After the 1957 season, the Dodgers left Brooklyn bound for the west coast. In June of 2001, the minor league Brooklyn Cyclones began play. Between those two years, there was no professional baseball in all of Brooklyn.
Except in comic books. Well, sort of Brooklyn. That's Brooklyn, right?
(OK, maybe not)
Young Justice was a team composed of the teenage sidekicks of several members of the Justice League, with some un-attached teenage heroes added to the team later (member listing and individual details will be attached to the lineup, below), basically the original concept of the Teen Titans, but that team and its pre-existing membership roster had a devoted fan base so it made sense to use another name for the new group. (Later they would in fact "graduate" to becoming a new Teen Titans team.) The Young Justice ongoing series was written by Peter David, who has been ranked by voters at Comic Book Resources # 17 in a listing of Top Comic Book Writers. One of the things that make him stand out from the crowd is his sense of humor, and on none of his runs on comic book series was this more evident than on Young Justice, where the background music tended to be an orchestra of slide whistles and kazoos. Probably the biggest Young Justice story was a wild, wacky ride called "Sins of Youth" in which the teen heroes of the DC Universe (not only Young Justice, but some non-members as well) were, though magical and technological means, turned into adults, and the Justice League and Justice Society members became younger, ranging from teenager to toddler. That story, broadly speaking, set the stage for the team of young heroes to play a worlds-saving game of baseball! It happened in the January, 2001 issue of Young Justice:
The original Green Lantern made his debut in 1940. In 1941, the writers decided to give him a comic-relief sidekick, so Doiby Dickles (that's "derby" spoken with a heavy New York/Brooklyn/"tough guy" accent), a short, pudgy, streetwise cabbie with a heavy Brooklyn accent was added to the cast. While his appearance (contrasted with the tall, lean, muscular hero) made him a bit comical, he was generally an asset to his patron hero and was part of nearly every Green Lantern adventure until his solo adventures ceased to be published when super-hero stories went out of style at the end of the Golden Age of Comic Books. When Golden Age heroes were revived in the Silver Age, Doiby was not forgotten. However, he was a bit of an embarrassment in an age where super-heroes took themselves a bit more seriously, and in which ethnic accents weren't considered inherently funny anymore. Nonetheless, rather than ignoring him entirely, the writers of the new Green Lantern's book, which included occasional appearances by the Golden Age character, made the effort to give him a dignified and happy send-off. The lovely Princess Ramia of the planet Myrg, rather than allow the ruling council of the planet to force her to marry the evil Prince Peril, fled to Earth. There she encountered Doiby, who befriended her and then enlisted the aid of both the Golden Age and Silver Age Green Lanterns in defeating Peril. Once the battle was won, Doiby stayed on "Moig" and married his "Space Princeress," there to reign by her side happily ever after.
But there are no permanent good-byes in comic books, and happily ever afters frequently have some detours along the way. Doiby's first few returns to Earth, after an absence of almost twenty years, were for a happy occasions. He and Ramia (now speaking with Doiby's heavy Brooklyn accent) attended the wedding of Green Lantern to his long-time secretary. He then returned again to invite Green Lantern and his wife to Myrg, where he revealed that he and Ramia have re-made the entire planet in the image of his beloved, idealized, mid-20th-century Brooklyn, complete with elevated trains, Coney Island fairways, and baseball being played in replicas of Ebbets Field. Doiby continued living his dream off-panel for another eight (publication) years.
And then, off-panel, Myrg was invaded and conquered by the alien Gren. Prince Marieb of Gren forced Ramia to divorce Doiby and marry him instead, and Doiby became a wanted criminal on Myrg. He fled back to Earth, where he met up with a number of fellow former Golden Age sidekicks (though unlike them, Doiby was an adult when he acted as Green Lantern's sidekick). When Young Justice got into some very public trouble, they banded together as "Old Justice" and took to the airwaves and to Congress to denounce the young heroes and get restrictions imposed on them. The story came to a head in the aforementioned "Sins of Youth" event, which revealed that both Young Justice's public troubles (at least most of them) and Old Justice's formation were manipulated by a group of villains, and after the many affected heroes defeated the villains and returned to their normal ages, the two "Justice" groups parted on good terms.
