America’s Visionary and America’s Pastime: Walt Disney and Baseball

Perhaps Walt Disney’s greatest strength as an entrepreneur was knowing what buttons to push in order to get the best results out of his employees. He was a master at understanding how people’s skillsets could be applied in order to make magic in his studio, as well as how to let those skills run free and develop. Baseball, believe it or not, was one of the arrows in his quiver as the head of Disney Studios, especially when he felt his team needed to get some fresh air and let a different part of their brains take over for a while. 

Animator Games

There are few jobs that require more concentration than animator. Not just concentration in terms of precision, but also creativity; they’re in charge of making inanimate things come to life on-screen, after all. This is the type of job that can’t be done by sitting behind a desk for hours on end, and Walt knew this. That’s why he would organize pickup games for the staff at Hyperion Studios in Los Angeles, right there on their lot. 

Walt Disney wasn’t just a passive organizer of baseball games, either. The founder of the company would often get into the games himself; who else deserved to unplug his mind for a little while more than Walt did? He was always a fan of the sport, especially growing up in the Midwest where baseball was king. Through these friendly baseball games, Walt Disney got to reconnect with a little bit of his childhood, while also providing a healthy outlet for his animation studio. 

Animated Shorts

Baseball wasn’t just a part of the work day at Walt Disney Studios, but also represented some of the company’s most famous short films. How to Play Baseball (1942) is an eight-minute short in which Goofy hilariously plays every position for both teams. The studio released Casey at the Bat a few years later in 1946, this time bringing the famous Ernest Thayer poem to life as we get to witness the mighty Casey of the Mudville Nine strike out (spoiler alert). 

Disney has gone on to produce several motion pictures centered around baseball, including Angels in the Outfield (1994) and The Rookie (2004), showing that the studio has maintained its strong connection to America’s pastime. 

Walt’s Nine Old Men

Disney’s famous “Nine Old Men,” the team of animators behind the studio’s first few decades of films, along with Walt’s love of baseball, are what inspired us to bring forth the Nine Old Men Baseball Tee. You get nine players on a baseball field to help lead your team to a championship, and in Walt’s case, you get nine animators in a studio to help launch your company into the stratosphere. Walt’s Nine Old Men Baseball Tee is great for roaming the parks (where better to go than Casey’s Corner?) or taking in a ballgame as the MLB season is in full swing this Summer. 

Honor Walt Disney’s love of baseball and his team of legendary animators with our latest addition to the Oswald & Sons collection, and we’ll see you at the ballgame!