An Eddie Lawrence routine, "Abner The Baseball," was turned into a two-reeler cartoon by Paramount in 1963. It was about the baseball that Mickey Mantle hit for the longest home run a ball had ever travelled and as such was enshrined in the Baseball Hall Of Fame. (The eponymous sphere was obviously named for Abner Doubleday, the man credited for creating the sport.)
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Jimmy invents automatic baseball equipment to make the Retroville baseball team win so remarkably they appear to be the greatest baseball players ever known, and end up catching attention overseas to stake it out in the World Championship in Japan. Unfortunately, Jimmy ends up admitting their underhanded method and the team gives into morality, feeling they should rely on their own skills... which they are severely lacking. The big game takes place offscreen, mercifully so, as the Japan team completely thrashed Retroville.
An episode of The Alvin Show had Alvin dividing his time between babysitting a neighbor's toddler and playing a baseball game. A Clyde Crashcup segment of the show had Clyde "inventing" the sport.
An episode of The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan centered around the potential kidnapping of star pitcher Boo Blew (an avatar of the Oakland pitcher Vida Blue). A lookalike was planted for the kidnappers (in league with a gambling ring) while the real Boo Blew was kept in hiding. The Chan Clan blows the lookalike's cover trying to rescue him thinking he was the real Blew, so a plan B goes into operation.
There was also the Animaniacs episode "Mighty Wakko At The Bat" which is based off the poem "Casey at the Bat".
Arthur has the episode "Arthur Makes the Team" in the first season. Arthur and his friends join a Little League Baseball game but Arthur can't seem to catch a ball for the life of him, leading Francine to spend most of the episode making fun of him. After seeing he is truly hurt by her words, she does a Heel–Face Turn and becomes his personal coach.
Back to the Future: Marty, Jules and Verne go back in time to save Pee Wee McFly's career as a baseballer.
Beetlejuice had "The Unnatural", in which Beetlejuice and his friends (the "New Yuck Prankies") faced Scuzzo and his gang of clowns (the "Jokeland Laugh-letics") in a baseball game. Beetlejuice refuses to take the game seriously until he finds out it's a literal "sudden death" match.
Ben 10 had this and that episode is named "The Unnaturals." It is set in Philadelphia in which the Cannons (Ben's hometown team) had a baseball game and their rival team is the Squires. As XLR8, he sabotages Cash and J.T. before acting in favor of the team. Later in the episode, Ben sneaks into the Cannons to play the next baseball game (with Cash in his red underwear suit, showing that his baseball suit has a number 23 that the main character uses). There, he tries to bat the ball but it failed two times. After a third try, he runs from his starting point up to the referee or umpire where the safe is and on that location, he transformed into Four Arms. The baseball association in this show or episode is called the Little League Baseball.
In "Torpedo", Bob discovers that his favorite player "Torpedo" Jones is playing for his hometown's minor league team. Meanwhile, Gene participates in the stadium's seventh-inning stretch mascot race, and Tina becomes a "water-girl" so she'll have an excuse to hang out with handsome, athletic men all day and pat them on the butt.
In "The Unnatural", Linda hocks Bob's new espresso machine so they can send Gene to a baseball camp, which unfortunately turns out to be a scam.
In The Boondocks episode "The Red Ball", Huey and other Woodcrest residents were forced to participate in a kickball game against a team from Wushung, China, to save Woodcrest from being bought out by the Chinese. This episode was transparently a metaphor for the economic relations between the US and China, and was a homage to the Samurai Champloo episode.
In the CatDog episode, "The Unnatural," CatDog competes in a baseball game. Cat is a terrible player, but Dog isn't. Cat eventually gets the idea to pretend he is Dog and vice-versa so he'll look like a better player. In the end, he takes off his mask and tries to hit the ball himself... but he fails. However, Cat realizes that he's good at other things and decides that he doesn't need to be a good baseball player after all.
Chowder has the show's equivalent with "Sniffleball", where Mung forced Chowder to play the game with other kids since he thought Chowder was spending too much time in the kitchen.
