2019-10-16 – wild

beanball

When I saw this prompt, I had no trouble tying it in with baseball. Indeed, the first thing that came to mind was a random drawing from my college-era (1984–1988) sketch pad. As it happened, the drawing wasn’t finished (the casualty and his first responders had not been inked in), so I took care of that and decided to just go with it.

While I was finishing this one up, I remembered a similar scene from Bull Durham and wondered whether that had been the inspiration for this drawing. But Bull Durham came out in 1988, and (as near as I can tell) this was drawn in about 1986. I did not sign or date drawings back then, but the other drawings on this page in the sketch book were of  (among other things) intramural volleyball and ideas I was working on when I did cartoons for The Acorn (college newspaper), so I’m pretty confident of the date.

1990 (?) – “a guy sits in a bar…”

“I really wish I knew where he was going with this…”

This cartoon fragment resides on one of the first pages of the sketch book I’ve been working in for…forever. Every time I take out my drawing supplies, I flip past this sketch to find a blank page.

That’s supposed to be me on the right (the hairline and facial hair may not be quite the same these days, but I’m sure anyone who knows me will readily recognize the looks of annoyance). Based on the drawings on the surrounding pages, this sketch is from 1990. Beyond that, I have no idea what’s going on here. I have no idea who the other person is (or even if it’s supposed to be anyone specific), what bar this is (strangely, even though the sketch doesn’t necessarily indicate “bar,” I know that’s the setting here), or where I was going with this strip. If I had to guess, I’d say this was likely to be some kind of I-don’t-want-to-hear-how-great-things-are-going-for-you-my-life-sucks statement. Or something similarly uplifting. I might guess this was during the time when my pal Eric was first dating his now-wife Laura—the other character here looks a little like a glassesless Eric—but (a) Eric wouldn’t have been inclined to prattle on about his good fortunes and (b) Eric doesn’t drink.

My beer is probably a Yuengling Lager or a Molson Golden. I was a bit of a label-peeler, so it’s amusing to see I found it worthwhile to capture that here. It was also extremely important, evidently, that I capture the precise position of the two snacks that escaped the bowl in each of the first two panels. And what exactly ARE those snacks? Goldfish?

Dialogue and theme aside, I like how this one was turning out. I wish I’d finished it.