In all fairness, Blue Mountain State had about 3 minutes worth of a football game (all in the series finale) and that show was hilarious. It's how you work it.
Fun fact: One of the writers for this series, Jeff Martin, also wrote the Simpsons baseball episode, Homer at the Bat. Amazing he could write some of the best and some of the worst baseball content of the 1990's.
Its such a tragedy how much our culture has changed for the worse. Back in 94, the whole country hated the players because they were greedy, wanting more than 6 million. Now, the vast majority of fans cuck themselves and adamantly advocate for the players making 50 million, saying that they are being horrible exploited because they aren’t making 70 million. Our culture is so unbelievably greedy, selfish, and brainwashed to think that labor is always right and owners are always wrong, and that there are certainly not two sides to negotiations.
I think I figured out what city the Pioneers are in! Here’s what we know: They have a 1944 club, so they have to be one of the AL’s original eight teams; their establishing shots are from Anaheim Stadium. They must be from the timeline where the St. Louis Browns' move to Los Angeles for the 1942 season was voted on a week earlier than it actually was. (December 1, 1941 instead of December 8-in reality, the move which otherwise would’ve been a sure thing was scrapped because of the imminent war.) They must be the Anaheim Pioneers. The Angels as we currently know them don’t exist; the 1961 expansion that gave DC their second Senators also gave Baltimore a second Orioles.
I assumed they were in Portland, Oregon solely for alliteration (and honestly the Portland Pioneers would be the perfect name for a Portland expansion team if for some reason they couldn't name them after the longtime Beavers minor league team), but your theory makes sense.
I would have gone much simpler and just said they were a replacement of the California Angels based on the stadium and uniform design (to work hand-in-hand with their baseball B-roll).
This may be stupid but the joke about the catcher not hitting 3 homeruns because he had sex two times, while really stupid, did make me laugh just because of the absurdity of it. Like the manager demanding he and his wife go have sex in his office is so stupid but makes me laugh.
I think that's a good way to put a lot of these jokes from the show. The jokes are really stupid, and outright offensive at times, but they're so absurd and ridiclous that it's hard not to laugh.
i doubt that would happen. I use to hate baseball and thought it was extremely boring till I started betting baseball. I actually enjoy it know, and was able to see ohtani hit a grand slam! I'm a sports fan and appreciate every aspect of sports if I'm able to get to know it. With today's low attention span, its going to be difficult to get baseball to be apart of the culture, like how basketball is.
I wish we could go back to a time when the general public and fans cared more about the team instead of cucking themselves, crying that the players signing 700 million dollar contracts not including 100s of millions more in endorsements, are being exploited.
Maybe it's just my imagination, but Joe Rogan here kind of looks like he could be a decoy for Matt LeBlanc. Maybe part of it has to do with Friends coming on the air around the same time. And Matt LeBlanc also specialized in playing you could say, meathead type characters like on Top of the Heap/Vinnie & Bobby.
When Phil Lewis started speaking in the show, I thought wow he’s basically Malik/Token Black Guy from Not Another Teen Movie. Then it cut to the clip from the movie. I absolutely love this channel.
Joe Rogan's finest moment was NewsRadio, which IIRC was like 1995-1999 or so. So it's a good thing this 1994 show bombed so hard and he got to be on the best sitcom he was ever gonna be on in his life.
Rogan played arguably the weakest character on the show (apart from Andy Dick, my personal least favorite), but I agree that NewsRadio was very underrated.
@@jroggs85Ray Romano almost got cast as Joe Rogan's character on NewsRadio but it was determined that his style of acting was too slow for the quick pace that NewsRadio required.
@@jroggs85 well yeah, he wasn't the strongest part of the show, but IMO his character worked along with the others. It was a good ensemble cast. And from his perspective as an actor just doing a job (after coming off his previous sitcom especially)... getting to work with Phil Hartman, Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Stephen Root, etc. had to be special. Andy Dick is mostly irritating (both IRL and on the show!) but Matthew had his moments. Like the ep where he went to Japan and came back trying to speak Japanese to impress everyone, or the best Matthew ep ever (Smatthew).
