Thursday, October 19, 2023

Halloween? No, BaseBALLoween!

Fuzzy BaseBALLoween, that is. My fifth Fuzzy Baseball book combines baseball with everyone’s favorite spooky holiday. Generally, baseball season only overlaps with Halloween halfway through the World Series. But I wanted the Fuzzies to play a team full of monster-ish characters, so I needed to come up with a premise to make that happen.

The book has a prologue where the fictionalized version of my editor demands that the next Fuzzy Baseball book be a holiday book. The fictionalized version of me pitches a number of holiday titles (Gobble Gobble Grounder…Ho-Ho Home Run… Kwanza Kurveball…) but he rejects them all, until as a last resort I pitch a Halloween book.

As the story begins the Fuzzies are at the World Series, but they are spectators, not participants. As soon as they express a desire to play one last game a bat in a tuxedo appears (Count Flappula) and offers them the opportunity to play a game against his team, the Graveyard Ghastlies, on Halloween night.




The Ghastlies are not monsters, but they are based on animals that are less than cuddly. There is an aye-aye, a fanged dear, and fanged toad, an Egyptian vulture, a great auk (extinct), and a naked mole-rat (clothed). There is also a werewolf, a ghostly walrus and a creature that is a polar bear/panda hybrid. When I illustrated their “team photo” I tried to emulate the cross hatching style of Edward Gorey. The name of the team, “Ghastlies”, is also an homage to Gorey.



In addition to the Ghastlies I created around 2 dozen ghouls and goblins in striped footy pajamas. Their design is inspired more by Tim Burton and Monster’s Inc than by Gorey. Their appearance represents a major plot twist in the story, so I don’t want to give that away here. But I will say this, if you want a celebration of Halloween that's more silly than spooky, you should check out Fuzzy Baseball #5: Fuzzy BaseBALLoween.