Hulk Hogan Never Played in The Little League World Series

The Gawker trial taught us nothing Hulk Hogan says in character is to be interpreted as truth. That includes the wrestler's boasts of baseball greatness.

A new Little League World Series champion will be crowned just days after publish of this newsletter. Perhaps, at some point years in the future, participants from the 2024 Little League World Series will join current surprise National League MVP contender Jurickson Profar, 2020 MLB World Series champion Cody Bellinger, Cy Young Award winner Dwight Gooden on the roll call of LLWS alumni to gain fame beyond Williamsport.

Nowhere on that roll is the name Terry Bollea. Neither is the name Hulk Hogan — which might seem obvious, given the latter is a stage name. Thanks to the asinine decision of a Florida judge in 2016, however, it’s in the best interest of anyone publicly discussing the exploits of has-been pro wrestler Hulk Hogan in a way that separates the character from the man portraying the character.

See, the argument in the Gawker case relied on this idea that Terry Bollea and Hulk Hogan are not one in the same. Hogan is a character, and one that by Bollea’s own admission in court, he portrays any time he is in public. But whereas Hulk Hogan is a celebrity, Terry Bollea is a private citizen, and who is whom seems to be determined on what most benefits Bollea at that given moment.

It makes no sense, I know. It’s confusing, it’s ridiculous, and as a legal strategy, a reasonable judge would immediately throw out a case predicated on the concept. Had Bollea not had the financial backing of misanthropic tech billionaire Peter Thiel, I suspect the invasion of privacy lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker would have been quickly tossed out.

But this isn’t about the Gawker case. This edition of The Press Break is what those in the wrestling community call fantasy booking. Fantasy booking entails a fan laying out possibilities for a storyline or general direction of a show, as well as attributing motivation to characters’ actions.

Think of it like speculation around movie and TV plots. All that follows is presented in the spirit of fantasy booking, since we’re talking about the character Hulk Hogan and not private citizen Terry Bollea.

I don’t know Terry Bollea. I do know that Terry Bollea never played in the Little League World Series and certainly didn’t bat .714 at the event as claimed in his autobiography. Applying the premise of the Gawker lawsuit, we must then assume that boasts of playing in the Little League World Series and hitting for a Herculean average in Williamsport come from Hulk Hogan and are part of the Hulk Hogan lore.

Now, wrestling gimmicks having fictitious backgrounds is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Mark Calaway, who portrayed The Undertaker, wasn’t actually a possibly undead monster controlled by an urn and trained in MMA. That just made for a far more interesting backstory than if The Undertaker was introduced as a center from the Texas Wesleyan basketball team.

An odd wrinkle to Hulk Hogan making the Little League World Series part of the character’s backstory, however, is that of that many things kayfabed¹ about wrestling personas, boasts of athletic accomplishment are usually legitimate and verifiable. A bevy of prominent wrestlers were college football standouts, for example, with their gridiron credentials touted to bring their characters legitimacy.

That’s not just a byproduct of wrestling as an industry pulling back the curtain on its performative nature in the 21^st Century, either. Ron Simmons twice earning football All-American honors at Florida State was a major part of his wrestling identity in an era when the medium still presented itself to its audience as genuine competition. The All-Big 8 recognition offensive lineman Leon White earned at Colorado played into the character Vader, an uncontrollable madman who dwelt in an isolated castle somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

So, given how often the athletic claims wrestlers made were legitimate, the choice to give Hulk Hogan a fictitious Little League World Series history is peculiar. That is, unless you consider the motivation of character Hulk Hogan is rooted in insecurity and petty jealousy, specifically jealousy toward the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

Part of Savage’s backstory is the very real baseball career of Randy Poffo. Poffo, who became a multiple-time champion in both the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling as Randy Savage, was drafted into the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1971.

Poffo was a standout catcher in high school and spent four seasons playing minor-league ball for farm clubs of both the Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds.

His time with the Reds is especially noteworthy when fantasy booking the motivations of Hulk Hogan in claiming past baseball greatness: A part of the lore Hogan has given the character is that he was a Cincinnati prospect at one time.

Maybe this is a way of extending the feud between Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, which culminated at WrestleMania V 35 years ago. If nothing else, Hogan’s baseball proclamations add credence to Savage’s charges of jealousy made in the build-up to their match.

Again, this is all very ridiculous and having to present the words and actions of Hulk Hogan as being independent of the man behind the character is hardly worth the time and energy put into this newsletter. That is, it wouldn’t be worth the time if not for recent developments thrusting Hulk Hogan back into the news.

Hogan appeared at last month’s Republican National Convention to introduce Donald Trump as the GOP nominee, and Hogan seems to be campaigning for Trump in an unofficial capacity since. At an event to promote a line of beer licensing his name, Hulk Hogan launched into one of these campaign pitches, asking attendees if he should body slam and “drop the leg²” on Democratic Party nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris while throwing some racism in the mix.

Given we’re less than a decade removed from Hogan being briefly ostracized by WWE for racist comments revealed during the Gawker case, and after a long road back to some semblance of public acceptance thanks to mainstream media like the Los Angeles Times offering Hogan some image rehabilitation, it seems an odd choice for the man performing as Hulk Hogan to dive back into those especially gross waters.

But the angle to this I find the most perplexing is, applying the Gawker case parameters, someone campaigning for a presidential candidate entirely in-character, no matter the content of their pitch to voters.

Picture it this way: In Forrest Gump, the actor Tom Hanks portrays the titular character on a journey that includes the fictional Forrest playing football at the very real University of Alabama. If we’re being generous, this analogous to the fictional Hulk Hogan claiming to have played at the real Little League World Series and having fielded offers from the real Cincinnati Reds.

Now, imagine Tom Hanks in full Forrest Gump wardrobe, speaking as Forrest Gump and being introduced as Forrest Gump, invoking his meetings with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon as real-life interactions with presidents, threatening to run over JD Vance like it was a kickoff return on The Third Saturday In October, as part of a campaign pitch for Harris.

Writing out that scenario even as a hypothetical feels I’m having a break from reality. I would like to think that everyone, regardless of political stripe, would agree this is weird. And, I surmise most folks would agree that Hulk Hogan’s recent return to the public spotlight by way of the presidential campaign is just as weird.

1. “Kayfabe” is wrestling lingo for a distortion of the truth intended to keep outsiders guessing.

2. For those unaware, Hulk Hogan’s signature move for much of his career was a running leg drop across a downed opponent’s neck. In Japan, he used the Axe-Bomber Lariat. An inherent irony with this change is the latter looks much more impressive while being less high-impact on the performer’s body; delivering the leg drop so often throughout his career badly damaged Hogan’s back due to his taking the brunt of the force on his tailbone.