Brewbacca

 

Not a long time ago in our galaxy, some content came into our view. In a moment of phone distraction, it floated onto our screen like wayward space junk. It’s hard to say where it came from. Might have been an Instagram reel? Who knows… Life and Instagram reels are a bit of a blur. 

But as you can see, we found a baseball card of Chewbacca on the Brewers. (We call him Brewbacca and we’re calling dibs on the copyright.) What a sight to behold. A John Williams orchestral banger cued in our minds in this moment of triumph. Goodbye depression and internal deadness, because Chewbacca is on the Brewers. 

We did our homework. The card traces back to a mid-90s SNL skit. It’s a spoof of the Home Shopping Network in which Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan loudly hype silly merchandise. Ferrell screams something like, “Order now and we’ll throw in this rare baseball card of Chewbacca on the Brewers!” He adds, “He’s a second baseman.” 

That’s where they lost us. We’re still glad this image exists, but we feel strongly that Chewie’s talents would be wasted at second base. With his size and skillset, that Wookiee checks all the boxes of a first baseman. 

So, guess what? Because some SNL writer from like 1996 under-thought this one, it’s our job to overthink it. The Force needs to be balanced. That’s why we’ve figured out spots on the field for a team of Star Wars characters. We’ve even scouted vendors, mascots, and other non-players—because don’t tell us Chewbacca is a damn second baseman. 

1B: Chewbacca

Towering at a height of seven-and-a-half feet, it’s nearly impossible to launch a throw over the head of Chewbacca at first base. This big walking carpet is strong, athletic, and super-lanky. With his foot on the bag, he can stretch and reach into the farthest corners of the galaxy to snare a one-hopper in the dirt.

He’s got the power to rip off the arms of most men and aliens, so we’ve got to figure that translates to hitting for power at the dish. Plus, this Wookiee’s got a wingspan longer than Randy Johnson, so opposing pitchers can nip outside the zone and still watch their offering get crushed from Endor to Mos Eisley. 

His only weakness is that he’s a bit of a lumbering oaf, which is exactly why he’s a liability at second base. To make a tired point to the SNL writer from like 1996 who miscast Chewie on the diamond: Get your shit together, man.  

2B: Princess Leia 

Lovely Leia is graceful, swift, and nimble. Second is one spot on the diamond that requires a player to pirouette, and you bet your ass this Princess can pirouette. As we saw in her escape from a holding cell in A New Hope, she can gun down Stormtroopers. Ergo, we gotta assume she can gun down runners on the base paths. 

Her diplomatic skills are central to uniting the infield. Leia is an action-taker who rarely makes errors. For those who may naysay her quick hands and strength, remember the time she got free from Jabba the Hutt and choked the giant sloth to death with her own chains? Yeah, we bet you feel pretty dumb right now if you doubted Leia. 

Her on-base percentage thrives, in part, because she makes pitchers lose their focus as they imagine her in a metal bikini. Hell, we couldn’t pitch her three strikes in a row just thinking about her navel. It doesn’t even help to think about baseball since she’s literally playing baseball.  

As if that wasn’t enough, Princess Leia has a straight-up psychic connection with her double-play partner at shortstop. 

SS: Luke Skywalker

The Last Jedi is the next in a tradition of shortstops seeming to have otherworldly powers. In his prime, Javier Baez dazzled on defense with magician-like highlights that earned him the nickname El Mago. (Which is Spanish for… the Mago.) Further back, Ozzie Smith was dubbed the Wizard of Oz for his superhuman dives, leaps, throws, and flips. And not to be forgotten, Milwaukee’s own Robin Yount had a mustache that was enchanting. 

Luke’s supernatural mojo comes not in the form of magic, wizardry, nor mustache. He uses the Force, of course. Under the guidance of our right fielder, rookie Luke was batting laser shots from a practice droid as he wore a helmet that blinded him. His skills only multiplied from that point. Whether shooting a bullseye into the heart of the Death Star with no help from his targeting computer or using his mind to set C3PO aloft on a throne to convince the Ewoks the droid is their God, the Force is strong in Anakin’s kid. 

His throwing arm is strong too, and accurate. In Return of the Jedi, Luke finds himself in a murder pit with a Rancor beast. He uses his quick feet and resourcefulness to evade the monster, then he throws a rock at a switch to drop a heavy gate on the Rancor’s head. Perfect throw. Dead Rancor. The rock appeared to be heavy. True story. 

You’ve seen what he can do with a lightsaber. Give him a Louisville Slugger and watch him abuse pitchers like they were Jabba’s henchmen. 

