Cleats by Bill Hinds for October 01, 2023

Might have picked something other than an elephant… not a donkey, either.

I love it when strips put out disclaimers. It tells the readers that comics and cartoons can’t predict the future. No matter what people on the Internet claim.

Back in the day, that might have been Steinbrenner.

I remember a story about Ronald Reagan back when he did baseball on the radio. to make it more interesting he’d describe the action on the field. Actually he couldn’t see the action, he was in a radio studio miles from the nearest stadium and getting reports about the game by telegraph from a reporter actually at the game. One day he was doing the play by play on a game that was in the ninth inning with 2 outs and bases loaded, and a full count on the batter and he saw his engineer copying down the newest report from the telegraph and he started describing the pitchers windup and release when the tech slipped the note to him saying that the telegraph was down. He couldn’t just tell his audience that the telegraph was down since he had the ball approaching home plate, but he couldn’t call it a strike or ball either, so he had the batter hit a foul ball since a foul ball on the third strike doesn’t count. For the next hour he had the batter hitting one foul ball after another describing how one ball would go into the stands or how the opposing team would just miss the ball. He kept it going until the telegraph was back up an hour later and he was able to call the last pitch.

Well, the Blue Jays got in via the back door. I’ll take it

Ah October! MLB World Series! Always a great touchstone no matter who’s playing who.BTW, thank you Bill for the new strip! “Cleats” is working out just fine!

Charlie Finley’s team in the WS ?

This strip is copyrighted 2005. White Sox beat the Astros 4 games to none. Astros had not yet transferred to the American League.