Original air date: 4/6/2005
The boys of South Park have found themselves in Little League Baseball, which their parents love and are extremely enthusiastic about, while the kids hate the sport. After winning their final game of the regular season, they soon find themselves stuck in the State Championships of Little League, and while they attempt to throw their games in an attempt to save their summer from being taken over by baseball, every other team they face has the same idea and South Park Cows have little experience with losing...
While the kids are on the field, Randy has made a name for himself via getting drunk and engaging in fights with other parents of the opposing Little League teams. Like something out of a Rocky movie, Randy finds himself facing the toughest person he's ever fought against: the Bat Dad. His fear of facing the Bat Dad leads to him not attending the State final.
Meanwhile, the South Park kids see a way they can save their summer by enlisting Kyle's stereotypical Jewish cousin, Kyle Schwartz, to their team, as they know him to be terrible at every sport he plays. However, while the final starts off promising due to Kyle Schwartz's physical failings, their opponents from the Denver Little League have practiced and proved themselves to be "really good at sucking".
Just as it seems South Park is going to win and doom the kids' summers to the national circuit of Little League, Randy returns to face the Bat Dad and the two wind up in a fight. Upon realizing that the fight could lead South Park to become disqualified, Stan and the rest of the kids encourage Randy to keep fighting, spurring him to victory and leading to South Park's disqualification.
Tropes:
- Bail Equals Freedom: At every game, Randy gets into a fight, is arrested by the police, then gets released after paying bail. The cycle continues throughout the episode and the trial for numerous counts of assault Randy committed is never seen.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- As Randy gets ready to fight Bat-Dad, he breaks some eggs into a cup. It looks like he's about to drink the raw eggs... right before he puts them into a skillet to make scrambled eggs... while drinking a beer.
- When Stan confronts Randy outside of the pizza parlor to tell him he doesn't want to play anymore. Randy is looking out in euphoric awe talking about how proud he is that they're going to the state championship. Stan walks off in frustration, not having the courage to tell Randy he wants to quit. Once Stan leaves, it's revealed Randy wasn't talking about Stan or the team at all. He was proud that he was going to fight a dad at the state championship.
- Baseball Episode: But not in the usual way. This episode sees the kids go out of their way to lose the State final, since they don't want to have to spend their whole summer playing baseball (since they consider it boring).
- Berserk Button: Randy pretending to know how to speak Spanish was enough to annoy a Mexican man and his wife.
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Due to his poor Spanish, Randy's heckles towards the Spanish-speaking Pueblo team end up... kind of lame.Randy: (holding a Spanish dictionary) Pueblo's no bueno. Pueblo es muy mal.note
- The Bus Came Back: Kyle's cousin, Kyle Schwartz makes his third appearance when he is recruited by the boys to help them lose the game.Kyle Schwartz: I'm back!
- Description Cut: The Donovans and the Broflovskis are sitting next to each other in the stands, and Mr. Donovan says, "Just look at those boys out there, lovin' the great game of baseball like we did when we were kids." Meanwhile, on the field...Kyle: [at second base] Oh, God, I'm so bored!...
[Token, at first base, yawns loudly]
Butters: [in left field, singing] I see a ladybug, hello Lady Ladybug...
[pitcher Stan throws the ball toward home plate with an expression that suggests he'd rather be anywhere else] - Didn't Think This Through:
- Randy's insistence on picking drunk fistfights with other parents ends up getting South Park banned from the tournament altogether.
- The kids want to lose the tournament because they hate playing baseball and want to spend the summer doing something else. So, they recruit Kyle's phenomenally unathletic cousin onto the team as a "ringer" that will drag them down and make them lose. When they play against another team that also wants to lose the game for the exact same reason, the South Park team finds themselves winning in spite of Kyle's cousin. Turns out that the opposing team spent a lot of time training to make themselves as crappy as possible. Turns out that having a single, phenomenally-talented/untalented player won't be enough to carry you to victory/loss against a team where every single member puts in the effort to become as good/bad as possible.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In the game against Denver, one of the policies is that if one person from one team’s audience gets into a fight, then that team gets disqualified.