3B: Rey 

When we first meet our third basewoman, she’s on the desert planet of Jakku, going through deserted spaceships, tryna earn a buck by picking parts. She’s a scavenger, a picker, so she was made to pick oncoming grounders out of the dirt. Rey also does a nifty slide down on a sandy hill early in Episode VII, so we can see her penchant for baseball. 

Her extreme sensitivity to the Force makes her a perfect fit at the hot corner. It’s called the hot corner because it’s usually played by the infielder who stands closest to the hitter, meaning they’re the most likely to have a scorching line drive rocket at their face. Rey has elite reflexes and reaction time, rivaled only by the team’s center fielder. 

She has the power to resist the creepy mind probes of Kylo Ren, and she showed remarkable poise by beating that same weirdly handsome devil in a lightsaber duel—as a rookie, no less. She can do everything—except save Episode IX from sucking. 

SP: Han Solo

He’s an unflappable gunslinger and a fierce competitor. He’s the most winning character in the franchise. He’s a great pilot—an ace, if you will. His best friends are a Wookiee and a Jedi, and he’s still the alpha male. We need this man on the mound.

We know he’s focused on speed, which translates to his fastball. Dude made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, so don’t expect his heater to fall below 96 mph. He’s no stranger to traveling at light speed, so of course he can light up a radar gun.

His background as a smuggler makes him adept at deception, so don’t be shocked to see the ace bust out some curves and sliders to keep ’em guessing. What he lacks in the Force, he makes up for with swagger, poise, and good looks. Can you imagine tryna get a hit with those dreamy, piercing blue eyes staring you down? We don’t know about you, but we’re going hitless. Three strikeouts. Then after the game, we want his autograph. We love him. He knows.

Manager: Yoda

Known as a paragon of leadership, Yoda is. Train Luke, he did, and embrace role of team mentor, he will. Likes Chewie batting cleanup, Yoda does. Funny in a hat, he looks. Run its course, this joke has.

Mascot: Ewok 

Picture one of these fidgety, furry bears dancing atop the dugout and doing cartwheels and shit. It’s adorable. If an Ewok with a T-shirt cannon doesn’t put a smile on your face, then the Dark Side has won. 

C: Jyn Erso

The job of a catcher is not glamorous. Behind the plate, catchers do the dirty work. After the game, their uniforms are the hardest to wash clean. They spend half their time squatting in the most uncomfortable pose in sports. They sacrifice their bodies for the greater good of the team. 

Rogue One heroine Jyn Erso is the team catcher because of her altruism. She gives herself up on a mission to retrieve intel on the weak spot of the Death Star. Like a catcher, she does the dirty work required to achieve the greater good, with little fanfare. Hell, we like her movie a lot, but we forgot her name a time or two while writing this thing. 

We love her big, beautiful, bright eyes. They’re ideal for scanning the diamond and processing what’s happening on the field. She is tough, gritty, and full of courage. She is smart enough to defer to pitcher Han Solo, but bold enough to shut down his ego trips. We are prioritizing defense over offense here, but hey, nothing matters more than defense against an evil Empire. 

DH: Mace Windu

During the climactic battle in the Arena of Justice in Episode II, Mace Windu puts on a helluva show with his lightsaber. He’s not the most fleet of foot Jedi, but he can deflect a droid’s laser shots with the best of ’em. He does a sweet fadeaway deflect to destroy a droid on the ricochet, while jogging to Jango Fett. Mace shows off some more sterling hand-eye coordination that’s clearly a transferable skill to hitting baseballs as he deflects shots from the bounty hunter. Then he beheads Jango Fett, with his kid watching in the crowd. Dude even takes a second to pose. Lil’ orphaned Baba Fett is watching on, traumatized. Meanwhile, Mace is basking in his closeup. Ice water flows through his veins, we say. 

We need Mace in the lineup, but he’s the designated hitter because he’s pretty one-dimensional. We’re pro-Mace all the way, but he’s not a versatile character. He doesn’t have the internal struggle of Anakin, nor the charm of Han or the arc of Luke or Rey. He doesn’t make the fight for goodness as compelling as Obi-Wan does. He’s not a weird, wise oddity like Yoda. He’s solid but prosaic. He swings a mean lightsaber and probably baseball bat, but he lacks range. He’s the David Ortiz of Star Wars characters and we’re thrilled to have him at DH. 

