Season 9 Episode 11: A Man for No Seasons

On the Bundy BreakdownMarried with Children No Ma’am Takes Over the Bundy Club: Bundy Breakdown Zoom Watch Party with Griff, Bob Rooney and Ike!

Major League Baseball has gone on strike, the 1994 season is over, and Al Bundy regards this as a personal injury. NO MA’AM’s response is to start a league of their own, sponsored by the only businesses willing to put up money, which means a team called the Chicago Cleavage playing in front of a crowd to the sound of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Along the way the group breaks into Wrigley Field, which gets Al interviewed on television by Joe Morgan, and the interview is the best scene in the episode. Morgan cannot get Al’s name right, Peg takes the microphone to answer a question that was not asked of her, and Al’s stated motive is the love of the game. Six real ballplayers appear as themselves, including Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas and Dave Winfield, several of whom were in the middle of genuinely significant seasons when the strike ended them. The episode also contains Griff’s initiation into NO MA’AM, which is the funniest sequence of the season so far: a three-stage ordeal involving a propeller beanie, a Man in Training shirt, and a final challenge in the Chamber of the Damned that Griff does not survive in silence.

The sponsors are the point. A league bankrolled by strip club owners produces team names, uniforms and a stadium atmosphere the script mines for most of its material, and it lets the show make an argument it genuinely believed: that the men who actually care about baseball had just been locked out of it by people who do not. Al’s grievance is played straight even as everything around it collapses into farce, and the episode marks the first appearance of Ike, who sticks around as a NO MA’AM regular for the rest of the series.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 27, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 11
• Overall episode number: 194
• Written by: Kim Weiskopf
• Directed by: Amanda Bearse
• Taped: November 11, 1994
• Production note: Set during the real 1994-95 MLB strike, which ran from August 1994 to April 1995 and wiped out the World Series.
• Production note: The first appearance of Ike, who becomes a recurring NO MA’AM member.
• Title note: A play on A Man for All Seasons.

Guest Cast

• Mike Piazza as himself
• Frank Thomas as himself
• Dave Winfield as himself
• Bret Saberhagen as himself
• Danny Tartabull as himself
• Joe Morgan as himself
• Pat Millicano as Sticky
• Shaun Toub as Akbar

The Chamber of the Damned

Griff’s initiation is the best thing in the episode and a genuinely good character scene for Harold Sylvester. The two completed trials are both humiliations conducted in public, and Griff’s response when asked whether he is ready for the third is the most Griff line in the series: he has an ex-wife and he works in a shoe store, so he feels no pain. He is then put in a bathroom with a two-hour videotape and the episode cuts away. His scream arrives on cue.

Al’s standard for membership, delivered to a room that nods along, is one of the better NO MA’AM jokes: the organization’s requirements have to be tough, because it is not like California, where you can simply walk in.

The Joe Morgan interview works because Morgan plays it entirely straight as a reporter struggling with a bad assignment. He calls Al by the wrong name twice, asks a single-word question, and gets an answer from the wrong person. Al’s instruction to pay no attention to his wife, phrased as a reference to Morgan’s own Cincinnati team, is the line of the episode.

The casting is a real snapshot of the strike’s cost. Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr. and Tony Gwynn were all in the middle of career years that the stoppage ended, and three of the men who appear here were among those affected.

The closing credits carry a dedication: “For Rocco, April 19, 1979 to October 23, 1994, Purr, Purr, Purr.”

Famous Quotes

• Al, running the ceremony: “You’ve survived the other initiation rites: The purchasing of panty shields in broad daylight. The attending a Julio concert in wig and matching ensemble. Are you ready for the third and final challenge?”
• Griff: “Hey, I’ve got an ex-wife and I work in a shoe store. I feel no pain.”
• Jefferson: “Al, are you sure we should put Griff through this?” Bob Rooney: “Yeah, the human mind is only made of flesh and bone.”
• Al, on standards: “NO MA’AM isn’t like California. You can’t just walk in. Our standards have to be tough!”
• Joe Morgan: “We’re here with the leader of the Wrigley Field break-in boys, Al Birdie.” Al: “That’s Bundy.” Morgan: “Birdie, let me ask you this. Why?”

Notes

• The NO MA’AM team is called the Chicago Cleavage and is sponsored by the nudie bars and their owners.
• Al’s response to Peg taking the microphone involves calling her the Big Red Machine, which was Morgan’s own Reds team of the 1970s.
• “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” scores the montage of the Cleavage playing to a full house.

A Man for No Seasons

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