@@TMC1982Part2 that kinda sounds familiar, but I definitely didn't remember that that was the reason it didn't work out. Interesting. Most 90s sitcoms had a pretty quick pace, when you think about it. Seinfeld could slow down here and there and really enjoy pacing itself slower, though.
@@gfox9295 For sure. Joe Rogan wasn't necessarily bad, just not one of the show's strong points, and I still think he gelled well with the rest of the cast and had his moments.
@@Mpetey123 Oh look, a Toe Brogan fan trying to pretend he's not simping for his culture warrior boss!!! I love it when you kids show up with that trademark lack of self-awareness.
I haven’t finished watching yet, but I wanted to comment before I forgot this small detail. When Baseball’s Not Dead had their pirate phase and saw Hardball 4, that took me back, I loved that game, absolutely a gem for its time on PC. Anyways back to the always excellent content from this creator!
@@BaseballsNotDead Nice! The video was awesome, now that I finished it, haha! Thank you for being a creator and working hard to produce these videos for us viewers.
I used to watch this on Fox Sundays. I was only 11 and I don't remember anything about it, but I was a huge baseball kid, so I always remembered it. It was in a slot between Simpsons and MWC, which I watched religously. George Carlin had a show in that slot at some point too. That how I was introduced to him. Eventually it went to King of the hill.
As an actual Wichita resident, our population of Hispanic peoples is very healthy. Also everyone in wichita hated the AAA team being named the Windsurge. I can remember constant fart jokes. I can remember we were somewhat excited about the idea of Wind Socks/Sox as a name
I went and looked at the IMDb page for "Hardball" and in user reviews section, it's noted that in the pilot, the Mike Widmer character (played by Mike Starr) was openly gay. This could've been pretty revolutionary to have an openly gay main character (keep in mind that this was still before "Ellen" or "Will & Grace") on a sitcom who wasn't playing a stereotype (i.e. somebody like Ross Mathews or Paul Lynde for you old timers), had an undeniably masculine persona, and is apparently accepted as homosexual without question by his players. But this aspect of the Mike Widmer character was dropped shortly after the pilot, and we're told that about his wife and kids.
I think those comments are reading way to much into a joke line Widmer says about wanting to have sex with Frank after Frank hits a home run. It was intended to come off as a shock joke and not him being an openly gay character IMO.
So basically it was a "Major League" TV series, post-Major League II, but trying to feel like Married With Children, 'cause it aired on the same night with MWC.
This along with Rachel Gunn, RN (a short-lived medical sitcom that aired on Fox in 1992 starring Christine Ebersole, a pre-Will & Grace Megan Mullally, and Batman himself, Kevin Conroy), is I think enough proof to suggest that Married...with Children was something akin to "lightning in a bottle" in regards to early '90s Fox sitcoms with crass, politically incorrect humor.
Brother, I dont comment much, but congratulations on the channel! You do great content and I hope the channel grows even more. Cheers from a brazilian baseball fan.
I suddenly hope that the Rowdy Reviewer gets ahold of this and discusses it on a future episode of "TV Trash" because he's a massive baseball fan. He had previously done a "TV Trash" episode on the first TV adaptation of A League of Their Own that briefly ran on CBS in 1993.
This was Rose Maries final show and the reason for change in character design was because they changed writers mid season. Joe Rogan talks about this on his podcast
I wonder if Hardball would've had a slightly better chance had it come out a few years later, when Fox actually had a broadcasting contract with Major League Baseball (which started in 1996). Then, this would've naturally opened up some better opportunities to cross-promote. When Hardball actually came on the air, all that Fox really had sports-wise, was the NFL.
Thanks for posting a link to the videos. I went back and watched them all. It wasn’t bad, maybe a 6 out of 10. Definitely as good as other sitcoms at the time that got a second season
The SNL comparison regarding Alexandra Wentworth's performance on Hardball is funny because I first knew of her from In Living Color, which had just recently finished its run on Fox. So it can't be that surprising if Wentworth's performance on Hardball may come across over-the-top hammy and schtick filled as if she's still playing in a sketch.
