Sigh... All right, let’s just get through this. So Champa contacts Beerus and proposes a friendly game of baseball to build “good relations between Universe 6 and 7.” I’m pretty sure the assemlbed teams represent the only people in either universe that are aware of the other universe.
Some issues with this premise:
1) Champa is only doing this as a pretense to go to Earth and enjoy its delicious cuisine. This seems pointless, as Universe 6′s own Earth was restored in Episode 41. Beerus specifically wished for this so that Champa could enjoy Earth food whenever he liked. Did he forget about this, or does U6′s Earth food just suck? Or maybe the U6 Earthlings destroyed themselves all over again? I mean, the Super Dragon Balls could bring them back to life, but that doesn’t resolve whatever they were fighting over when they died.
2) Champa can’t even field a whole team, so Vegeta and Goten switch sides to make it fair. Maybe they should have organized a Pickleball tournament instead.
3) Only three characters in this cartoon know how to play baseball, and two of them are the umpires. Everyone keeps fucking around and/or trying to hurt one another, because it’s a Dragon Ball cartoon and that’s how they all roll.
Let me just focus on Yamcha here, because he’s the only character who manages to look cool in all of this. Goku manages to strike out Champa, then Yamcha takes over pitching and strikes out two more batters. Then he’s the first at bat, and Vegeta beans him because he thinks the object is to incapacitate the opposing team. So Yamcha gets a free trip to first base.
Then he steals second and third because Champa doesn’t understand the rules well enough to stop him. At one point he throws the ball at Yamcha to cut him off, and apparently that’s illegal. I thought you could do that, but now that I think about it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Then Beerus and Champa start fighting above the field, and Whis and Vados have to stop them before it destroys the entire universe. Destroyer Gods fighting is supposed to be a serious taboo, just like time travel. Funny how Beerus destroyed Bulma’s lab, but he gets to keep his hands.
Anyway, Whis and Vados call off the rest of the game due to the Destroyers’ poor sportsmanship, so we didn’t even get a full inning into this nonsense. Champa is horrified to learn that the game is a tie, but it’s not. Universe 7 wins, because...
... While Beerus and Whis were fighting, and all the other players were cowering in terror, Yamcha managed to steal home plate. So U7 wins, 1-0.
This whole episode is played up like a backhanded compliment to Yamcha. He perserveres through the whole episode to win the game, and everyone congratulates him for it, but there’s also a lot of dunking on Yamcha too. Like “Way to go, Yamcha, I guess you’re not completely useless after all!” That sort of thing.
Also, this whole “Yamcha loves this because he used to be a major leaguer” thing kind of contradicts the very episode of DBZ that this is referring to. Yeah, Yamcha was the star player for the Taitans in Age 761, but he also found the game boring as hell, and he only did it for the money.
Sure, he’s had 18 years to change his mind about the game, and I suspect he’s mostly into this because it’s a chance to look cool in front of the others, but this episode is still kind of a let-down for me. There was a baseball issue of the Tenchi Muyo! comic, there was a baseball episode of Deep Space Nine, there was a baseball episode of Transformers, etc. etc. This is the literal definition of a trope shows use to blow off an episode.
