About In the Bleachers
Whatever your athletic interest, golf, baseball, running, or basketball and whether you haven’t picked up a ball since high school or you’re a serious sports fanatic, everyone can see the humor and irony highlighted by In the Bleachers. Ben Zaehringer helps us laugh at ourselves and those in the professional spotlight by drawing attention to the comedy of sports.
Ben Zaehringer was born in Glendale, California. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Film Studies. In 2009, he began the webcomic Berkeley Mews, a darkly comic send-up of pop culture nostalgia that has been featured in BuzzFeed, Savage Dragon and on the front page of Reddit. He began work on In the Bleachers in 2016, taking over for longtime creator Steve Moore in 2017. Ben has also written several gags for the Reuben Award-winning comic strip Rhymes with Orange. In 2015, he was the Artist-in-Residence at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California. In 2018, he illustrated the food-themed card game Hangry Thief. His first collection of Berkeley Mews comics, titled Sorry I Ruined Your Childhood, was released on October 2019. A second Berkeley Mews book, How Not to Get into Heaven, arrives in October 2021. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Edith, and their two cats.
In the Bleachers was originally created by Steve Moore, debuting on September 2, 1985. In addition to writing and drawing the comic for over 30 years, he also contributed to six book collections of In the Bleachers panels as well as an animated TV series based on the strip. Steve also was executive producer of the 2006 animated film Open Season, which was inspired in part by the numerous hunting-themed panels of In the Bleachers and spawned three sequels. He also wrote and produced the 2010 animated film Alpha and Omega, and served as a writer and producer on many of its six sequels. He reluctantly stepped away from In the Bleachers in 2017 due to Essential Tremor, a neurological disorder that causes shaking in the hands and other parts of the body. Steve currently resides in Idaho.