I was at a Bulls vs Maverick's exhibition game at Rupp Arena and my dad used a line from this show about BJ Armstrong. "I love that guy, not like you think, though, I wanna have sex with him!" Fun times.
Phill Lewis' character strikes me as how say an upper-middle class, middle age white person would write for a black character (especially what appears to be an angry and militant one) but without a shred of irony. It's like he's the token black guy so of course, it's natural for them to assume that he would behave and speak like that (like a one-note caricature).
Now that was a great vid! Between the little "that guy's famous for" asides that as an IMDb addict I'm always doing myself, the obvious long research for almost lost episodes, the jokes, the over-analyzing... Fantastic work. Congrats!
Bud Selig, the owner who became the Commissioner who presided over the steroid era and has a plaque in Cooperstown despite the people that actually saved baseball not having one. They didn't break the rules, PEDs were not banned by MLB until 2005 after all. They were however not beloved by the media......
I remember watching an ep of this show that aired at like 10am on Wednesday during school holidays in Australia. I remember the guy with the money troubles trying to sell bobble heads on tv when the GM called in live about the contract. I also remember a bit at the end where the catcher was saying something about how not could tell him what his eye colour was. But crazy thing, I'm sure I remember this show being called 'Bullpen' Again, I could be wrong, this was about 30 years ago and even to huge baseball fan teenage me, this show seemed like a waste of time
1994. Great year for music that still holds up. My favorite album of all time came out: alice in chains Jar of flies. Rest In Peace Layne Thomas Staley.
Are the Pioneers supposed to be the California (now Los Angeles) Angels? I mean, eagle eyed viewers could easily tell that the establishing shots are of Anaheim Stadium. The Pioneers like the Angels, are presumably in the American League by evidence by the fact that the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners are discussed or featured. And the Pioneers even share the same color scheme as the Angels did at the time.
Yes, they are. Someone else in the comments sorted this out but it seems like Hardball’s timeline takes place in a version of MLB where the St. Louis Browns moved to Anaheim in the 1940s; in our timeline, this never happened because the attack on Pearl Harbor led to the cancellation of the winter meetings.
2:48: Remember when Prince, not Alec Baldwin was considered the most baffling person that Kim Basinger would ever sleep with? You just know that this was of its time if you actually remember that Kim Basinger and Prince were ever a thing let alone the fact that she once owned a town in Georgia.
15:05: I didn't know or remember the fact that Nancy Valen, who played the hot new school nurse that Zack developed a crush on in that one episode of Saved by the Bell, was on Hardball. In fact, like on Saved by the Bell, Nancy Valen's character's name is Jennifer.
Good looks Of course I’m going to go watch this now . I actually remember some ads for this show but 14yo Me did not ever see an ep. Until tonight 👍😁
7 месяцев назад
Sort of reminds me of the old HBO series 1st and 10. About the fictional California Bulls football team. Great show from the 80s, but the only football they showed was from old USFL games, which seemed to be pretty standard after the USFL went under.
Your big flaw is nobody cares about the actress or the union. I'm a blue-collar union guy and it's never come up in conversation. By the way I remember watching the show my freshman year of high school and enjoying it.
Bro Jogan would never be a part of something that would steal or copy material from other comedic projects. He's no Carlos Mencia but he does have some integrity son.
You can also say that it's a baseball version of 1st and Ten, which was an HBO sitcom from the '80s that featured among other people, Delta Burke, Donald Gibb from Revenge of the Nerds, Jason Beghe from Chicago P.D., Tiny Lister, John Kassir (AKA the man behind the voice of the Cryptkeeper), and one Orenthal James Simpson.
@@TMC1982Part2 1st and 10 came out almost 6 full years before Major League so you could even more accurately say that Major League was a baseball movie version of 1st and 10.
