Shark Bytes

I loved this show when I was a kid. I remember Reggie Jackson doing a similar show in the late 80's. But Reggie was Jay Leno to Bench's Johnny Carson, good but not as good as the original.

Johnny Bench is my all-time favorite baseball player...being born and raised in Southern Ohio during the "Big Red Machine years," it just didn't get any better than that! I was fortunate enough to play baseball through my college years...what a great game and what a great catcher Bench was!

I loved this show also...just a great mix of baseball and fun, IMO. I have to admit, it was painful for me to watch the replay of Rollie Fingers striking out Bench during the '72 Series (after faking the intentional walk)! But Fingers and Bench were great that episode...I still love you, Johnny!

This show was great! It was on Saturday mornings after the Cleveland NBC affiliate's own Saturday morning show. My dad would wake up when it was on and offer his 2 cents to what Johhny Bench or Tommy Lasorda said. 99% of the time he agreed with them. To this day, my dad claims that a lot of kids learned to play baseball by watching this show, me being one of them.
P.S.,
my dad says Johnny Bench is the greatest catcher ever!

I remember the days of The Baseball Bunch. I remember it being one of my favorite shows on saturday morning besides the Smurfs. I was in Kindergarten when the show first aired, but my memories of it are quite vivid.

I became a great softball player by learning so many great tips over the years. This show was the only program my dysfunctional family would watch together. At least 30 minutes each week was set aside for my family to be normal.

Ooooohhhh, the memories! I can't remember a more simpler time than that. The Baseball Bunch, Saturday mornings, Honeycome cereal and Batman PJ's.
Me and my brother lived and breathed baseabll. He was a pitcher and I was the catcher for our little league team (League Champs three years in a row!)
We would go outside after the show and act like our favorite heroes. Mine was Johnny Bench and he was Bruce Sutter. Hours and hours of doing stuff like this is what kept us out of trouble and out of the house.
No Playstation, X-Box or You Tube. We made our memories outside. Our kids may never understand the meaning of simpler times. Probably the way we never understood the way our parents said the same thing.
Thanks to The Baseball Bunch, I now coach my daughters Softball team and my 3 son's baseball and T-Ball teams. Thanks Johnny and Tommy!! For the Memories!

This show never jumped. It was innocent and pure. A show like this would never make it today.

The Baseball Bunch is pure America back when it was something to say, "I'm an American"

Johnny
Thank you for teaching me how to play!

Great show!!

Useful show too, as every kid in America it seems plays the game at one time or another, and I played a lot.

I particularly loved how they humanized the sport, showing things like "professional" players botching a rundown. Johnny Bench was fantastic, even though I hated the Reds.

I never got to watch The Baseball Bunch very often, but I loved the very fact that the show existed because it made baseball players seem like real people, rather than the rock star cartoon characters we have today. Back then, we knew just enough about our sports heroes, and for the most part, they seemed worth emulating. I had the pleasure of meeting my hero, Chet Lemon in 1984, and he couldn't have treated me better unless he adopted me! These days, we know way too much about athletes in general, yet many of them seem about as approachable as the sun. Who among today's players would be willing to devote their time to a show like The Baseball Bunch? Major League Baseball is so driven to market itself to younger fans (many times at the expense of older fans), but what is it doing to teach them about the game and foster the love for it which I used to have?

I just wanted to say that the kid who played "Sam" (the fat catcher) went on to be a Junior Varsity National Champion debater at Kansas State University. Sadly, a few years later he hanged himself in his closet over a holiday weekend. He was a really awesome kid, very bright, and he didn't grow up to be fat at all. Rest in peace, Jared.

This was a great show for a kid watching something about baseball. I like Johnny Bench and Tommy Lasorda is decent and I like Joe Morgan. It was a good show for kids and even adults could get into it.

When I saw this show listed, I immediately had flashbacks to the early 1980s, where I caught it Saturday mornings on my local NBC station. It was a fun show. Johnny Bench was a great host, and the San Diego Chicken was amusing (listen I was 11 at the time). My favorite episode is when they had my boyhood idol Graig Nettles, the third baseman of the New York Yankees, on to teach fielding. "I'll bet Tommy Lasorda has pinstripe nightmares thanks to Graig Nettles," Bench quipped. Then the show disappeared. NBC Game of the Week, the joy of every Saturday afternoon, soon followed . . .

This show brings back some great childhood memories. This was on my local NBC affiliate every Saturday afternoon. Johnny Bench was a great host, and I enjoyed seeing different big-leaguers every week offer tips on hitting and fielding. I loved when it when my idol, third baseman Graig Nettles of the New York Yankees, was on to demonstrate proper fielding. What was also great was that Bench and his guests always taught the kids to behave professionally and with class when they play. Today, the kids would be encouraged to show attitude, etc. The San Diego Chicken was all right. The skit when they reenacted George Brett's pine tar game was funny. In my view,"The Baseball Bunch" never jumped probably because it wasn't on long enough to jump and because they really didn't change anything. Unfortunately, it went away, then followed by NBC's "Game of the Week," which filled my Saturday afternoons with fun.

I am now preparing for my fourth year playing fantasy baseball. As I was reading projections, this show popped into my mind. I remember getting up early in the morning, running to my best friends house, and watching the Baseball Bunch. We loved the Chicken and Johnny Bench did a terrific job of teaching the finer points of the game. we would head over tot eh little league field on the next block and practice what we learned after each show. Good memories.

I think the show jumped during that two-parter with Special Guest Star Pete Rose. In Part I Pete takes the kids to Vegas. In Part II he teaches them how to scratch themselves...HEY! JUST KIDDING! Call off the lawyers...but seriously folk, I have to agree with the poster who said the "Bunch" jumped when the kids sang, "There Is Nothing Like a Game." I heard they played that song to try and drive the Branch Davidians out of their compound.