City Island (2022): "Sportsmanship" centers on Watt and co. playing softball and being hilariously awful at it.
At least two Classic Disney Shorts: Goofy's "How To Play Baseball" plays this straight, while a variation is used for "Slide, Donald, Slide", in which Donald Duck tries to listen to the World Series on the radio and pretends to be playing baseball along with it.
Cool McCool's dad Harry McCool and his brothers Tom and Dick are assigned to retrieve Babe Ruth's 715th home run ball which had been stolen. From the episode "Horsehide And Go Seek."
Dan Vs. has the episode "Dan Vs. Baseball", which revolves around the main protagonist vowing revenge on baseball for interrupting his favorite program (and also for destroying his car).
In "Baseball's Best Ballplayer", after Dennis wins a baseball game, he becomes tired when he is assigned to put the equipment away. He falls asleep and has a dream where he is a famous baseball player who faces off against a team of Mr. Wilsons.
In "The Old Ball Game", Dennis hides in Mr. Wilson's car during a game of hide and seek with Gina. Around this time, Mr. Wilson heads out to a baseball game, but he doesn't realize Dennis is in his car until he's halfway to the stadium. Not wanting to miss the game, he has no choice but to take Dennis along with him. At the game, anything that can go wrong for Mr. Wilson does go wrong; he has to pay $20.00 for Dennis' seat, plus another $20.00 for the seat Dennis put the snacks he bought him in, he misses a great hit due to having to buy Dennis an ice cream, he gets stung on the nose by a bee that lands on said ice cream when Dennis gives it to him, he accidentally tosses said ice cream into Lefty Malone's shirt, causing him to strike out as a result, and gets a black eye from him after the game ends due to Dennis telling Lefty the insult Mr. Wilson said to him earlier.
Dinosaucers had the aptly titled "Take Us Out to the Ballgame", in which the Tyrannos hunt for the world's biggest diamond and are led to Houston's Astrodome, where the Secret Scouts happen to be teaching the Dinosaucers how to play baseball. Hilarity Ensues.
Doug has two of these. The first is the episode "Doug Out in Left Field" where Patti decides to implement her own baseball team called The Pulverizers after a sexist coach rejects her from his team due to her gender. The next one is "Doug On First" when Doug's father tries to get Doug to replace Patti as pitcher despite the fact that Doug wants to stick to his position at first base.
DuckTales (1987): In "Take Me Out of the Ballgame", stodgy butler Duckworth has to play substitute coach to Huey, Dewey and Louie's Little League team despite having no working knowledge of the game.
Timmy wishes Chester was the best baseball player in the world (since he's very bad and unfortunately named McBadbat, so bad, in fact, his father has to hide his face in shame with a paper bag) to make their little league team, the Losers, stop losing against all the other teams... one of which consisted of toddlers.
Norm the Genie once came under Chester's possession and granted his wish to make Bucky an all-star ballplayer. Insanity ensued.
Later episodes reiterate the same plot: one has Timmy wish to be a basketball champ on Dimmsdale's Ballhogs, while another brings back every element of the Baseball Episode, except this time, it's soccer, Timmy's the hapless team member of the Dimmsdale Victims, and Poof lends a hand.
One episode, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", had Fred umpire a Little League game.
In "Big League Freddie", Fred signs a baseball contract after scouts are impressed with his substitute, who was wearing his uniform.
Baseball was also the subject of a couple TV specials: "Little Big League" in which Fred and Barney competed against each other coaching Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's teams, and "Windup Wilma" in which Wilma becomes a baseball pitcher.
The show has its own blernsball episode, "A Leela of Her Own''. It starts with the more typical expression of this trope (a friendly game between friends and neighbors), but soon Leela becomes an actual Major Leaguer.
They then did a half-baseballbasketball episode in "Time Keeps on Slipping", in which the Harlem Globetrotters (they're aliens) challenge Earth to a game "for no reason," and make it clear that the game carries "absolutely no consequence of any kind." The Earth players still take it incredibly seriously (and lose).
