User Reviews

Ward has a baseball signed by some of the great baseball players of his youth including Grover Cleveland Alexander. He has decided to put it his den as a remembrance. Then Ward gets drafted to go out shopping with June.

Home alone, Beaver shows the ball to Larry and Larry says let's play catch with it. Larry believes it would be great to play with a ball they're not supposed to touch. Beaver doesn't think 1t's a good idea but Beaver has no resistance when it comes to Larry and the baseball ends up in the street run over by a truck and completely ruined.

When Ward returns home from being out with June he finds the den locked. Beaver and Larry claim they are in there because Wally was bothering them. When Wally walks in the front door, Ward snaps at him for picking on Beaver and Larry. Beaver and Larry are in the den writing names on one of Larry's baseballs in the hopes Ward will be none the wiser.

Fred Rutherford stops by claiming he wants some reports to look over. While Ward goes upstairs to get them from his briefcase, Fred looks at the baseball at thinks Ward is playing a joke on him, the names are all wrong. Ward immediately calls upstairs for Beaver who knows he is in trouble. Ward really is upset this time and grounds Beaver for a week with no TV. And he has to eat up in his room.

Larry comes by to get Beaver and is shouting up to him to open the window. When Beaver comes to the window Larry wants to know if Beaver squealed on him. Beaver says no, but he knows Larry would squeal on him.

At dinner June is making her usual complaints that it's lonely without Beaver at the table. Before you can say I told you so, Ward has crumbled and is going upstairs to bring Beaver down when Wally interrupts him. Wally tells his dad he shouldn't break down. Wally relates an incident when he was younger and Ward broke down on his punishment. Wally says Eddie and Lumpy knew what punishment Wally had received, and Wally felt bad that his friends thought of Ward as a pushover. Ward returns to the dinner table by himself. June is disappointed that Beaver isn't with him. Ward says he just learned a lesson from Wally, if we want our children to love us, it's first important that they respect us.

Ward would be seen as quite the bully parent today; some parents might even turn him in to DCS. There are those who observe that today children are in power and it is parents who get the punishment. I doubt there are many who would disagree that our culture has become child centric. That may be the reason some coffee shops, restaurants, and movie theaters have initiated bans on children in their establishments because parents can no longer control their children in public.

Everybody has a friend like Larry Mondello. Throughout the three seasons he's on Larry always convinces the Beaver to do things that always gets him in trouble but not in a criminal or malicious way. This time is to use a prized possession of Ward a signed baseball. Beaver keeps telling Larry not to use the baseball but at the end they are playing catch with it. Not surprising Beaver misses the catch and the baseball gets destroyed. Larry then takes another baseball and attempts to sign the ballplayers names all the while saying I'm your pal.

When Ward is showing the baseball to Fred Rutherford its obvious the gig was up. Ward was right in punishing the Beaver in order for him to respect other people's property and the Beaver alone is responsible cause he should not be able to be talked into doing something is wrong.

This is an extremely funny and well-written episode. Ward has decided to display his special baseball in the den - a ball covered all over with autographs of baseball greats. As you can imagine, the item has great sentimental value for sports-loving Ward. But then Larry Mondello comes over to play, and you just know things are going to go sour. Always the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Larry entices Beaver to bring the ball outside and play with it. Beaver resists vigorously and repeatedly; but the next thing we know, the two boys are outside throwing Ward's precious baseball around. Before long the ball rolls underneath a moving truck and is thoroughly smashed. How will the boys get out of this predicament?

The scheme they cook up is quite a riot (shall I mention the names "Baby Ruth" and "Kiki Gherig"?). There are notable contributions from Fred Rutherford ("the hickory hitting the cowhide is music to my ears!") and some sprightly banter between Ward and June. (Ward, reacting to the idea of frozen waffles: "Whatever happened to those sweet, gray haired old ladies who worked in the kitchen all day?" June: "They're posing for the pictures on the frozen food packages, dear.")

Although Beaver gets the blame and the punishment for ruining the baseball, Larry does get a satisfying comeuppance of sorts. And Ward even learns a lesson about parenting from Wally! Interestingly, both Beaver and Ward undergo the same temptation to "back down" - Beaver on obeying Ward's order not to touch his baseball and Ward on giving Beaver his due punishment. This gives the episode a nice symmetry and shows that both children and adults have moral lessons to learn. And along the way we are led to believe that it is a little foolish to treat sports heroes as "ancient gods."