Wiki Fiction: Sci Fi Baseball

Aug 17, 2022

Sci Fi Baseball

meanwhile... on Baseball planet...

Yes, I've previously included the game of baseball in several of my own science fiction stories (example), but only in a limited fashion, without the story really having anything to do with baseball (see this other example). Since it is the middle of the baseball season, I set myself a challenge: why not search for interesting examples of the sport of baseball appearing as a plot element in published science fiction stories?

Play Ball in 1930. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) provides a fairly long list of stories with "baseball" in the title. I suppose "Baseball Ghost" in the August 1930 issue of Ghost Stories was not science fiction. Sadly, I can't find that issue of Ghost Stories so I don't know if "Baseball Ghost" was similar to "The Word of Babe Ruth", in which George Ruth returns from beyond the grave (see below).

in the Ekcolir Reality

In this blog post, I'll comment on a total of 22 stories that include baseball. For some of these stories, baseball is only mentioned in passing and we can't really say that such stories are "about baseball", but I find them interesting because they suggest how important baseball was during the golden age of science fiction. The stories were published between 1928 and 1994, with 10 from the 1950s which seem to have been the peak years for silly baseball stories in pulp magazines. I'm particularly interested in science fiction stories, but I'll also include stories with little or no fictional science content. Whimsical entertainment was the goal of most of the authors.

interior art by Murphy Anderson

Titan 1946. The ISFDB mistakenly suggests that there was "short fiction" called "Captain Staley's arms snapped back like a baseball pitcher's." by Murphy Anderson in the Spring 1946 issue of Planet Stories, but that is not correct. There is a drawing with that caption (see the image to the left), but it is part of a story called "Crisis on Titan".

life on Titan (click image to enlarge)

Space Aliens. In order to deal with some pesky aliens on Titan, the heroic Captain Staley must throw seeds at the aliens. Yes, seeds. You'll have to read "Crisis on Titan" to find out why Captain Staley can't use a ray-gun to deal with the annoying aliens. Sadly, "Crisis on Titan" (see the image to the right) did not actually provide readers with an account of a baseball game on Titan. 😢

Ray Ball. If casual mention of baseball in "Crisis on Titan" does not satisfy your craving for baseball in Sci Fi, that same 1946 issue of Planet Stories had "Defense Mech", a short story by Ray Bradbury which also mentions baseball (see Figure 1, below).

Figure 1. Baseball on Mars.

Smack Yow! Since this is a Bradbury story, nobody need be surprised that the setting is Mars. Bradbury gave the game of baseball a bigger role in "Defense Mech" than Anderson did for "Crisis on Titan", but the baseball is only taking place in the unhinged mind of one member of the crew of a spaceship that lands on Mars.

interior art for "Defense Mech"

Mars 1955. In 1955, Walter R. Brooks published "Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars". You can get a first edition copy of this book for $1,500.00 at this website. Sadly, I think (I never read it) this story is fantasy, not science fiction, since the main character is a talking pig (the titular Freddy) 🐷.

In contrast, you can tell that "Defense Mech" by Bradbury is science fiction by... well, look at the interior art (image to the left). A Martians with a ray gun (lower right)... it must be science fiction, right? 🔫

Do the Hoka Toka. "Joy in Mudville" by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson first appeared in the November 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This is one of their Hoka stories, the first of which was published in 1951. The Hoka are space aliens from planet Toka who look a lot like Earthly teddy bears and they like Earthly cultural oddities, including baseball.

teaching the Hoka to play ball

Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson imagined a baseball Galactic Series featuring the two best baseball teams from the entire galaxy and the Hoka team (the Teddies) is in the championship game. One of the Hoka players is called Casey, but the Hoka Casey does not strike out; he hits a home run and wins the game.

Final score: the Hoka from Toka win by 1 run.

1964. Moving rapidly into the future, in the December 21, 1964 issue of Sports Illustrated, there was a story called "How to Forget Baseball" by Theodore Sturgeon. The story is not really about baseball; it is set in the future when a sport called ~~quidditch~~ quoit is played rather than baseball.

Stop killing red~~shirts~~skirts
in the Ekcolir Reality

Animal House. In the July 1957 issue of Fantastic was a story called "The Day Baseball Died". This story is about a chimp who is able to pitch. However, the career of that sportsman-like ape is not what puts an end to baseball. No. At the very end of the story, an elephant enters a baseball game and that is what heralds the end of the sport.

