Yamcha: So this is a win?
Coach: Kid, you do nothing but win.
Coach: Kid, you do nothing but win.
Episode Title: Yamcha Strikes Out
Original Airdate: July 3, 2020
Yamcha's now-former manager compares their constant winning to Mr. Satan beating up a bunch of kids.
After hitting his 500th consecutive home run, Yamcha gets startling news: he's being fired. Because the results of his team's games are a Foregone Conclusion with a player as good as Yamcha, no one comes to their games anymore. But he will hardly go home empty-handed.
You can't do this! These tropes are all we've got left:
- Aren't You Forgetting Someone?: The Z-Fighters leave Roshi at the stadium after the game. Apparently he was passed out after getting drunk. He manages to find his own ride home (or at least the titty bar) by summoning Baby Gamera.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Reeling over being fired, Yamcha is pleading for the owner to reconsider, until told just how much he'll get for signing the non-compete.
- Broken Glass Penalty: Yamcha's final career home run is hit so far, it breaks a window at Capsule Corporation. Baby Trunks immediately starts crying.Vegeta: MOTHER FU—
- Call-Forward: The manager referring to Mr. Satan beating up a bunch of kids could be a reference to the new World Tournament in the Buu saga, which has a Junior Division whose winner would then fight Mr. Satan in an exhibition.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Every bit as much a deconstruction of the trope as One-Punch Man. While he's definitely the weakest of the Z-Fighters, Yamcha is still one of the strongest humans in the world. Just one problem with that: since no one can hold a candle to him on the baseball diamond, his team wins every game. A direct result is that the fans aren't coming to the games anymore, since they already know how they will always end.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Every game Yamcha played resulted in his team effortlessly crushing the opposition.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Yamcha, after all the bad things to happen to him, ends up retiring from baseball (due to being too good) with 20 billion zeni which he wisely invests to become incredibly wealthy.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Because his personal success has driven away the fans, Yamcha's teammates don't regard him highly.
- Vegeta is listed as a "My Friends... and Zoidberg" example of this.
- Friendship Moment: Yamcha gave his friends season passes, and they're the only ones who bother showing up for the game. After Yamcha hits a homerun, Krillin (the only other person in the entire stadium invested in the game) lets out an enthusiastic shout.
- Furry Fandom: Two of Yamcha's teammates are anthro animals, which have always been sprinkled throughout Akira Toriyama's work. Naturally, one of them, Gonzalez, is played by TFS resident furry KaiserNeko.
- Irony: When telling Yamcha he's fired (not on fire like the guy had hoped), the team's owner says this is the first time he's out his entire baseball career.
- Left the Background Music On: At first, it seems like "Cat Loves Food" is playing to demonstrate how positive Yamcha finds his fate to be. Actually, it's just playing on the radio.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: All of Yamcha's friends are allowed to eat for free at his Wolf Fang Grill sports bar... as well as Vegeta.
- Mythology Gag: Roshi summons Baby Gamera, who he had summoned before in the original series of Dragon Ball to get around as by that point he was too impure (pervy) to ride on the Flying Nimbus. The scene might also be a reference to TFS' playthrough of Budokai 2 (which features the turtle as part of its loading screen minigame), in which Lanipator frequently expressed his love for it.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: How the baseball audience sees this. While watching Yamcha effortlessly win was fun at first, watching him curb stomp every game got boring.Manager: Nobody wants to watch Mister Satan enter a kids' karate championship!
Owner: ...I'd watch that.
Manager: Yeah, but only a psychopath would watch that more than once! - Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Yamcha's existence in the world of sports is an example of this trope. Among other fighters he hangs out with, like Goku, or Vegeta, or even Krillin, he's easily the weakest. But being the weakest in a group of people with enough power to crack planets in half isn't a real determination of how strong someone is in a normal setting. As a result, he easily dominates Baseball to the point that no one watches anymore- it's so one sided it's boring to watch.
- Now What?: Before finding out he's about to win the Karmic Jackpot, Yamcha laments that he literally has nothing without baseball, talking about Bulma leaving him, and most of his friends being married or otherwise busy (except for Tien, who "has three eyes and is a total asshole").
- The Pollyanna: Yamcha is so optimistic that he's blissfully unaware of how badly the team is doing in terms of audience and how many of his teammates are just plain sick of him. He thinks nothing bad will come of both the coach and owner wanting to see him after the game, so learning he's been fired is quite a surprise to him.
- Tears of Joy: When the coach tells him he does nothing but win, Yamcha starts tearing up.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: As a severance package, Yamcha receives 20 billion zeni and the right to license his image, which he uses to buy out Hetap, doubling his net worth. Then he opens a chain of sports bars, making him set for life.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After Yamcha is told he did indeed win here, a narrator explains how he formally retired, successfully invested his newfound wealth to become even richer, and opened the Wolf Fang Grill sports bar chain. After wrapping up Yamcha's story, the narrator previews the next episode of this apparent retrospective series, saying they'll look back on former tournament champion Jackie Chun and inquire over what became of him.
- With Friends Like These...: When saying baseball is all he has in his life, Yamcha admits some of his friends are indeed assholes.
