Baseball and professional wrestling are my two favorite things in the world. They’ve both been a part of the American identity since the late 1800s. They both were among the most popular programming with the advent of television. They both saw huge steroid-enhanced boom periods in the late 1990s. With all of those similarities, though, there has been very little overlap between the two.
There have been countless football players performing in pro wrestling — the NFL battle royal at WrestleMania 2, Lawrence Taylor vs Bam Bam Bigelow, “Mongo” McMichael, Kevin Greene … not to mention every great pro wrestler who started their careers after not being able to make it in pro football. On the basketball side, Dennis Rodman, Karl Malone, and Shaq have all had matches on PPV. Heck, you even had The Goon cross-checking people out of the ring.
Of course, there are a whole lot of examples of wrestlers throwing out first pitches of varying degrees of good-ness, and WWE Superstars in the wild accosting mascots. There are also plenty of examples of MLB players demonstrating their pro wrestling superfandom. But when baseball and wrestling actually collide in the ring (or the wrestling arena), that’s when magic happens. Or the opposite of magic!
So, in honor of the World Series starting on Tuesday, here are, for better or worse, some of the times that baseball and wrestling have intersected. Mostly for worse.
Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz
Steve Lombardi, most commonly known as The Brooklyn Brawler, had been wrestling for a decade by 1994. The threat of an MLB players strike loomed over the baseball season that year, and in the summer WWF started airing promos about the arrival of a new wrestler named Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz.
When the baseball strike finally happened, Knuckleball made his debut. His gimmick was that of a professional baseball player, who — now without a job — decided to come to the WWF to throw hands. And just in case you didn’t know he was a ball player, he wore a baseball uniform and painted his face white with red stitching. Above, he runs down the crowd for being the real problem with sports today, while also giving a relevant argument for not using public municipal funds for building stadiums.
When the baseball strike ended, so too did Abe’s run. Feel free to blame the Expos/Nationals curse on him.
Dale Torborg, MVP
Jumping ahead to 1999, baseball survived the strike and was doing better business than ever, thanks to the chemically-enhanced home run race of the year prior. WCW introduced Dale Torborg, the Most Violent Player.
Torborg, a former baseball player and son of former player and coach Jeff Torborg, was introduced as an ex-baseballer who came to WCW to throw hands. And, as is tradition, he wore a baseball uniform (with catcher’s shin guards!) and painted his face with baseball stitching. Thankfully, he went with black and red face paint, so he looked like an off-brand Kane.
This version of Torborg only lasted in WCW for a few weeks before getting repackaged into an even worse face-painted gimmick as the KISS Demon. He left wrestling altogether a few years later and went back to baseball as a strength and conditioning coach, never to be seen again in wrestling. Well, never to be seen again until …
AJ Pierzynski
This f*cking guy.
AJ Pierzynski is easily my least favorite player of all time. After the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, Pierzynski, along with White Sox strength coach the KISS Demon, showed up on TNA Impact to present the X Division with an honorary championship ring. This raised the ire of Simon Diamond, which led to a match at Turning Point where Pierzynski would manage Chris Sabin and Sonjay Dutt against the Diamonds in the Rough.
The best thing to come out of this feud was footage of Simon Diamond showing up to the White Sox training facility to call out Pierzynski, only to get laid out with a chair by Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. Much to the delight of JIM THOME.
Baseball did give the world of professional wrestling one truly amazing gift, though. This guy:
As an undrafted walk-on, Randy Poffo hit over .300 his first three seasons of Rookie and Low-A ball as a catcher and outfielder. When he injured his throwing shoulder, he taught himself to throw with his other arm. After his baseball career failed to take off, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and started his career in wrestling.
Thank God no one thought to paint a baseball on his face.
Now let’s all kick back and watch the Macho Man sock some dingers in a charity softball game.