- Genre Savvy: Before the game against Denver, Cartman recognizes that they're in a sports movie type plot and that at this point, the team usually recruits a ringer to help them win. So in order for their team to lose, they need to recruit someone who's a terrible athlete instead.
- Heroic Second Wind: "I didn't hear no bell."
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The Denver team's pitcher is so accurate at throwing the ball he can intentionally hit players' bats. Likewise, their batters are so good that they can bat themselves out by hitting the ball just enough to land on a catcher's glove.
- Informed Flaw: While the Denver team is clearly good at intentionally throwing games, it seems weird that they made it to the finals if they were that good at playing badly.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Randy had been a major character in several episodes before, but it was here that he became a full blown Deuteragonist. His self-centered personality and habit of becoming fixated on something often pointless or arbitrary to self-destructive lengths also fully coalesced, defining both him and the direction much of the show from this point onward would take.
- It's All About Me: Randy solely wants to follow the little league to start fights with other dads. When he seemingly meets his match and opts out, Sharon's stance to just watch the game to support his son flies over his head completely. The boys use this to their advantage, knowing Randy would start a fight and disqualify their team without a second thought.
- Moral Myopia: Bat Dad keeps screaming derogatory remarks at South Park's Little League team but when Randy does the same about the Denver team, Bat Dad gets riled up and orders Randy to shut up.
- Oh, Crap!: After striking out the last Conifer batter, the boys celebrate the end of baseball season and the real beginning of summer — until Stephen Stotch, their coach, tells them they're now going to the post-season and have more baseball to look forward to. The kids' jaws drop in absolute horror, and Stan lets out a Big "NO!". Later on they give the same reaction on finding out if they win the state championship game their season starts all over again in the National circuit meaning they’d spend the entire summer playing baseball.
- Opposing Sports Team: The Denver team South Park face in the finals.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The South Park team are cobbled together from the available "talent" in their class. They are still the best of a bad bunch in their local league, but would be ground into paste in the postseason if the other teams weren't even more determined to lose than they are.
- Rule of Cute:
Word of God from Matt Stone and Trey Parker's DVD Commentary confirms that the idea for the episode started with the idea of seeing if the boys would look cute in baseball outfits, and damn, they were ADORABLE! Even Matt and Trey thought so!Trey Parker: This is our big baseball show. This whole idea started with the brilliant concept of, "Wouldn't the boys be cute in baseball outfits?"
Matt Stone: Well, aren’t they? They sure are!
Trey Parker: Yeah, they sure are! - Running Gag: Randy constantly getting into fights at the Little League games, then being arrested afterwards.
- Shout-Out: Randy's plotline is a complete plot reference to the Rocky movies. With the song accompanying it being a sped-up version of "You're The Best" from The Karate Kid (1984). Randy even sings a snippet from the song while he's fighting Bat Dad.
- Sports Dad: This appears to be the case for all the boys' parents on every baseball team in Colorado. They want their kids to play baseball regardless of the players' feelings on the sport, leaving forfeiture completely off the table. Butters even says that his parents will ground him if he quits or doesn't try.
- Springtime for Hitler: The boys don't want to waste their summer playing baseball, but they also know they can't just quit or openly throw the game lest they disappoint their parents. So they instead try to intentionally lose while looking like they're playing to win, even going so far as to inform the opposing team what kind of pitches they'll throw. Unfortunately for them, the other teams also want to get out of the league, and they end up just being better at sucking than the South Park kids.
- Sudden Name Change: Bat Dad's real name is said to be Tom Nelson during the televised interview, but during the game, the woman he's with addresses him as "Chris". Likely a continuity error.
- Super Ringer: Inverted. The boys recruit Kyle Schwartz in hopes that his lack of athletic ability will make them lose.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Kyle Schwartz thinks he's actually doing really good in baseball due to the Denver team intentionally playing badly. Then Randy's brawling gets South Park's team disqualified, and Kyle is left disappointed to have lost again.
