The Naked Gun's Baseball Bit
Leslie Nielsen had all but retired or decided to by the late 70s after decades of playing the straight man and never really reaching the artistic fulfillment he had been looking for as a thespian. He'd gotten a few starring roles back in his late 20s/early 30s (chief among them the cult classic Forbidden Planet), but then had been relegated to mostly generic supporting parts increasingly similar to one another. Yet another of those came in 1980, but this time in a movie that made fun of what had populated Nielsen's career.
The success of Airplane! gave the actor and his benefactors an idea: do the same kind of parody about cop shows. Didn't work ratings wise (Police Squad was canceled after only 3 airings, out of 6 episodes produced) so they did the next logical thing: increase the budget and make a major motion picture.
The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad is composed from start to finish of priceless, classic moments of movie comedy which all deserve a spotlight of their own. Yet for this week's Scene It my fancy will be to feature the side splitting sequence where Nielsen's Frank Drebbin goes undercover during a baseball game where he quickly gets the gist of what a referee does on the field.
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