The U.S. Acres segment, "Shell Shocked Sheldon" begins with Orson and his friends playing baseball. When Roy hits the ball, Sheldon has trouble catching it due to his arms being inside his eggshell. Roy runs to home base, and when Wade tries to tag him out, the two argue over whether Wade tagged Roy out or Roy safely made it to home base (which becomes the episode's Running Gag).
In another U.S. Acres segment, "Orson at the Bat", Orson imagines himself as "Casey at the Bat" due to a baseball-related injury.
One Screaming With Binky segment has a baseball player play at the Klopman Diamond. He has already received two strikes and is determined not to strike out. Just before he can hit the ball, Binky, who is working as a vendor, shows up and yells "Hey, Ball Player! You want some peanuts?", causing him to strike out. The baseball player then beats Binky up for causing him to strike out.
In the two-part episode, "The Horror Hostess", a horror movie hostess named Vivacia takes Jon and eight other men to her castle and shrinks them to form her own baseball team so she can have them play against the Rodents, a team of baseball-playing rats.
The Ghost and Molly McGee has a baseball episode, "The (Un)natural". In that case, or a softball episode, about Scratch cheating by helping Molly to win the softball tournament with his ghostly powers. However, Libby won by catching the ball with his mouth.
Goof Troop: In "Take Me Out of the Ball Game", Goofy enters Max in the Little League after handing his old baseball gear to Max as a present for his birthday. Not one to be outdone, Pete enters P.J. in the Little League as well. Neither Max nor P.J. want anything to do with baseball, so they so anything they can to skip out on the entire season. By the end of the episode, it becomes clear that the glory days Goofy and Pete espoused so much about may not have been true and that they were just hoping to live their dream baseball careers vicariously through their sons. At the end of the episode, Goofy and Pete decide that their sons should take up football.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy had a baseball episode, known as "The Bad News Ghouls", featuring Billy's team versus Mindy's. Mandy wanted in but Billy was sexist on that regards (and too stupid to notice the other team wasn't all-male either). Mandy then put on a Paper-Thin Disguise (namely, covered her hair with a baseball cap). Billy never realized "Manfred" wasn't a real boy.
Hey Arnold! had several prominent baseball episodes. The original pilot, reworked into the series as a regular episode, had Arnold bean Harold, and Harold was not amused at all. He called Arnold out for a fight (Helga even taunting Arnold through the night counting down the inevitable showdown)... but Arnold used the intimidating power of craziness to persuade Harold to back off. Another episode took Arnold's reputable beaning skills a step further, where he unintentionally nailed every single teammate who stepped up to bat!!Hilarity Ensues as Arnold looks for a cure to end his hazardous hitting streak- much to the dismay of friends. While bunting!
The Impossibles once faced the Bizarre Batter, a villain who abducted a baseball player during a game.
Johnny Bravo once tried to help his mother's little league team to win a game for an all-girls championship. The Opposing Sports Team, the "Bad Girls", were cheating and Johnny decided to disguise himself to join his mother's team. When the Bad Girls' coach unmasked him, Little Suzy did the same to the Bad Girls and the umpire disqualified both teams.
Episode 95 of Kaeloo had Kaeloo, Stumpy and Mr. Cat play baseball against Quack Quack, Olaf and Serguei. When Stumpy's team realize that the opposition is too powerful, they resort to cheating.
In the episode "Take Me out of the Ball Game," Hank coaches the company softball team and has problems dealing with putting his wife in the team who is an ace pitcher.
Not to mention "You Gotta Believe (In Moderation)" which features Hank and the gang attempting to win against a Harlem Globetrotters-style team of clownish all-stars.
Another episode from season 13, "Bad News Bill" when Hank realizes that a little league coach's encouragement techniques were giving Bobby false hope and ultimately humiliating him.
The debut episode of Laff-A-Lympics featured a pitcher-batter contest. Hong Kong Phooey strikes out Quick Draw McGraw, Captain Caveman outhits Dread Baron's pitching machine, and Scooby-Dum strikes out Sooey Pig.
The Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Slugger" revolves around an experiment who can deflect projectiles with his baseball bat-shaped tail, and just so happened to activate while the cast was playing baseball. Unfortunately, Mertle gets around this by challenging Lilo and her friends to a game of basketball. Fortunately, basketball just happens to be similar to an alien sport that the normally unathletic Pleakley is really good at.
Looney Tunes did this several times, including most famously with Bugs Bunny in "Baseball Bugs". Other baseball-themed episodes include "Buddy's Bearcats", "Porky's Baseball Broadcast", "Boulevardier From The Bronx"(centered on the One-Shot Character Dizzy Dan), and "Gone Batty"(featuring Bobo the Elephant).
Looney Tunes Cartoons has "Pitcher Porky", where Porky is pitching against the Gashouse Gorillas (from Baseball Bugs). When he hurts his pitching arm, Daffy hides in his uniform and pitches for him.
The Magic School Bus had a baseball episode which they dedicated to friction, of all things.
While Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series played hockey in nearly every episode (they were a professional hockey team, after all), "Mad Quacks Beyond Hockeydome" had the ducks kidnapped by an Evil Overlord from another galaxy and forced into a tournament of space hockey where the losing team gets disintegrated.
Monsters at Work: In "The Damaged Room", Mike and Sulley have to babysit a human toddler, whom Mike dubs "Snore" after Phlegm accidentally damages her room and MIFT has to repair it. On this day, Sulley gets tickets for a baseball game between the Monstropolis Creepees and the Red Shocks, so they take Snore to the game in a monster costume.
The Mr. Bogus episode "Baseball Bogus" dealt with Tommy embarrassed at the aspect of his father, Mr.Anybody, playing in the Little League against his team. Fortunately, with a little help from Bogus, Mr. Anybody manages to score a few hits during the game.
Pac-Man had an episode called "Southpaw Packy". After the Ghost Monsters disrupted the Pacland World Series, Pac-Man and his family challenged them.
A bumper on The Pink Panther's show had Pink, the Ant and the Aardvark playing a ball game. It ended with everyone out...knocked out, that is.
Pinky and the Brain did it in "Pinky at the Bat." The mice join a baseball team so the Brain can release a special perfume on the pitcher's mound
The Raccoons' premiere episode for season 2 "Double Play" where Bert and Cedric competing for entering a professional baseball team, the Mammoth Mudhens. Bert's team playing them is called the Evergreen Giants.
One episode of The Real Ghostbusters saw two groups of Native American spirits (one good, the other evil) awaken to do battle, as they have done every thousand years. Since their burial ground had become a baseball stadium, they chose for their modern-day battle to take the form of a baseball game. The Ghostbusters' interest in the game is due to Winston getting drafted to the Good team, and therefore risking the loss of his soul if the Evil team wins. After the game is over, Winston reveals that it wasn't his soul at stake, but Peter's.
Rocko's Modern Life had one called "Spitballs", where Rocko and Heffer go to a baseball game in an effort to catch a foul ball to replace Rocko's prized childhood foul ball after Mr. Bighead destroys it. Jumping through hoops, humiliation and very bad seats, Rocko's able to obtain one, but is stopped by a kid who wants the ball. He's convinced to give it up and ends up with a huge wad of tobacco from Heffer's favorite baseball player instead.
Rugrats (1991) also did it in the episode "Baseball", where Stu and Grandpa Lou take Tommy to see the Grizzlies play the Boston Bombers. Tommy gets a balloon at the game, which becomes the main focus of the episode's plot, as it keeps escaping his grasp. As in most Rugrats episodes, Tommy disappears to chase the balloon while the adults are oblivious that he's missing and continue to watch the baseball game.
Shaun the Sheep has the TV especial "Championsheeps" in which the entire farm made their own Olympics with each animal species like a team, made in 2012 for that year's London Olympics.