Ball Droid: R2-D2

As if the dancing Ewok with a t-shirt cannon wasn’t cute enough for the damn kids, this bleep-blooping droid on wheels will be programmed to fetch foul balls. R2 can extend that grabby metal claw from its body to snatch Spaldings gone astray. It’s also got a blowtorch and taser, so it can do security in the event of a Tusken Raider streaking onto the field or something. 

Social Media Manager: C-3PO

This neurotic droid is fluent in over six million forms of communication. And Lord knows he won’t shut up about it. His job is to hype the team and inform its fanbase on thousands of social media platforms in a wide array of languages across the universe. Do you know what they call X on the planet Tatooine? We have no clue, but it’s got to be a better name than stupid-ass X. What matters is that C-3PO knows, insufferable know-it-all that it is. 

We considered finding a spot on the field for Threepio, but then we remembered we wanna win. 

LF: Lando Calrissian

In order to see why Lando plays in left field, we’ve got to break down what it means when something “comes out of left field.” It’s unlikely for a left fielder to throw out a runner, so when it does happen, it comes as a shock. Along the same lines, when the leader of Cloud City betrays his friends and we see the reveal that his dinner party has been crashed by Darth Vader, that’s a classic moment that comes out of left field. 

The stunners keep coming from Lando. He seems guilt-stricken about his heel turn, but we question his sincerity. After all, he has been described as “scum,” and dude was a bit too flirty with Leia. But when our heroes are on the brink of doom with Han frozen in Carbonite—BOOM! Lando comes to the rescue. He turns on the Empire’s drones, frees Chewie and Leia from their handcuffs, and helps them escape. Double turn. 

That’s two cinematic stunners straight outta left field in less than an hour. He also made a trip to Earth in order to promote Colt 45 beer. No one saw that coming. Lando’s domain is covering space in left field. 

CF: Anakin Skywalker

He’s instinctive, brash, and so talented it’s scary. He shows both power and finesse when he swings a lightsaber (which kinda looks like a bat, if you think about it), and as we saw in the Boonta race on Tatooine, his reaction time is off the charts. We’re not crazy about his mass murder of younglings at the Jedi Temple, but we do love the way he can track a baseball instantly off the crack of the bat. He’s a high-risk, high-reward, franchise player in center field.  

Anakin’s hand-eye coordination is matched by his passion. Like Ken Griffey Jr., we can picture Ani running balls out at a dead sprint and crashing into the wall to make the catch. The trouble is, passion can be a detriment to a Jedi. (Junior broke his wrist making the catch. Anakin was almost killed by Count Dooku.) Anakin has the spitfire to try to gun down a runner at home when he’s standing on the warning track–-and if the guy was safe, he’d be pissed. And anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering, and so on…

Ok, we gotta admit: Those killing sprees are sort of a red flag. Still, the kid’s a five-tool player and we can’t deny his moxie.  

RF: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Perhaps the best pure hero in the franchise, Obi-Wan stands for what is right.  Therefore, it makes sense for him to stand in right. Anywhere else on the field would feel wrong.

We admire his moral compass and integrity. In the thrilling finish to Revenge of the Sith, he says to our center fielder, “I have the high ground.” The moral high ground included.

He’s even more righteous than Manager Yoda, who was on the verge of refusing to mentor Luke because the prospect lacked patience. It was Obi-Wan’s voice that insisted, “He will learn patience.” (And we have him to thank for Luke taking more walks as of late.)

When it comes to handling the bat (which you’ve got to admit, somewhat resembles a lightsaber), check out the beauty of his swing at the 6:20 mark in The Phantom Menace. It’s sweet enough to make the fuzzy Force Ghost of Tony Gwynn shed a tear of joy. In the same scene, O-WK is cracking battle droid shots up the middle, comeback line-drive style for hit after hit.

His only drawback is that he won’t listen when we yell at him to shave that awful rat tail. 

Food Vendor: Jar Jar Binks

Jar Jar tried to make it as a hot dog vendor. He got a chance to roam the bleachers, running his mouth, slinging borderline-pork products in buns. He spent three long innings shouting, “Whosa wants hot dogs?! Yousa want hot dogs? Meesa sell space wieners—ha!”

People got annoyed. Then they got furious. Then there was a palpable sense of bloodlust at the old ballpark. Worse, he failed to sell a single hot dog. 

Security had to escort him out of the ballpark for his own safety, because angry fans wanted to kill the unpopular Gungan.

Thankfully, Jar Jar escaped harm and was brought to an escape pod in the parking lot.  

