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Baseball has been America's pastime since it was first created in 1839, so it is no surprise that Gary Larson would address the game in The Far Side. After all, The Far Side has touched on every aspect of life from the days of the cavemen to the far-flung future of aliens and the end of the universe. No matter what the topic is, Larson generally addressed it.
With baseball, in particular, Larson loved focusing on the objects that make the game possible, rather than the game itself. He loved exploring the legacy of baseball bats, balls, and gloves and the way that they have impacted the world. Even when he does not focus on specific teams or matches, Larson loves exploring the legacy of baseball.
Fish Discover the Meaning of Baseball
Evolution Created Every Sport in The Far Side
When beginning to explore the impact of a sport on the world, it is always important to remember where that sport started. However, despite being a brilliant comic strip, The Far Side is not always historically accurate. In Larson's world, baseball began before the first arthropods made their way from the ocean to the land.
In the strip, a group of arthropods invented baseball after encountering a ball on land. With a baseball bat in hand, they began the next stage of evolution by wandering onto the beaches to reclaim their lost ball. It was the start of a powerful legacy, and not just when it came to baseball.
A Baseball Crushes an Innocent Man
No One Is Safe From a Home Run
One of Larson's most famous sports comics was one that certainly fit The Far Side's brutal sense of humor. After all, it featured an innocent civilian, who was crushed by an enormous baseball while walking on the sidewalk. A woman, while being interviewed by an officer, emphasized that it "just came out of left field."
The joke in this strip is twofold, as it focuses on a common issue with baseball stadiums while also touching on a familiar idiom. In some minor league — and even major league — baseball stadiums, any car parked in the lot could see windows shattered by home runs. When tied to the "out of left field" idiom, which describes an unexpected and unpredictable situation, it paints a vivid picture of what happened to this poor man.
Freud Was a Baseball Legend
The Freudian Slide Was a Brilliant Trick
Once a fairly prominent neurologist, Sigmund Freud became a legendary researcher after helping to found a then-new and exciting branch of psychology. His theory, psychoanalysis, focused on the importance of nurture, stages of development, and dream analysis. It is still in use today, though it has been heavily modified through the years.
One major element of Freud's theory was that people occasionally slip phrases into dialogue that reveal their innermost thoughts without any intent to share them. These Freudian slips are a well-known concept, and Larson sought to turn them into one of The Far Side's strangest gags. Freud, a victim of his own discovery, slides backwards to the wrong base, only just managing to stay alive in doing so.
A Lobster Is Marked By the Strike Box
Hopefully, the Chef Is a Poor Pitcher
Baseball is generally a sport that demands accuracy, patience, and a willingness to take risks. Sometimes, in The Far Side, it also involves boiling a lobster alive. Chefs in a restaurant elected to turn their kitchen into a dunk tank, and the poor lobster was the ultimate victim.
This is not necessarily exactly like baseball, but it can be easy to imagine one of the other chefs calling out the ball every time it missed the strike box. Unfortunately, it seems that this lobster only gets a single strike before an out, which is not necessarily fair. Still, in The Far Side, sports don't always have to be.
A Caveman Learns How To Hold a Bat
Always Keep the Label Up
Baseball players have always been very particular — and for good reason. Any batter faces the threat of broken bats, bones, and pride any time they step up to the plate. As a consequence, they often work very hard to ensure that they hit the ball exactly as they need to, while keeping the bat's label up.
Keeping the label up ensures that the strongest part of the bat takes the brunt of any hit, and Larson depicted that discovery as occurring relatively early in human history. The Far Side's prehistoric cavemen even realized it after beating a sabretooth tiger to death. Baseball truly did start early in this world.
Two Fish Destroy Their Own Bowl
Baseball Is Seemingly Not a Safe Sport
While there can always be accidents in baseball, it is generally a safe sport. After all, it is nowhere near as contact-driven as hockey or American football, so players rarely have to deal with body checks or tackles. Unfortunately, only humans truly have an easy time with baseball games.
In Larson's world, fish have an especially difficult time with baseball. After all, just hitting the ball can shatter a fish tank, which generally means death for the poor fish. While the strip is bizarre, it is funny to see the reaction of the stunned and sheepish goldfish.
Wiffleball Cannot Replace Baseball
It Doesn't Pack the Same Punch
At its core, a baseball bat is nothing more than a specially designed block of wood. Manufacturers have to follow specific parameters to comply with league rules, but the actual object itself is just wood. It hits hard, it maintains its strength, and it is a devastating weapon. There is a reason that so many movies depict gangsters carrying baseball bats as weapons.
Wiffleball bats, however, are lightweight, airy, and generally made of plastic. Getting hit by a wiffleball bat certainly hurts, but it is no more effective than getting hit by the ball itself. That is why it is so funny to see gangsters walking around with wiffleball bats, as if it would do a thing to hurt any prospective victim.
A Dinosaur Looks To Play Baseball
This Strip Is Outright Tragic
While it often depicted them, The Far Side rarely featured happy dinosaurs, and there is good reason for that. After all, by the time Larson sat down to draw each panel, the last of the dinosaurs had died around 70 million years earlier. Any story about dinosaurs is inherently tragic.
In order to make his panels even more devastating, however, Larson used baseball to define the depth of the tragedy. A lone surviving dinosaur, looking to play a match with his friends, finds himself all alone. It's a painful sight, though Larson's clever notes also make it oddly funny.
A Chicken Looks To Reinvent Baseball
Riots Make Baseball Extremely Violent
Unfortunately, anytime baseball does not involve a diamond and fielders, the game tends to become somewhat violent. As soon as the bat is by itself, it turns into a weapon, and it can devastate lives. In a revolution by chickens against a farmer, it can even prove to be the most important tool in the arsenal.
Luckily, the revolution does not get especially far. All of the other chickens "chicken out" of the fight, leaving one lone bat-wielding hen at their helm. Though this chicken may not want to play a traditional game of baseball, it certainly wanted to hit the farmer like he was the ball.
A Baseball Glove Must Be Well-Maintained
It Remains an Important Artifact
One of The Far Side's more confusing strips came when Larson decided to draw a few essential scientific remnants from age-old studies. One jar features neuroscientist Paul Broca's brain, another features an appendix from an unknown source, and the final jar includes nothing but a baseball glove submerged in fluid.
The joke of this strip is that a baseball glove hardly belongs alongside these biological and scientific resources. There is no great need to study a baseball glove, nor does it need to be suspended in fluid. Yet, just as Broca's area and his brain were essential to neurological research, baseball has become an essential part of America's culture. No matter how bizarre it can be, baseball remains America's pastime, and The Far Side proved it.