That proved to be very fortunate for Doiby, because a few months later, he decided to take a break from his troubles in a Catskills resort he'd liked in his youth...by wild coincidence (a recurring phenomenon in the series), the same Catskills resort that Young Justice was using as a temporary headquarters. Doiby was moping over the loss of his wife and his home planet, lamenting that there was nothing he could do about it. The members of Young Justice offer to help him regain what he had lost, but Robin, who has always tended to be more cautious than the others, points out that they don't have a spaceship. Suddenly, they get a delivery (one of my favorite subtle Peter David jokes in the series):
The box contains, of course, a spaceship capable of interstellar travel. Where did it come from? It's the follow-up from the second issue of the series two years earlier, in which the team saved the desert kingdom of the extremely wealthy shiek "Ali Ben Styne." In gratitude, he told Young Justice that he'd give them anything...except his money. (And yes, there was a Ferris Bueller's Day Off reference in that issue as well.) The speedster Impulse, whose code-name describes the workings of his brain, dashed forward and made the request, which was not revealed. Turns out, he asked for a spaceship, and it just arrived at that moment.
Thus equipped, Young Justice and Doiby took to the spaceways, joined en route by a teenaged version of the ruthless bounty hunter Lobo (another use of the "absurd coincidental timing" humor. David was quite fond of using that). When they landed on Myrg, Doiby was immediately arrested, and despite Young Justice's threatening response, Prince Marieb remained defiant. Suddenly, a large spaceship darkened the sky overhead, and Marieb begged Young Justice to protect him from those aboard it, promising in return to restore leave Myrg and Ramia and restore Doiby to his rightful position. This spaceship belonged to an alien race called the Slag, and they had recently conquered Gren and consequently were the new rulers of Myrg. And what are the Slag obsessed with? Take one look at the head of the Slag regiment and take a guess (if the site this article appears on isn't enough):
While the absurdity of an alien race being familiar with baseball is part of the inherent humor of the story, the phenomenon is explained in-story, though never conclusively. The Slag claim to have invented the game on their own, with its precise similarity to baseball simply being on of those Peter David coincidences. Robin suspects that they picked up radio signals from Earth and then adopted the game and falsely claimed it as their own invention. (Strangely, no one even suggests that the Slag actually invented it and that it was introduced to Earth by them or by another race taught by them.) In any case, the Slag have a custom of giving their conquest targets the sporting chance to prove themselves worthy of continued freedom through a game of baseball (one wonders how many other planets must have been familiar with baseball for any of them to have ever had the chance. Myrg, of course, has baseball because Doiby brought it from Earth). Myrg is already under their rule (because Gren, conquerors of Myrg, couldn't beat them in baseball), but they will be allowed to play for their freedom...with Earth on the line was well.
