"How to Play Baseball" With Goofy

So it seems like baseball has been all people have been talking about lately. This is great for people who like baseball, but these conversations can be intimidating for someone like me who heavily prefers cartoons to sports. How am I supposed to know what the heck these people are talking about? Luckily for me and my fellow cartoon lovers who are bored by sports, there was a very instructional film made to explain all the subtle nuances of the game perfectly for us. And to make this film all the more accessible to us it was done by the Disney studio and features Goofy himself.

Released in 1942, How to Play Baseball was the first "How to..." short staring Goofy that the Disney studio released as a stand alone short. Technically audiences saw How to Ride a Horse first. How to Ride a Horse was a segment in the Disney feature film The Reluctant Dragon. That feature was released in 1941, however How to Ride a Horse would not be released as a standalone film until 1950. However this short did introduce something new to the idea of these "How to..." films with every player being Goofy. How to Play Baseball came about in a rather interesting way. Samuel Goldwyn was producing The Pride of the Yankees and was very proud of how that movie was coming along. He contacted Walt Disney about making a cartoon specifically to accompany that picture. According to some studio documents Walt said he saw Goofy as the animated counterpart to the live action Gary Cooper. So production on the cartoon began. Jack Kinney was chosen as the film's director as he had also directed How to Ride a Horse. Jack Kinney was the perfect choice for a cartoon like this. He was easily at this time the director of the zaniest Disney cartoon shorts. His films were fast paced, funny and featured a wise guy sense of humor that the other Disney directors didn't seem to have. Probably Kinney's biggest competitor as the zaniest Disney cartoon director would be Jack Hannah who would make some similarly very funny and zany cartoons. However Hannah wouldn't began directing for the studio until two years after How to Play Baseball was released. Assigned to animate on this film were some of the studio's best animators. Les Clark, Ward Kimball, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis and Bill Tytla all animated here. Tytla animated much of Goofy pitching in this film, Ward Kimball animated the batter being hit with the ball and Marc Davis animated Goofy biting the baseball instead of the chewing tobacco.

This is a fantastic short film and just a lot of fun to watch. It is often said that Warner Brothers and MGM made the funny cartoons while Disney made the cute cartoons. However this short shows that this wasn't always the case. There is nothing cute here but lot that is really funny. Also the humor is just as slapstick and satiric as what Warner Brothers or MGM were doing with their cartoons at this time. There are plenty of laughs here and I am certain any fans of slapstick comedy cartoons will enjoy this cartoon a lot.

So sit back enjoy and for those of you who (like me) don't like to watch sports learn about what everybody around you is talking about.


                                                            

(I have been alerted that the video I linked to has been taken down, so I redirect you to this link: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3uq6ed. Sorry for any trouble. -Michael J. Ruhland)

      

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/baseball-featured-in-first-goofy-how-to-cartoon/