''Play Ball'' is a 1937 animated

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

Terrytoons Terrytoons was an American animation studio in New Rochelle, New York, that produced animated cartoons for theatrical release from 1929 to 1973 (and briefly returned between 1987 and 1996 for television in name only). Terrytoons was founded by ...

. It is the penultimate film featuring

Kiko the Kangaroo Kiko the Kangaroo is a fictional kangaroo appearing in theatrical cartoons produced by Terrytoons. He is featured in ten cartoons made between 1936 and 1937. Fictional biography As with various anthropomorphic animals at the time, Kiko wears short ...

. In reissue prints, the film goes by its alternate title ''Kiko at the Bat!''

Plot

Kiko is a baseball player who leads a team of joeys at the baseball diamond. Their opponents are a team consists of various other animals. The other team is first to bat. Their first batter, an ostrich, is out immediately after failing to hit the ball three times in a row. Their second batter who is a

spider monkey Spider monkeys are New World monkeys belonging to the genus ''Ateles'', part of the subfamily Atelinae, family Atelidae. Like other atelines, they are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil. The g ...

, however, manages to score a

home run In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team. A home run i ...

on first hit. Their third batter, a pig, also scores a point on first attempt. Their fourth batter, an elephant, hits the ball so hard and sends it a great distance but Kiko's team manages to catch it, thus preventing a third score. Finally Kiko's team gets to bat. One of the joeys is first in being the batter, and misses on first attempt. But that joey manages to hit the ball on second attempt despite a sneaky trick from the spider monkey who is now the pitcher. The joey also makes it safe after running back and forth between bases. Next, Kiko becomes the batter. As Kiko hits the ball and runs to the bases, a joey jumps out his shorts, and another one jumps out of that joey's shorts, and so on, all of which are going in the same direction. The ostrich in the outfield tries to catch the ball, only to accidentally swallow it. While the players in the other team struggle to extract the ball from the ostrich's esophagus, Kiko and the joeys continue to run on the bases, scoring multiple points.

References

External links

''Play Ball''
at the

Big Cartoon Database The Big Cartoon DataBase (or BCDB for short) is an online database of information about animated cartoons, animated feature films, animated television shows, and cartoon shorts. The BCDB project began in 1997 as a list of Disney animated featu ...

1937 films 1937 animated films 1930s American animated films 1930s animated short films 1937 comedy films 1930s sports films American animated short films American black-and-white films Terrytoons shorts American baseball films Animated films about kangaroos and wallabies American comedy films American sports comedy films 20th Century Fox short films Films directed by Mannie Davis Films directed by George Gordon 1930s English-language films {{short-animation-film-stub