Baseball

"Baseball" is the second segment of the fifth episode of season 1, and the fifth Rugrats segment overall.

Characters Present

 * Tommy
 * Spike
 * Didi
 * Stu
 * Lou
 * Bucky Majors
 * Batboy
 * Announcer 3

Summary
''Stu and Grandpa take Tommy to see a Grizzlies' baseball game. Tommy, however, is more interested in his balloon hunt than the game, and his balloon hunt helps make a very important play for the Grizzlies' player Bucky Majors..''
 * - Description from Klasky Csupo

Plot
While Tommy is taking a bath in the bathroom, Grandpa Lou is listening to the radio of a baseball trivia question on baseball legend Bucky Majors of the Grizzlies. The announcer also announces that the thirteenth caller who answers the trivia question will win three tickets to the baseball game against a Boston team, in which the number is 555 - KOLD. The question is which baseball player in the history of baseball hit the most home runs on the second Tuesday in every month of April of all time. Grandpa takes Tommy out of the bath tub and walks into the room to call to answer the question, which the answer is Bucky Majors. Grandpa wins the tickets to the baseball game and takes Stu and Tommy.

At the game, they end up getting low seats and Tommy gets a hot dog and a balloon. Grandpa lets Tommy see Bucky Majors through a pair of binoculars as the baseball legend is set to bat. When he gets to the mound, Majors hits a home run, eliciting cheers from the fans. As Grandpa grabs the binoculars from Tommy, his balloon gets loose and floats away. This makes Tommy meander away and follow after it, crawling through the seats and the announcer's box. The balloon flies further away from the box. But when Tommy sees a bear mascot, he climbs down the steps and ends up in the field. He crawl through the dug-out and makes a grab for the bear head. But the mascot walks away and Tommy falls into a popcorn bag (while the seller doesn't notice). Dominic, the popcorn seller, picks up the popcorn box, oblivious to Tommy still inside.

As he walks up the steps to sell it to the other fans, one of the sports commentators tell his partner Chuck about the time he threw his back out when he used to pitch to a batter while the bases were loaded. Later, the game becomes tedious, and not much is happening. As Dominic makes it to the announcer's box, Tommy takes a peek through the popcorn box and views his balloon floating in view. He chases the balloon outside and ends up causing dissonance around the stadium as he walks on the keys under an organ. This causes Grandpa and Stu to wake up wondering who is winning the game.

Meanwhile, Didi arrives home to find that Grandpa, Stu, and Tommy missing, reading the note they left for her offered by Spike. So she watches the baseball game on channel two from the television. At the game, the opposing team are on offense with the bases loaded, and the Grizzlies team need only one more out to win. Meanwhile, Tommy continues to chase after the balloon from the top of the stand and finally grabs it. He then sees the flying baseball and lets go of the balloon. As he grabs the baseball, he falls, and Bucky Majors leaps and catches him in his glove, winning the game for the Grizzlies in the process. At home, Didi sees what is going on in the stadium and then faints. Stu and Grandpa finally notice that Tommy left and run to the field to retrieve him, while Grandpa tells a story about his past as he, Stu, and Tommy end up on the front cover of the newspaper with Bucky.

Trivia

 * Other names for this episode are Tommy at Bat, used on the box of the British version of the Tommy Troubles video, Stadium Seats, used on the Viewmaster reel of this episode, and Baseball Tommy.
 * Larry and Steve make a cameo appearance in this episode while cheering for the Grizzlies' win.
 * The logo on the blimp, "Good Tire" in one shot and "Good Day" in another, is a parody of GoodYear tires, who sponsor blimps to fly around sports games.
 * This is the first episode where Tommy was seen naked.
 * This is the third time we see Tommy wearing shoes, the first was in episode "Waiter, There's a Baby in My Soup", the second was "Beauty Contest", the fourth was in episode "Stu-Maker's Elves", but in the later episode "Heat Wave", it was the first time he wore socks, and shoes with his normal clothes.
 * This episode and it's sister episode "Beauty Contest" stopped airing reruns on NickRewind for unknown reasons.

Goofs

 * If the Grizzlies were the only team to score, then why do we see a run in the upper (or visitors') tier during the shot of the scoreboard?
 * In the baseball episode, Bucky Majors is wearing a different uniform when he's batting then Crazy-legs McGill the pitcher who is also on his team.
 * When Bucky Majors hits the baseball so hard it falls apart, the string inside the ball changes color between shots; at first the string is gray, but in the next shot the string is brown.