Favorite major-sport-themed cartoons

J

JaRee

New member
What the subject line says... what are your favorite major sport-themed cartoons, and (to keep it from being merely a list thread) why?

I'm defining "major sports" as: baseball, (American) football, basketball, and hockey, plus (for our non-North American chums) soccer ("football").

For me:
Baseball:
- Probably have to go with "Baseball Bugs", the LT short where Bugs becomes a one-man baseball team against a bunch of thugs. Very funny.

Runner-up being the various Peanuts specials where the gang plays baseball (*badly*)...

Football:
- Not sure, but the "Lisa and Homer bet on pro football" episode of The Simpsons was quite amusing (even if Homer comes off pretty bad for taking Lisa for granted like that).

Runner-up: Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown for various bogus reasons in various Peanuts specials (it's a classic... OK, so one special where they play on a football team and she does that was pretty mean on Lucy's part, but still...).

Basketball:
- Garfield and Friends' "Basket Brawl": Garfield vs. Odie and Nermal in a goofy "basketball" game played with food---Jon wanting to get food past Garfield so they can go on a picnic, and it turns into a basketball game complete with a mice crowd turning the living room into a "stadium", mice-cheerleaders, and two mice as announcers/color commentators covering the whole episode like a basketball game. Guessing Garfield's creator being from basketball-crazy Indiana had much to do with this one being made.

As Garfield himself put it, this *was* "the dumbest episode we did all season". ;-)

Hockey:
Assuming this category's going to mostly be Canadian-cartoon centric, but I can think of a US-made one: the Goofy theatrical short "Hockey Homicide" (a crazy hockey game that devolves into mayhem...). Had a wilder-than-average-Goofy-short tone to it...

Runner-up: Not a specific cartoon, but there's 6Teen's "Penalty Box" store as being full of amusing hockey references, complete with the manager constantly giving his employees (and their friends) "time outs" in an actual penalty box.

-B.
 
I remember there being a show called "Mutant Football League" or something back in the early 80's, that one was cool. LoL Prostars was kinda cool too, but I bet both series wouldn't hold up today if rewatched or replayed. I cant really think of many sports based cartoons :/
 
Several anime series have been sports themed. Revolving around such diverse sports as baseball, basketball, tennis, wrestling, motorbike riding, etc. There was even an anime series built around Ping-Pong! Many of these sports anime series have yet to be seen outside of Japan, Prince of Tennis (which had a notably brief on Cartoon Network's Toonami block) being one of the few that have come to American shores.
 
One of my favourites is the Raccoons on Ice, a very early Raccoons special about a hockey game between the protagonists and Cyril's team of bears.

I also like Baseball Bugs, and I remember liking "You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown" when I was little. Even as a kid I found some of the later Peanuts specials pretty tedious, but I enjoyed that one a fair bit (mostly because of the cool main theme).
 
I think Mutant League was mid to late 90's
I used to think that it was incredibly violent but it probably got some slack since they weren't that human looking

I liked some old shows like Where's Huddles and Super Globetrotters and such. Loved the old Flintstones episode where Fred goes back to school and he's unstoppable on the the football field.
 
In addition to Baseball Bugs, there was "Gone Batty" that featured an elephant instead of Bugs playing baseball.

For football, you can't forget the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "The Acme Bowl" featuring the winless Acme Looniversity against Perfecto Prep.

And hockey of course is at the core of Disney's "The Mighty Ducks" animated series.
 
Back
Top