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.