Telekinesis. The May 1940 issue of Fantastic Adventures included "The Wizard of Baseball", a short story by Milton Kaletsky. I've previously mentioned another story by Kaletsky called "The Hormone", which I'll call science fiction, but Fantastic Adventures often had "light-hearted and whimsical stories" and I don't really know how to describe "The Wizard of Baseball". Lefty Lopez is close to being fired from the team when he discovers a self-help book about WILL POWER. Soon he is making salt shakers slide across the table by sheer will power! Then he is throwing impossibly curving curve-balls and smashing home-runs... all by his amazing will power.

original cover art by Frank R. Paul

Or is it? Next, the baseballs thrown by Lefty seem to take on a life of their own, as does his bat. Maybe in another Reality, such as the Ekcolir Reality, some of these baseball stories would have been written by female authors and made more sense.

I must also mention that at the end of the May 1940 issue of Fantastic Adventures there was an essay "explaining" what alien life might be like on Io. I suspect that the essay was written by Raymond Palmer, about whom Asimov once wrote that he never had reason to believe a single thing that Palmer ever said.

Io 1940. The essay "explains" that Io is likely to have plant life and be home to heavily-furred natives living in cities. Frank Paul provided an illustration (full color, on the back cover of the magazine) for this Io fantasy and I must ask: if you could have a baseball team from Mars, then why not also imagine playing baseball on Io?

Figure 2. Ads in Amazing Stories magazine (1940)

Commercial Break. One of the interesting parts of reading old magazines is seeing the advertisements (see Figure 2). Raymond Palmer edited both Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. According to this webpage, NURITO was mostly aspirin and in 1936 the Federal Trade Commission asked the makers of NURITO to stop making claims about the ability of their product to cure diseases. Similarly, for decades all sorts of claims were made about "Gold Medal Haarlem Oil Capsules". In 1932, the FTC told the makers of "Gold Medal Haarlem Oil Capsules" to stop making claims about the health benefits of their product.

Here in 2022 we have monkeypox, but in 1940 it was INFECTIOUS DANDRUFF. The makers of Listerine spent decades claiming that their product could prevent colds and other ailments like dandruff. Finally, in 1976, the FTC insisted that these misleading advertisements end, but not before Listerine ads helped fund the golden age of science fiction.

full page ad from Fantastic Adventures (1940)

on page 5 of the July 1940 Amazing Stories

Adam Link. I'm waiting for major league baseball to start using "robot umpires" to call balls and strikes. I wonder if Isaac Asimov was ever tempted to write a story about positronic robots and baseball. In the July 1940 issue of Amazing Stories there was "Adam Link, Champion Athlete". Asimov detested many of the early pulp magazine depictions of clanking robots, but he singled out the Adam Link stories as exceptional in how they depicted mechanical men as more than just out-of-control monstrosities.

in the Ekcolir Reality

In "Adam Link, Champion Athlete", Adam the robot and his robot "wife", Eve, play several different sports in the course of the story, including a game of baseball. It is not much of a game. 😒 Adam the robot can pitch balls so fast that human players can never get a hit. Both Adam and Eve, with their robotic strength, hit pitched balls all the way out of the ballpark.

The July 1940 issue of Amazing Stories also had "The Ray of Hypnosis" by Milton Kaletsky. In "The Ray of Hypnosis", Professor Higginbottom invents a ray gun that can hypnotize people, but he makes the mistake of shooting the gun at a mirror and so he hypnotizes himself. If there could be goofy stories about ray guns, then why not also provide Sci Fi fans with silly tales of fictional baseball? But I digress...

cover art by Bradley Clark

According to the science fiction encyclopedia, the most extensive list of baseball-related fiction had been compiled by Tim Morris. Sadly, the link provided for that website is now dead. However, Steven Silver's website is still online. An early "Sci Fi" story listed by Silver is from the November 1938 issue of Astounding, "The Einstein Inshoot" by Nelson S. Bond. "The Einstein Inshoot" concerns a pitcher who can toss baseballs into the 4th dimension.

The June 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had "Star Slugger" by William Morrison (Figure 3, below). Set on Mars, the story is rather bland, but it features a woman playing center field for one of the teams; a team with its players all from the planet Mars. Sadly, there are no space aliens in this story.

Figure 3a. Earth wins in "Star Slugger".

