Pitcher Porky

"**Pitcher Porky**" is the forty-first cartoon and the first segment of the eighteenth episode of the first season of *Looney Tunes Cartoons*.

## Summary

*Benchwarmer Porky Pig finally gets his chance to shine on the pitching mound. With the game on the line, he needs all the help he can get - even if it's from Daffy Duck.*

## Plot

*The Gashouse Gorillas Baseball Team are crushing the prissy Sweet Valley Cutie-Pies at the top of the eighth-inning. The remaining pitcher Sterling "Wet Knickers" Osborne has no choice but to face the Gorillas' own Butch "Killer" O'Reilly. He is batted straight into an ambulance after he winds up and pitches, which takes him out of the game and into a large explosion outside the stadium. The rest of the Cutie-Pies are not doing so well either. The benchwarmer Porky Pig is the only one standing as many of them are injured, frightened and even dead. The team's coach apathetically allows him to get onto the mound and pitch for the team. Elated, Porky tells his fellow benchwarmer Daffy Duck the good news. Daffy congratulates him by shaking his hand, but accidentally breaks Porky's right arm in the process, dampening his high hopes. Daffy thinks up a plan to substitute for Porky's arm by hiding under his shirt. When Porky steps up to bat, the preppy Gorillas taunt him over being unfit to win the game. Daffy reassures the pig that everything is going to be okay, shaving the feathers off his right wing and disguising it as Porky's right arm. Daffy creates a stinkball by filling an old baseball with a rotten egg, a smelly sock, and a pungent fish carcass. Porky pitches the ball to O'Reilly, causing his bat to go limp from the smell before he too is repulsed and melts into a puddle of goo, rendering him out.*

*Next up to bat is Mad Dog McNulty. Porky is intimidated by his tough nature, so Daffy decides to unleash the mad-ball on McNulty. The mad-ball verbally insults him on his swinging, finally spaying and neutering McNulty after he mentions his previous job as a candlestick maker and forcing him to tearfully quit the sport for good. The Cutie-Pies' confidence continues to increase as Porky nonchalantly throws a knuckleball at one of the Gorillas, with Daffy hiding inside to deliver the final blow using nothing except brass knuckles. Unfortunately for them, the Gorillas' star player, a hulking brute by the name of Lil' Joe Johnson, steps up to the plate. A relaxed Daffy squirts a tube of sticky glue onto to baseball, not realizing that the glue has also set onto his hand. When Porky pitches the glue-covered ball, Daffy is forced out of the pig's shirt and batted into the stadium wall, declaring a foul ball in his dazed state before getting immediately crushed by a piece of debris. Faced with Johnson's hulking stature, Porky whimpers in utter cowardice before deciding the only logical thing to do is to think like Daffy Duck himself. His brain sprouts Daffy's signature long, slender, tapered bill, allowing him to go absolutely nuts and score two pitches. The first has him tying his arm around the ball, using it as a lasso to make Johnson lose his focus, while the second has him coiling it into a spring and launching it at him, causing Johnson to tornado himself out of the stadium and into the scoreboard, making the Cutie Pies win. As Porky and Daffy are jubilantly paraded by their fellow teammates, they attempt to high five but get tangled up in Porky's arm.*

## Voices

* Eric Bauza as Daffy Duck
* Bob Bergen as Porky Pig
* Jeff Bergman as Empire / Coach
* Corey Burton as Announcer
* Kevin Michael Richardson as Butch / Maddog Baseball

## Trivia

* This short was first screened at Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 12 June 2019 before being released on HBO Max in 2021.
* This short marks the first and only appearance of the Gashouse Gorillas in 73 years, since "Baseball Bugs".

## References

1. ↑ https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/warner-bros-animation-bows-looney-tunes-cartoons-short-1203240721/