The episode "Homer at the Bat" featured Homer becoming a star player on the company softball team, and Mr. Burns hiring a team of Major League all-stars (Roger Clemens, Mike Scioscia, Don Mattingly, Steve Sax, Wade Boggs, Ozzie Smith, Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Darryl Strawberry, all of whom voiced themselves) to play the final game to win a bet. The episode has become one of the most famous instances of this trope and is one of the show's most popular episodes. Steve Sax admitted that people like talking to him about the episode more than his playing career and its popularity even resulted in Homer being inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In a case of Hilarious in Hindsight a running gag in the episode has Burns getting mad at Mattingly for failing to cut his sideburns (even after he shaves off most of his hair). After getting cut from the team Don is heard saying "I still like him better than Steinbrenner." A few weeks after the episode was produced, but before it was aired, Mattingly would be suspended from the Yankees for failing to cut his long hair as per team owner George Steinbrenner's policy.
In "Dancin' Homer", Homer is the mascot for the Isotopes.
In "MoneyBART", Bart is a player on the Isotots and Lisa is the numbers-crunching manager.
As well as the infamous "The Boys of Bummer", in which the Isotots enter the Little League Championship, but Bart fumbles the ball and costs Springfield the game, making him the most hated person in town.
On that note, "Bart Star" casts Bart as a pee-wee football player, with Homer as his coach. Bart really sucks, especially compared to Nelson.
Gee, this comes up a lot, huh? In "Lisa on Ice", Lisa becomes the star goalie of a pee wee hockey team so she won't fail gym. Bart, who was already the star of a rival team, feels upstaged.
In the South Park episode "The Losing Edge", the kids try to lose at baseball so they won't waste their whole summer playing it — a strategy that proves difficult, as every other team is trying to do the same.
In the Steven Universe episode "Hit the Diamond", the Gems have to deal with a band of Ruby foot-soldiers from the Homeworld. Steven convinces them to settle things with a game of baseball. If they win, they can search the barn; if they lose, they have to go back to Homeworld. Being from another planet, the Rubies have no idea how to play baseball, which conveniently gives Steven a chance to explain the game, to the benefit of any viewers who may not know the rules.
The Teacher's Pet episode "Take Me Out of the Ballgame" has Spot/Scott trying to help his owner Leonard win the baseball game after the former is disqualified from participating after the dog masquerading as a human student accidentally lets it slip that he's only been a student for eight months.
A soccer game in an episode of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, when Manny's soccer team is underperforming he decides to use his Tigre powers to give them a boost up.
Buster Bunny replayed Casey's role and twisted the end by actually hitting the ball.
In another baseball episode, Perfecto Prep was easily defeating Acme Looniversity until the antics of some game crashers revealed how they were cheating.
In the T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Top Dog", the villains are shown literally stealing bases, while in "Lie Like a Dog", Dudley Puppy beats up the villains after they steal the other spectators' money.
In the episode "Uncle Baseball", Uncle Grandpa enlists a few famous baseball players to help when a Little League team needs help. The guest stars are the cartoon versions of Adam Jones, Chris Archer, David Price, Jose Altuve, and Noah Syndergaard.
In the Wacky Races (1968) episode, "Hot Race to Chillicothe", Dick Dastardly, Muttley, and the Anthill Mob hide out in a baseball stadium and disguise themselves as baseball players to evade a cop. Later in the episode, as Dastardly plays dirty in a game of baseball against the Anthill Mob, Rufus Ruffcut and the Slag Brothers partake in the game to even out the odds.
A "Wing Dings" segment of Dastardly and Muttley had the Vulture Squadron playing baseball. Muttley tees off on a Zilly pitch and is rounding third base. Just as he slides into home, Dick Dastardly (as catcher) pulls home plate off the ground and tags Muttley out.
In the Perils of Penelope Pitstop episode, "Game of Peril", Penelope is on a scavenger hunt with a list of items especially made for her by Sylvester Sneekly (the Hooded Claw's alter-ego). One of them is a home-run ball from a baseball stadium, so the Anthill Mob takes her to a baseball stadium where a game is being held. The Hooded Claw catches the ball and tricks Penelope into standing on an X so the Bully Brothers can drop a safe on her.
