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"Night Game" is the 20th episode of the second season of The Real Ghostbusters, first aired September 22, 1987. The episode was written by Kathryn M. Drennan.1 A supernatural battle between the forces of good and evil plays out as a baseball game inside a stadium, and Winston Zeddemore is drafted to play for the side of good, with a human soul as the prize.2
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The episode carries production number 76008, air order number 020, and DVD order number 021. It was recorded on June 27, 1986.1 It first aired during the show's second season and appears on Volume 1, Disc 4 of The Real Ghostbusters DVD box set.
Voice work for the regular cast came from Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman, Frank Welker as Ray Stantz, Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler, Arsenio Hall as Winston Zeddemore, and Laura Summer as Janine Melnitz. For the episode's supernatural characters, Maurice LaMarche also voiced the Umpire and a devil-like player on the evil team, while Arsenio Hall doubled as the Evil Relief Pitcher.
On the night of a full moon, the pitcher's mound in a baseball stadium glows and ectoplasmic energy shoots out before vanishing. The next day, Winston arrives at the firehouse with two tickets to a Jaguars baseball game. Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Janine Melnitz turn him down, and Egon Spengler begs off because he is in the middle of a project. Winston instead appeals to Slimer and his appetite for junk food.
At the stadium, the Jaguars are losing again, but Winston insists it is not about winning. The ectoplasmic energy reappears and hurls a baseball into the ground at high speed. Winston reports the event back to the others, who are skeptical until he lays out an old legend: once every 500 years the supernatural forces of good and evil fight a battle, always on the same site, which happens to be the ground the Jaguars Stadium now occupies.
Egon argues they need a permit from the Mayor first, and that everyone should rest before acting. Winston stays up to read more about the legend, then drives to the stadium alone. A security guard who is a Ghostbusters fan lets him in. Ectoplasmic energy floods the stadium, the guard escapes and calls the firehouse from a pay phone, and Ecto-1 races out.
The Ghostbusters find an ectoplasmic barrier sealing the stadium. The P.K.E. Meter reads an unprecedented level of energy. Egon's plan is to fire all three particle beams at a single spot, which opens a temporary tunnel. They drop through and land before a giant umpire. Winston turns up assigned to short stop. The legend holds that the ghosts choose their form of battle from their surroundings, here a baseball game. The team convinces the Umpire to let them observe, and learn a human soul is the prize. Egon reasons the game is for Winston's soul, since there is no other reason the ghosts would let him play; if good loses, evil will torment that soul for the next 500 years.
The score is tied 0-0 in the eighth inning. The players for evil cheat and score, and the Umpire refuses to penalize them, explaining that cheating is the nature of evil. In the bottom of the ninth, evil brings in a relief pitcher, a giant pink one-eyed humanoid resembling an elephant. Peter decides it is not fair to let a game decide Winston's fate and moves to attack the pitcher with Ray, but Egon stops them: if the Ghostbusters cheat, good loses. With two outs and on the verge of a strikeout, Winston hits a three-run home run to win it for good, 3-1. The forces of evil melt away and those on good's team congratulate Winston before vanishing. The Umpire bids them farewell and muses that they may meet again. Winston then reveals the soul at stake was actually Peter's. Realizing he nearly cost himself his own soul by trying to cheat, Peter declares he will only go to Mets games from now on.
"Night Game" introduces several one-episode supernatural figures that are central to the story.
The Umpire presides over the cosmic contest as a giant spectral figure. He enforces his own brand of absolute fair play: cheating by evil is permitted because it is evil's nature, but any cheating by those on the side of good means good forfeits. He addresses the departing Ghostbusters with a farewell that cryptically implies a future meeting. Maurice LaMarche voiced the character, doubling from his regular Egon role.
Good's Baseball Team is composed of luminous supernatural beings who play by the rules. Winston is added to their roster at short stop. After Winston's home run clinches the win they congratulate him and vanish.
Evil's Baseball Team is a squad of malevolent spirits who compete using whatever tactics they like. Their starting pitcher is a green snake-like entity whose delivery is closer to a sling than a traditional throw. The relief pitcher is a towering, one-eyed pink entity resembling an elephant, brought in specifically to strike Winston out. The Umpire establishes that no party at the game is neutral, which is why the other Ghostbusters cannot intervene: shooting at the relief pitcher would itself count as cheating and hand victory to evil. The relief pitcher was voiced by Arsenio Hall.
In a later IDW Publishing comic, Winston is depicted wearing a Good's Baseball Team shirt, a direct callback to this episode.
In Drennan's handwritten notes, Ray was originally the central character of the episode rather than Winston.3 Slimer was not in the original draft; Drennan received a note asking her to find a way to work him in, so she sent Slimer to the ballpark with Winston, which also gave Winston someone to talk to in dialogue that established him as the right person to play in the game.3
The animation department initially changed the sport from baseball to football, deciding on their own that football would be more visually interesting, and rewrote the script accordingly without consulting Drennan or story editor J. Michael Straczynski. Drennan and Straczynski argued the case and the sport was changed back to baseball.3
Straczynski added Peter's closing line to the final draft as "From now on, I only go to Yankees games." During the recording session, Lorenzo Music changed it on the spot to "From now on, I only go to Mets games," which drew overlapping ad-libs from the rest of the cast naming their own favorite teams.4 The finished episode makes reference to the Mets twice and the Yankees once.
A character named Mr. Pencar was dropped from the episode.1 In the episode introduction recorded for The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, Drennan, a baseball fan, admits to a slip in the sports terminology, with Ray using "points" instead of "runs."
The episode includes several small character details worth noting: Winston's personal car carries the license plate "BIG-042"; dialogue in the episode reveals he always harbored a desire to play Major League Baseball; and an exchange with Janine about fungus briefly captures Egon's full attention in a way the rest of the ghost-hunting scenario does not.
There is a continuity error in the animation: a ghost batter from evil's team is seen at the plate, is struck out, and then later is shown running the bases.
Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report - "Night Game" (1986). ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 8. CPT Holdings, Inc. ↩
Benjamin, Troy & Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, p. 162. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR USA, ISBN 9781506749273. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Benjamin, Troy & Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, p. 77. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR USA, ISBN 9781506749273. ↩
