This is a one shot cartoon produced by Famous Studios for Paramount. There will be spoilers ahead:
By the time this was made, limited animation was virtually a necessity. It was prohibitively expensive to produce animated shorts otherwise. Disney chose to do a few shorts a year rather than significantly compromise and they could afford to do so, because by this time, they primarily did features. Other studios did what they had to do to stay open.
That limited animation is the biggest flaw in this cartoon, which is otherwise a pretty entertaining short. The focus is on the narrator, a baseball named Abner. Abner starts out talking about the horrors of being a baseball in a "live ball" era, where lots of home runs are hit.
Abner is fished out of the ball bag and shoved in the umpire's pocket to await his fate. During all this, Abner complains about the behavior of the crowd and the players. The crowd yells things like, "Knock it out of the park!" and "Tear the cover off the ball!", while the players toss him around hard and smear dirt in his face.
There's a fair amount of reused footage and audio, to save money. Much of it comes in the crowd scenes, where one character is partially animated and surrounded by still figures. It detracts a bit from the effect, but it can't be helped.
Abner eventually realizes that the final hitter he'll face is Mickey Mantle and resigns himself to his obvious fate. He's hit hard and goes out of the park. The ending is rather cute but a bit long. A decent cartoon.
Worth watching.
By the time this was made, limited animation was virtually a necessity. It was prohibitively expensive to produce animated shorts otherwise. Disney chose to do a few shorts a year rather than significantly compromise and they could afford to do so, because by this time, they primarily did features. Other studios did what they had to do to stay open.
That limited animation is the biggest flaw in this cartoon, which is otherwise a pretty entertaining short. The focus is on the narrator, a baseball named Abner. Abner starts out talking about the horrors of being a baseball in a "live ball" era, where lots of home runs are hit.
Abner is fished out of the ball bag and shoved in the umpire's pocket to await his fate. During all this, Abner complains about the behavior of the crowd and the players. The crowd yells things like, "Knock it out of the park!" and "Tear the cover off the ball!", while the players toss him around hard and smear dirt in his face.
There's a fair amount of reused footage and audio, to save money. Much of it comes in the crowd scenes, where one character is partially animated and surrounded by still figures. It detracts a bit from the effect, but it can't be helped.
Abner eventually realizes that the final hitter he'll face is Mickey Mantle and resigns himself to his obvious fate. He's hit hard and goes out of the park. The ending is rather cute but a bit long. A decent cartoon.
Worth watching.