trying to teach El Chavo how to box, but it ends miserably when El Chavo himself tries to teach Quico and his hands got sticked in the gloves.
  • Another episode was a ping-pong centered episode where the characters get into confussion when Quico tries to play with his new ping-pong game while El Chavo tries to bring, unsuccessfully a half dozen of eggs to Don Ramon in order to have breakfast.
  • Finally there are three versions of an episode where the kids try to play baseball outside their homes just to have accidentally beating themselves, Don Ramon or Señor Barriga in the process.
• Cold Case has three baseball episodes: "A Time to Hate" about a gay college baseball player beaten to death in 1964, "Colors" where the team re-opens the 1945 case of an African-American baseball player who was beaten to death with his own bat, and "Stealing Home" where the team looks into the murder of a former Cuban baseball star who escaped to the U.S. to provide for his family after the Cuban government fired him for talking to a U.S. sports agent. "Stealing Home" also features the annual softball game against the fire department.
• Corner Gas has an episode with a slow-pitch softball game.
• The Cosby Show had a rare American instance of a cricket episode, when Cliff got into an argument with his West Indian friends about whether cricket or baseball was the better sport, which ended up with the three of them playing an impromptu cricket match in the living room.
• The regular CSI had an episode in season 12 with an intermural game between the CSIs and police department. Cue fangirl squees about the guys in uniform.
• CSI: NY: In the episode "The Closer," the victim was a baseball fan found dead, and the team investigates. The episode let Carmine Giovinazzo show off his real life pitching skills—both the actor and his character Danny Messer wanted to be pro baseball players but had careers cut short by injuries.
• Several episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm have plots involving the sport. Notable examples are "The Car Pool Lane," "The Ski Lift," and "Mister Softee."
• An episode of Dad's Army had the Home Guard playing a Cricket match against the ARP wardens, who brought in a ringer in the form of guest star Fred Trueman (at the time, a recently-retired Yorkshire and England fast bowler who held the record for the most wickets taken in Test matches). The Home Guard wins when Godfrey, of all people, hits a six.
• Dance Academy had an episode where Tara and Christian rekindle their relationship by playing a game of beach cricket.
• Death in Paradise: In "Stumped in Murder", the president and star player of Saint Marie's cricket club is found shot dead on the pitch after a night out.
• British example: Doctor Who had a cricket episode, in "Black Orchid".
• Despite being a British series, Drop the Dead Donkey has a baseball episode, with Gus' brother challenging him to a match which, predictably gets out of control.
• Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: "Traveling All-Stars". The whole town becomes obsessed with the game, and women have to fight for their right to play as well.
• Due South: "Dr. Longball". Ray and Kowalski help a small-town sheriff when the town's baseball team becomes a target of sabotage attempts.
• Early Edition: "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Chuck comes for a visit and offers to take Gary to a Cubs game wherein a promising rookie Pedro Mendoza is going to play. But Gary finds himself trying to help the owner of a restaurant who borrowed money from a loan shark who is demanding ownership in the restaurant as payment. And it seems that the owner of the restaurant and Mendoza are linked.
• Father Brown: In "The Last Man", the arrest of the new captain of Kembleford's cricket team for the murder of the team's fast bowler, and a suicide the year before in the cricket pavilion and a match against a rival village to determine the ownership of the cricket ground finds Father Brown consoling the victim's mother, solving a murder involving blackmail, playing cricket and watching Lady Felicia as the last man of the innings.
• Father Ted had a football episode, in which Craggy Island played Rugged Island in the Annual All-Priests Five-a-Side Over 75s Indoor Football Challenge Match.
• Frasier: "The Unnatural", which has Frasier attempting to play on the KACL softball team at the behest of Freddy. We don't see the match itself but judging from Frasier's "training" by Martin, he didn't do too well.
• Freaks and Geeks. In "The Diary", the geeks' plot centres around playing baseball in gym class.
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: In "No Hits, No Runs, No Oysters", the Oysters are the local baseball team, of which Claymore is the manager. The family and the captain want Jonathan to play for the team, but even he realizes that he is no good.
• * An episode of Galactica 1980 has a baseball game central to its plot.