Tournament of Ass-Kickers

Violence is a polarizing impulse for me. In actuality, I find violence repellent and detestable. The violent urge, except when it is employed in self-defense, is laden with twisted sadism. Enforcers of violence do ignoble and deplorable damage to their fellow man. With every strike against flesh, such crooked lowlifes tacitly contend, “There must be more suffering!” And that sort of brutal adage refutes the possibilities of virtue a human being can choose to pursue—to minimize suffering.

If you'd rather chase after suffering than peace in this frenzied rat race known as life, then you're fucked in the head. If that's the case with you, reader, then let's never hang out together.

In my imaginative life, which of course differs from actuality, violence appeals to me. It is quite a challenge to suppress the human urge for gaudy entertainment. We get bored so easily without fireworks, thunderstorms, Super Bowls, Royal Rumbles, episodes of “Cops,” and the like. The days become unbearably slow and stagnant in the absence of lurid spectacles. In cycles of neurosis, we trade boredom for pain when the boredom begins to ache. Later we trade the pain back for boredom when the pain becomes dull.

The pangs I feel to partake in one hell of a bloody show are transferred to imaginative outlets. My precious jollies are had when I press the X-button to decapitate a zombie with a loaded shotgun as I guide my character through the gory adventure of a survival horror video game. I watch on with savage glee as Lieutenant Aldo Raine carves a swastika into the forehead of the hysterically squealing Jew Hunter. Once a year I watch a WWF cassette tape highlighted by a steel cage match between The Undertaker and The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels—as dumb tribute to gaudy and fictitious violence at its best.

I suppose I'm a hypocrite because I disdain real violence but embrace fictitious violence. I assure myself that imaginative violence is harmless as long as one has a thoughtful philosophy to condemn real violence. But perhaps I'm fooling myself.

The ensuing column glorifies fictitious violence with (hopefully) funny results. After I graduated college, I still published guest contributions on a sporadic basis in the Advance-Titan. I was able to do this because fellow humor columnist Tyler Maas, two years my junior, had become the editor of the newspaper, and Tyler is a fan of my work. For the Halloween issue, we collaborated on “The Tournament of Ass-Kickers” with two other columnists whose names I cannot recall. We devised brackets of 16 combatants for each writer and then determined the outcome of each fight, working our way to the Final Four.

Included here is the first round of my bracket, the Fist Pumps for Brutality region. Much of what follows differs from how it was printed in October of 2007, which hardly matters. Changes have been made to allow for more contemporary references as well as an expanded list of dead pro-wrestlers.


First Round Match-ups

Wolverine (1) defeats Captain Planet (16).
Shortly after the opening whistle blows, Captain Planet sets his mind to digging a compost heap. He offers Wolverine a hoe in a gesture of what he refers to as, “Solidarity with Mother Nature.” For the novelty of an easy kill, Wolverine doesn't even bother to extend his deadly Adamantium claws, opting instead to club Captain Planet to death with the garden tool. Wolverine then litters an empty bag of pretzels onto the mangled corpse of Captain Planet. Sorry, hemp-worshiping vegans, but if you want America to become more environmentally conscious, you need to lend your support to a superhero who's got more balls than Captain Planet.

Goro (2) defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt (15).

With a functioning limbs advantage of six-to-two, Mortal Kombat's most insidious villain finishes off what polio started. Goro hijacks the wheelchair of our greatest (handicapped) president and bashes FDR with it using his top two arms while the others play Wii Boxing and write haikus in honor of fallen heavy metal God Ronnie James Dio.

Massive Naked Black Guy from “Cops” who Punched a Hole through a Wooden Fence while Jacked-Up on PCP (3) defeats Aquaman (14).

Aquaman's reputation as the most useless above-sea level superhero is validated in this one-sided fracas. Pfft. Aquaman. His “powers” would only prove fruitful if we lived in a world in which SCUBA divers robbed mermaids at harpoon gunpoint. His opponent, whom we will refer to from now on as PCPNBG, with the last three letters in the acronym standing for “Naked Black Guy,” is built like a naked linebacker. He is impervious to pain until the PCP wears off and he is covered in blood. Aquaman's fear of possibly contracting Hepatitis from the bloody vagrant is fleeting. Before the panic really takes hold, PCPNBG bashes Aquaman's head in with a trash can lid.

The Bride (4) defeats Chewbacca (13).

