[txranger]

Came across this old comic strip character from the 1940's named Ozark Ike... He played for a team named the Bugs... Based on some quick research on who the character was based on, from the team in the movie and since Bugs seems to me to be a play on the word Cubs, guess where I based the team... Here is some background on the character and where he was derived from...

Ozark Ike
Ozark Ike was a newspaper comic strip about dumb but likable Ozark Ike McBatt, a youth from a rural area in the mountains. The strip was created by Rufus A. ("Ray") Gotto while he was serving in the Navy during World War II in Washington, D.C. as an illustrator for Navy instruction manuals.
Characters and story
Strong-but-dumb Ike McBatt is from a hillbilly family living in the small backwoods community of Wildweed Run (pop. 49). Ozark Ike is an all-around athlete, playing baseball, football and basketball. Between seasons, he enters the boxing ring. The characters and the baseball park settings are apparently inspired by Ring Lardner's well-known baseball short story "Alibi Ike" (1915), filmed in 1935 as the comedy Alibi Ike.
Ozark Ike's girlfriend is Dinah Fatfield, whose family has been involved in a feud with the McBatt clan for several generations. As evident in the names, this background situation of the strip was inspired by the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
Gotto presented Ozark Ike to promoter Stephen Slesinger, who also managed Red Ryder, King of the Royal Mounted and the merchandising of Winnie-the-Pooh. Slesinger sold the cartoon to King Features Syndicate, and it debuted November 12, 1945. Gotto's assistant on the strip was Fred Rhoads. Gotto left in 1954, but the strip continued until 1959 under King Features cartoonists Bill Lignante and George Olesen. Lignante was better known as one of the leading courtroom artists for network television.
"Ozark Ike" was the nickname of major league baseball players Gus Zernial and Ralph Kiner.

Alibi Ike whom Ozark Ike is based on
Alibi Ike is a 1935 American romantic comedy film directed by Ray Enright and starring Joe E. Brown and Olivia de Havilland. The film is based on a short story "Alibi Ike" written by Ring Lardner and first published in the Saturday Evening Post on July 31, 1915. The film is about an ace baseball player Frank X. Farrell nicknamed "Alibi Ike", a baseball player who continually makes excuses for everything that goes wrong or right. For example, when asked what he batted last year, Farrell says that he had had malaria most of the season, which is why he hit only .356. Lardner is said to have patterned Alibi Ike after baseball player King Cole.
After falling in love with the beautiful sister-in-law of the team manager, he is kidnapped by gangsters who want him to throw the World Series.
Alibi Ike was the most successful of Joe E. Brown's "baseball trilogy" of films, which also included Elmer the Great and Fireman Save My Child. It is considered one of the best baseball comedies of all time.