• Grace & Favour (aka Are You Being Served? Again) has a cricket episode in the second series.
• In an episode of The Greatest American Hero, Ralph uses his super suit to pitch for the LA Stars.
• Greek: Season 3 episode Take Me Out revolves around an all-Greek baseball game.
• Grey's Anatomy invented an annual hospital-vs-hospital softball tradition just to have a softball episode. No one even pretends the doctors have the slightest chance of winning; the entire on-field action consists of acting out of thinly-veiled personal issues.
• Happy Endings has a kickball episode, "Kickball 2: The Kickening".
• Just Shoot Me!: Maya, who played softball in college, joins the Blush softball team after it's revealed that she has a hell of a pitching arm. She gets too competitive, however, just as she did in college, and the others try to get her to quit.
• Lark Rise to Candleford had a cricket episode in the truncated fourth series - with a bit of input from the women.
• Leverage:
  • Featured in "The Three Strikes Job" with Eliot becoming a catcher for part of the con so that they can steal the ballpark and the team.
  • Another episode had Eliot become a hockey player, trying to protect a punch-drunk enforcer who could die if he gets another concussion. And in yet another episode, he was an underground MMA fighter.
• LazyTown in the episode "Sleepless in Lazy Town" Robbie Rotten deprives Sportacus of sleep so he has no energy to play in the town's big baseball game.
• Little House on the Prairie had an episode, "In the Big Inning", which has the residents of Plum Creek play a game against a team from Sleepy Eye. In typical Little House fashion, the opposing team is full of cheats and bad sports.
• MacGyver (1985): In "Squeeze Play", MacGyver helps take down counterfeiters who are making fake baseball collectors items.
• Magnum, P.I. had a softball episode in season 4 ("Squeeze Play"). Noteworthy in that Robin Masters bets a year's use of his estate on the game and Magnum's team loses. The bet is rendered invalid in the end, though.
• Man v. Food has Adam Richman touring three minor league parks showing the food they serve. One park's challenge involves Adam having to finish a giant burger in between the seventh-inning stretch and the game's final out, which meant that he didn't know how long he had to finish since each game's outcome varies. But he did manage to finish it off only because the final batter fouled off an 0-2 pitch.
• Married... with Children:
  • Al helps start up a nudie-bar-sponsored baseball league when MLB goes on strike.
  • The episode where the mall softball team benches him.
• Midsomer Murders:
  • "Dead Man's Eleven" is centred around a cricket match.
  • The detectives join in a cricket match in "Secrets and Spies" (series 11).
  • In "Last Man Out", when star cricketer Leo Henderson dies during a tournament, the investigation draws Barnaby into a dangerous game.
• The Mindy Project has “There’s No Crying in Softball” where the OBGY Ns play in an interdepartmental hospital softball tournament.
• Monk : "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame"
• Murdoch Mysteries: Station House 4 prepares for a baseball match with another station house in the two-parter "Stroll on the Wild Side". Inspector Brackenreid and his counterpart share a long-lasting rivalry (they make a bet on the outcome), and Brackenreid is so determined to win this year he drafts Crabtree to secretly film the rivals' practice session. Later, Crabtree examines stills from the film trying to fathom the drop of the pitcher's spitball. Murdoch reads a book about the game, and uses science to help Crabtree find out how to hit the spitball. George tries to show Higgins how to throw a pitch and accidentally breaks a window in the office, prompting Brackenreid to reassign George as the pitcher. All the officers and constables look dashing in their baseball shirts and caps.
• Australian show My Place has a cricket episode early on.
• They didn't play baseball, but the MythBusters did a whole episode on baseball myths.
• The Noddy Shop had one called "Slugger", in which Truman and Sam want to play baseball with a group of Little Leaguers. However, a ball possesed with goblin magic comes into play, changing the circumstances.
• The NUMB3RS third season episode "Hardball" deals with the murder of a minor leagues player and the case brings up memories for Don, who was in the minor leagues before joining the FBI.
• Happens in Power Rangers far too many times to list. Any time one of the heroes or one of his/her young friends shows an interest in a sport, it's almost a given that it will inspire the Big Bad to come up with a Monster of the Week based on it. They even did it with soccer once.
• Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld was challenged to a softball match by a strip club. Greg, Bill, Andy, Courtney Friel and Professor Marc Lamont Hill of Columbia University and the strippers divided up and faced off. As one might expect with Red Eye, the game was riddled with oddness and stupidity, from Bill's pathetic headfirst slide/stumble into home plate, Andy's observation that most of the strippers are from "Russia, which I think is somewhere in Africa", and Greg's "stripper injury" from a stripper tackling instead of tagging him.
• Relic Hunter: In "Diamond in the Rough", Sydney has to find the lucky glove of a legendary player that was stolen during the 1946 World Series.
• Remington Steele: The season 3 episode "Second Base Steele".
• The second episode of Rizzoli & Isles starts with a softball game between Robbery and Homicide, which is interrupted by the dumping of a dead body from the nearby freeway overpass. Notably, both ladies are hilariously bad, though Isles is considerably worse; Rizzoli's attempts to teach her how to swing properly set up a Chekhov's Gun later on.
• The Round the Twist episode "TV or Not TV" has Pete temporarily become a local footy star, and he's responsible for his team's victory. This is a very rare Australian Rules Football example.
• Sesame Street: One sketch has Mr. Johnson at a baseball game, attempting to catch a foul ball. To his horror, Grover is working as a hot dog vendor at the ball game. Grover's attempts to protect Mr. Johnson from incoming foul balls interfere with Mr. Johnson's attempts to catch one. Eventually, Mr. Johnson becomes so frustrated with Grover's attempts to protect him that when he tells Grover to leave him alone, he doesn't listen to Grover trying to tell him that another foul ball is coming. Mr. Johnson ends up missing the ball, which Grover ends up catching.
• Shining Time Station:
  • In "Field Day", the kids are part of a baseball team and Schemer is their coach, hence they are known as the Schemer Team since Schemer paid for the uniforms. Schemer sends Schemee to spy on the opposing team, the Snarleyville Slashers. In the end, the Schemer Team actually loses to the Slashers, but Mr. Conductor teaches them a lesson in good sportsmanship, so they are determined to do better next time.
  • In the second of the hour-long family specials, "Second Chances", Schemer once again coaches the kids in a baseball team, this one being known as the Indian Valley Scooters, and once again, they play against the Snarleyville Slashers. Sledgebolt, the coach of the Slashers, tries to sabotage the Scooters' chances of winning by paying Schemee a nickel for every ball he misses. When Schemer finds out, he disqualifies Schemee, and Billy's visiting nephew, Kit, has to take his place and score the winning home run, which he does.
• Schitt's Creek: Patrick pressures the un-athletic David into joining his team, pitting them against David's father Johnny, Roland and Ronnie. David is not into it, but Patrick's competitive side flares up.
• In the Scorpion episode "Foul Balls", the heroes are forced to play against a team of Jerk Jock Homeland Security employees. Thanks to a bet between Cabe and his Obstructive Bureaucrat boss, if Scorpion loses they'll get no more government contracts, which would lead to the end of the team.
• Seinfeld: Jerry and George are seen playing softball in two episodes, where the plot surrounds this event.
• Small Wonder: "Victor/V.I.C.I."
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The first-season episode "If Wishes Were Horses" has Sisko and his son interacting with an alien simulacrum of Herman "Buck" Bokai, one of the last baseball stars. It ends with Bokai giving Sisko the baseball that sits on his desk for the rest of the series.
  • "Take Me out to the Holosuite" is a light Breather Episode in the heart of the Dominion War arc. In it, Sisko ropes his crew into helping settle a score with his rival from Academy days: the obnoxious Captain Solok, and his all-Vulcan team, The Logicians. It's the usual Ragtag Bunch of Misfits baseball story, albeit one that includes Worf's idea of baseline chatter: "Death to the opposition!" Solok wins easily, yet is baffled by The Niners' delight that they managed to score a single run (against a team made entirely of aliens both stronger and smarter on average than humans, scoring a run is legitimately impressive).
• Studio 3 has yearly Australia Day 'Smackdown' specials featuring a comically dramatised game of sport. They have included the Cricket Smackdown (2011), the Tennis Smackdown (2012), and the Soccer Smackdown (2013).