Figure 3b. Editorial comments on "Star Slugger".

In 1965, the Astrodome held the first indoors baseball game. "Star Slugger" describes a baseball game inside a domed stadium on Mars where balls hit off of the inside surface of the dome are in play.

Let the girls play.

Mars Ball. The team from Earth has trouble because they are not familiar with the low gravity conditions.

In "Star Slugger", the team from Earth wins after a meteor hits the dome that encloses the playing field, weakening it, and allowing a baseball that is hit by a player from Earth to go right through the dome and be called a home run.

"The Einstein Inshoot" and "Star Slugger" were among the stories collected in Baseball 3000 along with "Who's on First?" (1958) by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

interior artwork
by Ed Emshwiller
for "Who's on First?"

"Who's on First?" features space aliens who come to Earth and "cheat" by using their telekinetic powers to control the movement of the ball during baseball games.

The Devil you say? In the April 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe was "Devil Play" by Nathaniel Norsen Weinreb. I can't really call this a science fiction story since it features the Devil who uses magic to make it so that a pitcher in the World Series (James Otis) always strikes out every batter... but then Kenneth Kitchner comes to the plate. The Devil has used his magic to assure that Kitchner always gets a hit. Sadly the story ends before Otis starts pitching to Kitchner, but maybe this is not just the end of baseball, but the end of the world. 💀

cover art by Terry Smith

Equal Time. I'm trying to restrict this blog post about baseball to older stories, but having mentioned "Devil Play" (above) I'll also include "Jesus at the Bat" by Esther M. Friesner which was published in the July 1994 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (download here). Jesus (A.K.A. Yeshua ben Jose), God, cherubs, hosts of angels and legions of demons all show up at the Little League Baseball Championship game. Friesner included all of the following in her baseball story: Dunkin' Donuts, Santa, Playboy magazine, Readers Digest, Amway, P.M.S., the P.T.A., the IRS, HIV-positive hemophiliac orphans, Charlton Heston, Sports Illustrated, Woman's Day, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, the Children's Crusade, the Constitution, the Black Death, Frank Capra, Teenage Mutant Ninjas, the Holy Grail, Wite-out, the Cavalry, Temple moneychangers, pillars of salt, Doomsday, Hoodoo, the Ten Commandments, Crackerjacks, Mick Jagger and Thor.

cover art by Maria William

Not Science Fiction. ❌ Did I mention that this is a story about baseball? "Jesus at the Bat" is about a boy whose "friends" call him "Wimpgrip" and who makes a wish that his pathetically bad little league team will start winning baseball games, so Jesus (wearing an Angels cap) shows up to play on the team. Recognizing Jesus' supernatural baseball abilities, the coach calls Jesus a fuckin' miracle. The coach's wife complains loudly that Jesus is a foreigner and a Jew. With Jesus on the team, they win a game and the coach comments, "We fuck-u-lutely won!" When they reach the championship game, the dear little boy (Wimpgrip, whose "prayer" brought Jesus to his baseball team) comments on the opposing team and takes note of the fact that the godless kids from Taiwan are all going to Hell. "Jesus at the Bat" was later re-published in Death and the Librarian and Other Stories.

interior art by Ernie Barth

The Joy of Baseball. The September 1953 issue of Galaxy featured "Half Past Alligator" by Donald Colvin. "Half Past Alligator" includes a Sci Fi plot element, space aliens ✅, and baseball ✅. On a distant exoplanet, the natives (the Quxas) are a disorganized lot, but they enjoy playing baseball. Readers are supposed to believe that once the Quxas learn teamwork by playing baseball, their entire society will vastly improve.

The Babe. In the February 13, 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post was "The Word of Babe Ruth" by Paul Gallico. Is this a science fiction story? Well, it involves Jimmy, a young boy who would rather read science fiction stories than play baseball. In the story, Babe Ruth comes back from the dead, gives the boy a talking to, and next thing you know, Jimmy is getting the game-winning hit in a baseball game.

cover by Ed Soyka

More Robots. The September 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe had "The Celebrated No-Hit Inning" by Frederik Pohl. We can tell this is science fiction because a baseball player gets to travel into the future... to 1998. In Pohl's imagined future, each baseball team can have up to six robot players. "The Celebrated No-Hit Inning" was collected in the 1976 anthology Run to Starlight.

cover art by Stephen Hickman

First Contact. Also collected in Run to Starlight was a story called "Dodger Fan" by Will Stanton, first published in the June 1957 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "Dodger Fan" is about a baseball fan (Jerome) who gets teleported to Mars. The story is supposed to be funny. The Martians notice that Jerome is very interested in baseball. When Jerome wants to go to a ball game, the Martians quickly build a baseball stadium and train up two teams of baseball players.