In spite of Chewbacca's height and weight advantage over Beatrice Kideaux, the Bride, the bedazzling Samurai assassin from the Tarantino flick “Kill Bill,” it is important to keep in mind that Chewbacca, endearing as he is when his plaintive moans aren't irritating the shit out of you—Chewbacca is essentially a noisy, gawky, Muppet creature. He's built more like Yao Ming than Shaq O'Neal; he's lacking in bulk for not only a dominant low post game, but also superior ass-kicking prowess. The Bride slays as many Yokuza henchmen in two gory minutes of “Kill Bill” than Chewbacca kills Strom Troopers in the entirety of the “Star Wars” trilogy. The Bride dominates the fight but spares Chewbacca's life. Rather than slicing the Wookie in half with her Hattori Hanzo blade, the Bride opts for a more humane victory and mercifully plucks Chewbacca's right eye from its socket. She then sells it to the highest bidding nerd on e-Bay. (Congratulations to Tyler Christensen from Sherman Oaks, California!)

Hacksaw Jim Duggan (12) defeats Magneto (5).

X-men arch nemesis Magneto's ability to manipulate metallic objects with telekinetic force is rendered useless because Hacksaw's foreign object of choice is a wooden 2 x 4. Magneto's lone offensive attack is telepathically ripping a gold stud out of Hacksaw's earlobe, which Hacksaw only wore in the first place because his old lady Deedra, a bartender at a bowling alley in Queens, insists it makes him look more dashing. Luckily for Hacksaw, the plate inserted into his head after the notorious “Sledgehammer Trampoline Incident” is not made out of metal, but rather Legos. (It turns out that pro wrestler Dr. Death, who performed the procedure, is not in fact an accredited surgeon.) Hacksaw squeezes the pine into finely ground sawdust with his mammoth, clumsy hands and then bludgeons Magneto into a mangled monstrosity. As Dick Vital would exclaim, it's upset city, baby, and they are rejoicing in the streets of Hacksaw Jim's hometown of Glen Falls, New York.

General George Washington (11) defeats Robocop (6).

Unknowingly corrupted by overconfidence, Robocop pistol-whips General Washington for the first two minutes of the bout, echoing the initial power and haughtiness of the British Empire during the Revolutionary War. Bloodied and exhausted, Washington matches the fortitude he displayed during his troop's six-month winter Battle of Attrition holed up at Valley Forge. General Washington, always a savvy strategist, aims the barrel of his musket at Robocop's vulnerable mouth area, specifically the hollow target of his open mouth as Robocop drones bland cop rhetoric about Persecuting to the Fullest Extent of the Law. Crimson-tainted gunpowder sprays through the back of Robocop's neck.

Macho Man Randy Savage (7) defeats Super Macho Man (10).

Supercilious Nintendo boxer Super Macho Man scrambles the brains of the Macho Man Randy Savage early in the bout, landing solid thumps on his skull with the force of a hammer. He should have worked the body instead. Considering that much of Savage's thought process consists of catchphrases such as “Oooh, yeah, Dig it” and “Snap into a Slim-Jim,” Savage's head trauma has little if any effect on the fight. The former WWF Champion eventually turns the tide of the fight, nailing a flurry of clotheslines before finishing Super Macho Man with a flying elbow drop off the top rope. In a post-match interview, a teary-eyed Savage dedicates his victory to the memories of his tragically fallen pro-wrestling comrades, including: the Lovely Miss Elizabeth, Mr. Perfect, The Big Boss Man, The British Bulldog, Owen Hart, The Texas Tornado, Earthquake, Yokazuna, Eddie Guerrero, Flyin' Brian Pillman, Chris Benoit, Ric Flair, who is expected to die in a Sledgehammer Trampoline accident of his own later next week, and 14 others whom I'm omitting due to lack of space. For God's sake, please stay the hell away from cocaine and steroids, kids!

Chucky (9) defeats The Leprechaun (8).

The Leprechaun at once tackles Chucky, pins him down and kneels on his wee doll arms, and wields a broken bottle of Guinness inches above Chucky's bulging eyes. With certain death looming, the redheaded Hellraiser pleads in an Irish accent: “For the love of Riverdance, you can't kill a fellow Irishman!” The Leprechaun skeptically remarks, “What? You're too big of a wanker to be hailing from Mother Ireland.” Chucky persists. “I swear on me last drop of whiskey, me family's from Ireland. Every time I think about the Great Potato Famine I feel like stabbing the first babysitter I come across.” The Leprechaun lowers his guard. “Ay! I've stabbed more than a few babysitters me-self. And the Great Potato Famine? T'was devastating! You know, me grandparents in the Old Country didn't even realize there were edible foods other than potatoes. Just imagine what a cursed time they had—“
At this point the treacherous Chucky takes advantage of the Leprechaun's naïvety and thrusts a switchblade into his opponent's jugular. In his regular voice, Chucky muses, “Stupid Mick.”