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody episode "Big Hair and Baseball" detailed Mr. Moseby taking the titular twins to a Boston Red Sox baseball game against the New York Yankees. Mr. Moseby catches a ball for Cody, assuming it was a foul ball, but because he and the twins were sitting on the very front row, it was still a legal ball and it counted as interference, which caused the Red Sox to lose the game and Mr. Moseby to become a citywide pariah.
• The Sunny Side Up Show: Carly and Chica sing about things they need to bring to T-ball practice in one segment.
• Happens in Super Sentai far too many times to list. A more common trope here than in Power Rangers, since baseball is the most popular school sport in Japan. A popular episode plot is where the Monster of the Week and friends challenge the Sentai to a game, and a variation is where the villains take control of a human baseball star, whom the Sentai are charged with rescuing. J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai actually had two baseball episodes. The first one had a ball-themed monster attempt to assassinate the rangers by providing some kids the rangers were coaching with boobytrapped baseballs. The second one had a batter-themed monster infiltrate the ranger's base by pretending to be a defector. The High School Heroes had the baseball episode actually be the first episode, with a baseball-themed monster based on the one from Himitsu Sentai Gorenger.
• While the angels themselves don't play baseball, the Touched by an Angel episode "The Perfect Game" revolves around the game. (That'd be the second episode of the series named "The Perfect Game". The first one is a bowling episode.)
• The Twilight Zone
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Mighty Casey", Dr. Stillman creates a robot named Casey and offers his services as a pitcher to the Hoboken Zephyrs, an extremely unsuccessful major league baseball team. Casey's amazing pitching abilities turn the team's fortunes around, at least until he has a heart installed and cannot bring himself to hurt the feelings or damage the careers of the players on the opposing teams.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Extra Innings", Ed Hamner is an ex-baseball player whose career ended because of an injury. Thanks to a magic baseball card that he got from his baseball-loving friend Paula, he can possess a baseball player named Monte Hanks who never woke up after being hit by a ball in 1910 as to continue playing baseball. Beause of the card being torn up, he gets to have a long, fruitful baseball career.
• Ugly Betty has one. Of course, this being Ugly Betty, Hilarity Ensues.
  Betty: "No! You can't jump on people!"
• Ultra Series
  • The Ultraman 80 episode "The Evil Glove is Laughing at You": A child had a temper tantrum due to being a failure at baseball, and took his anger out on his baseball glove by stomping on it repeatedly and throwing it away. Unfortunately, the Minus Energy emanated from the boy's anger ends up bringing the glove to life, where it turns into a sentient, glove-like monster called Glovusk, who gradually becomes kaiju-sized as it absorbs Minus energy throughout the city. In the climatic final battle, Ultraman 80 decides to Be the Ball to knock out Glovusk by ramming into the monster repeatedly, eventually resulting in the monster turning back to a baseball glove. Moral of the Story: Always treat your belongings with respect, or they will become kaijus.
  • Ultraman X has the rugby variant in the episode, "We Are Nebula!" where Wataru's younger brother Isamu who's a budding rugby player gets roped into an Intergalactic Rugby Match with some aliens. It's as ridiculous as it sounds, befitting a Breather Episode.
• Wiseguy had "Player To Be Named Now" in which the mad Arms Dealer Mel Profitt decides to live out his childhood fantasy of becoming a baseball star, by buying an NBL team and forcing them to accept him as a player. He even forces the current owner's company into bankruptcy so he can buy at a cheaper price. The closest we see to an actual game though is Mel batting with the protagonist Vinnie pitching (Mel turns out to be a lousy batter compared to Vince). In the end the NBL rejects Mel based on his reputation, resulting in an aesop that Money, Power, And A Gang of Mooks Isn't Everything.
• WKRP in Cincinnati: The aptly named episode "Baseball".
• The X-Files: In "The Unnatural", Mulder goes to talk an agent who started to investigate mysterious cases and basically founded the X-Files division at the FBI. However, he ends up talking to his brother who used to be a cop who warms up to Mulder when he finds out that he likes and knows a lot about baseball. He tells Mulder a story about a baseball-loving alien. Then Mulder and Scully have a cute date, playing baseball, Hands-On Approach style.