"Dodger Fan" was more recently collected in Worst Contact. I won't say that "Dodger Fan" is the worst First Contact story ever published, but rather than have fun with Sci Fi, it tries to make fun of science fiction.

featuring "Home Team Advantage"

High Stakes Baseball. The first story in Baseball 3000 was "Home Team Advantage" (1977) by Jack C. Haldeman, originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Above, I mentioned a story called "Devil Play" from 1955 and I have to wonder if Haldeman read "Devil Play" and was influenced by it when writing "Home Team Advantage". Haldeman's story is a kind of alien invasion story in which readers are told that because Earth lost a baseball game to invading Arcturians, the hungry space aliens had won the right to eat every human on Earth. It is the End of the World.

In addition to the man-eating Arcturians as stock space aliens, for "Home Team Advantage", Haldeman trotted out a bunch of stock baseball characters. "Slugger" the home run hitter, "Lefty" the lefty, the constantly cursing "Coach" and the ~~Babe~~"Kid", with a 0.395 batting average. Television coverage of the end of the world is provided by "Hawk", retired from baseball, but still renowned as an irritating and opinionated son of a bitch.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

"Home Team Advantage" is supposed to be funny, in the same way that A Modest Proposal might be called funny. After the catastrophic loss of the big baseball game to the Arcturians, the baseball fans get to vote for the "lucky" individual who will be the first human being eaten by the Arcturians, just like fans vote for who will play in the All Star Game. "Hawk" is so irritating that he is voted in as the first to die. After chewing on Hawk's nose, the head of the Arcturian invasion force declares that Earthlings are indigestible. The alien invasion of Earth is called off.

Also in Baseball 3000 was "On Account of Darkness" by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini, originally published in the November 1977 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "On Account of Darkness" is similar to Sturgeon's 1964 story "How to Forget Baseball" (mentioned above). In the far future setting of "On Account of Darkness", the sport of baseball has been completely forgotten.

cover by Tiziano Cremonini

Long Format. I'm not a fan of Mary Shelley's story Frankenstein. However, for his novel "Brittle Innings" (1994), Michael Bishop included a character named Hank Clerval in his baseball story. I've never read Bishop's novel, but apparently it is made clear that "Hank" is the artificial lifeform who was animated by Dr. Frankenstein and it just so happens that he is a fairly good baseball player. Strangely, from the perspective of a science fiction fan, the "monster" (Hank) is not even the main character in "Brittle Innings".

Magical Fantasy. I hesitated to show the Italian cover for "Brittle Innings" (there it is, to the right) because Bishop did not adopt the Hollywood version of "Frankenstein's monster". I've seen "Brittle Innings" described as being in the slipstream genre. My interpretation of Shelley's story, Frankenstein, is that there never was a monster, just a dude (Victor) who got disconnected from reality. I wonder how anyone (Henry or the monster) from so long ago made it to 1943, but I suspect that is never explained in the book, so I've not read it.

interior art for "The Educated Pill"

Gadget Ball. The July 1928 issue of Amazing Stories had "The Educated Pill" by Bob Olsen. "The Educated Pill" was a gadget story. An inventor (call him Snitz) has built a mechanical baseball that can literally fly in circles. Snitz can squeeze the ball and push a few buttons, specifying a special trajectory for the ball. The trick ball is used in an important baseball game, but it has some problems.

Drone Ball. At the end of "The Educated Pill", Snitz has plans for improving his mechanical ball, including making it remotely controlled. I'm sorry to say that neither atomic power or anti-gravity made it into Olsen's story.

alien baseball player

Retro-SIHA. Sadly, I failed to find any truly interesting science fiction about baseball in the old pulp magazines... most of the stories that I found are magical fantasy, not science fiction. 😢 However, the X-Files episode called "The Unnatural" was about an alien who enjoyed playing baseball. That episode of The X-Files was written and directed by David Duchovny and was a pretty good hour of Sci Fi television. I nominate "The Unnatural" for a retro-SIHA award.