Young Justice plus Doiby made eight players, so the Slag used their alien technology to read Wonder Girl's mind and teleport to them the person she's most like to have with the team - their former teammate, archery gold medalist Cissie King-Jones, who was just two issued earlier saved from an attack by the co-star of the last article's story. (As Myrg clearly has baseball at some sort of professional level, it's a mystery why a local was not simply recruited. Maybe the reason is that they were really playing for Earth's fate and not just Myrg's.) After yelling at her for not thinking of someone (say, Superman, as the super-heroes are allowed to use their powers in the game) more likely to help them win a baseball game with the fates of Myrg and Earth on the line, she and the others outfitted themselves with baseball-jersey versions of their costumes and took the field, in the following arrangement:
| Pitcher | Impulse | The grandson of Barry Allen, a.k.a. the Flash, he has super-speed like his grandfather. He's the sidekick/protege for Wally West, Barry's own former sidekick and successor to the Flash name. He was portrayed in live action by Kyle Gallner on an episode of Smallville. |
| Catcher | Superboy | A wisecracking teenaged sorta-clone of Superman that was created when Superman was sorta-dead; he's the protege and something of an adopted younger brother to Superman. |
| First Base | Secret | A ghostly girl whose body is made of smoke or mist. She is capable of solidifying part or all of her body. |
| Second Base | Robin | This is the third Robin, Tim Drake. Never portrayed in live action, he is the second Robin who appears in the various Batman animated series of the 1990s. |
| Shortstop | Empress | A granddaughter of a New Orleans voodoo priestess, she is acrobatic and can teleport short distances. |
| Third Base | Doiby Dickles | |
| Left Field | Lobo | A character frequently played for comic relief with over-the-top crudeness and violence, he is an amoral (to the point of having committed genocide) bounty hunter with super-strength, stamina and the ability to heal from any wound. He was turned into a teenager during the "Sins of Youth" crossover event but unlike the other youthened adult characters, didn't get turned back into his usual adult self. He hooks up with Young Justice on the way to Myrg (another bit of Peter David fortunate-coincidence humor) simply because he likes to fight, and they accepted him because they needed more muscle in order to invade Myrg. The regular, adult version of the character has been depicted in live action on the show Krypton, played by Emmett J. Scanlan. |
| Center Field | Wonder Girl | The second heroine to bear the name (the first, Donna Troy, had long since taken on other code names). Protege of Wonder Woman, she was given the powers of super-strength and flight by Zeus. (She is later revealed to actually be his daughter.) |
| Right Field | Cissie King-Jones | A gold medal-winning archer, she formerly used the name Arrowette as a hero and member of Young Justice. After her school guidance counselor was murdered by a stalker, she almost killed him, but after being prevented from doing so, she quit costumed heroics altogether and, consequently, the team. |
The batting order is a bit of a question mark. What we know for certain is that Impulse is the lead-off hitter, and at some point in the lineup (probably the last four batters due to the quality of play of the last three), Wonder Girl, Secret, Cissie and Doiby bat in that order. There is a page in which the Young Justice team is depicted in an order which is neither alphabetically nor by position. Impulse is listed first, so perhaps that was intended to be the batting order, but the four mentioned above who batted consecutively are not consecutive in that image, so either it was changed for story reasons after the page was already drawn, or it was simply random to begin with. If it has any meaning, the remaining Young Justice players are there listed in the following order (though not consecutively): Robin, Superboy, Lobo, Empress.
The Slag players are not named or otherwise identified, or even easily distinguished from one another in the field, as they wear full battle armor for game play. Their commander (depicted above, with the baseball-seam scar/tattoo/whatever on his face) is named K'rnd'g (presumably this is pronounced "corndog" for humorous effect), but he doesn't appear on the field on-panel, only in the dugout. Their announcers have identifying numbers of some sort on their armor (they go through three of them during the course of the game, as they value homerism to an extreme degree...
...the first announcer claims to have lasted for years, which would seem to indicate that the Slag teams do not usually face competition that can be honestly complimented) but those identifiers don't seem to be present, or at least visible on the Slag players.
Impulse, possessing super-speed, burns the ball past the Slag batters, and strikes out the first three of them on nine extremely fast pitches right down the middle. (The umpires are robots, clearly the Slag have as little patience with inconsistent strike zones as with critical commentators.) When Young Justice comes to bat, Impulse leads off (apropos to my comment about the pitchers unwisely hitting last in the prior article, Superboy asks Robin, who serves as the team's leader and manager, why the pitcher is batting first. Robin, at least, knows the reason behind that constant of real-life DH-less baseball) and lays down a bunt...but then rounds the bases at super-speed to score the game's first run. After that, we are treated to a montage of baseball action until the ninth inning, at which point we are told that Impulse has been pitching a perfect game and Young Justice leads 11-0.
