Web pick of the week: Baseball Bugs

This week’s web pick is the classic Looney Tune ‘Baseball Bugs’, which among other things added yet another phrase into the incredible lexicon of baseball. 

Occasionally you will find a pitcher whose change-up is so confounding to the batter, it looks as though the ball has come to a stop somewhere between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. 

The batter swings so early at the offering that you could imagine him getting in position again and taking another hack at it before it actually crosses the plate.

The name for such a devastating pitch: a Bugs Bunny change-up. 

Bugs debuted his pitch back in 1946 in the classic cartoon. “I think I’ll perplex him with my slow ball”, says Bugs, and so he does, along with two other batters! 

Baseball Bugs is just 7 and a half minutes long, but it’s full of classic moments, from Bugs talking up his batting prowess (“Wham, a homer, wham, another homer!”) to chirping away behind the plate like all good catchers (“That’s the old pepper boy, that’s the old pitching, that’s putting it over the old plate boy!”), and is a much-cherished piece of baseball’s popular culture history.