As it turns out, the Slag have the technology to compensate for Young Justice's super powers, and were just waiting for the ninth inning to use it in order to make their defeat extremely demoralizing for their new subjects on Myrg. Using said technology,their batters' reflexes were able to adjust to Impulse's super-speed pitching and, in the top of the ninth, they teed off on his pitches to the tune of twelve runs. With Young Justice losing and the bases loaded without a single out, Robin suddenly puts the clues together and realizes that the Slag are now capable of hitting Impulse's pitched. Why it took until twelve runs had scored - you'd think that four or five runs after eight perfect, unhittable innings would be enough to tip off someone trained by the world's greatest detective - but I suppose the Slag were just that good at inducing that false sense of security that the second announcer spoke of. In any case, Robin calls in Cissie to relieve Impulse - because of course an expert archer has perfect aim with projectiles of all kinds (to be fair, that fact was established about Cissie before the baseball game) - moving Impulse to right field, and switched Empress to third, having Doiby take her place at short. He has Superboy set a low, inside target for Cissie to aim for, and she places the pitch perfectly, jamming the Slag batter and inducing a grounder to third base. After Empress steps on third, she uses her teleportation powers to avoid the Slag runner attempting to collide with her and...throws the ball to Robin at second base, who steps on the bag for out # 2. The incoming Slag runner from first forces Robin to throw wildly to first, but Secret is able to stretch the mist-stuff of her midsection so that her hand can catch the ball while her foot is still on the bag. Triple play! If only Robin had figured out this strategy two runs earlier...ah well. (Why she couldn't have just teleported herself to second and then first base to step on them I have no idea; I'm rather certain that her range had been established at more than a mere 90 feet.)
Due up for the Young Justice team would be Wonder Girl, Secret, and Cissie, the last two of whom had yet to get a hit, and a similarly hitless Doiby was to follow, if necessary. The bottom of the ninth is played out in the following issue (which necessitates some introductory exposition - a caption on the first page has an announcer giving the score as 11-10 going into the bottom of the ninth, but that's a mistake, given what was already established in the issue before). Wonder Girl hits the ball so hard that it rips through the Slag outfielder's armored glove, allowing her to be safe with a double. (Incidentally, at this point, the Slag second baseman steps on Wonder Girl's hand, leading Superboy to retaliate and get ejected from the game. Although his continued participation ends up being unnecessary, I'd think that that should have forced Young Justice to forfeit, as they only had eight players left. Perhaps the machine that brought them Cissie to fill out their roster to start the game would have allowed them to summon a replacement.) Secret and Cissie follow and, as expected, they both strike out, which puts the fate of Earth and Myrg in the bat of Doiby Dickles. The Golden Ager gets two strikes and starts clutching his chest in exhaustion and despair. But then his beautiful princess stands up from the crowd to express her confidence in him, and, inspired, he makes contact with the next pitch, launching (perhaps...just perhaps...with assistance from a wind created by Impulse) a walk-off home run into the stands. Young Justice wins the game 13-12, and Doiby, a wanted criminal on Myrg just hours earlier, is now the planet's heroic liberator and soon again to be king.
It's a familiar theme...the cheaters protest when the cheated-on cheat back. K'rnd'g, suspecting involvement of Impulse in Doiby's home run (though Impulse and Young Justice claim innocence), protests and armors up to attack Young Justice and take Myrg by force of arms. Lobo, however, infiltrates the Slag in the stands and yells that he's throwing back Doiby's home run ball. K'rnd'g happily catches it, only to find that it was actually a grenade, which then explodes. K'rnd'g is disgraced, and the Slag leave Myrg in peace, to be followed soon by Marieb and the Gren. Young Justice is yanked away by their vehicle (not the spaceship that brought them to Myrg, but a smaller one, called the "Super-Cycle", which they'd been using since the first issue of their series and has a mind of its own) to another adventure. Cissie is left behind, but the Myrgs use the Slag's teleportation device to return her home, and several issues later, Lobo (who has become a genuine member of the team, his extreme and un-heroic attributes greatly muted in this teenage incarnation), without incident, returns to Myrg to bring the spaceship back to Earth.
And (presumably, as they never again appear in a published comic book not set in the past) Doiby and Princess Ramia re-married and reigned over their Brooklyn-on-Myrg paradise, this time genuinely happily ever after.
