Comedy Central/Games with Names Podcast
Bill Burr has been grinding away on a press tour to promote the release of his new stand-up comedy special Drop Dead Years, with his latest appearance coming on the Julian Edelman-hosted podcast Games with Names. While appearing on the former New England Patriots wide out’s pod, Burr detailed a sketch he pitch while working on Chappelle’s Show that never made it on air.
Bill Burr appeared in a handful of Chappelle’s Show sketches during the show’s brieg by iconic run, most notably in “Samuel Jackson Beer” (S2 E1), “The Racial Draft” (also S2 E1), and “World Series of Dice (S2E7).
According to Burr, he also wrote a sketch in which Dave would travel back in time to the segregated days of baseball that never made it to air.
“I’m always watching this old footage of sport — they would tell the history of baseball separately. They would talk about in the 1950s [old timey accent], ‘Oh boy, oh boy — it was the golden age of baseball! Willie, Mickey and the Duke! And I used to centerfield and woopy doopy, there was Duke Snider!'” Burr explained.
“And then they had the other side, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. And it was super ugly, and people were throwing black cats on the field, and saying all of this s—. But they told those two stories separately for some weird reason,” he continued while cuts to Julian Edelman showed Tom Brady’s former safety blanket looking generally confused.
“So I wrote this sketch where Dave was watching Billy Crystal-going-to-a-Yankee-game things, and just fantasizing, ‘Oh boy, oh boy, I wish I played during the golden age of baseball! And then he went back, and of course, it was like, ‘And here we are, 1954, and he’d come up to the plate.. GET OFF THE FIELD YA BLACK B——!'”
At the end of the anecdote, Burr’s voice seemed to take on a bit of a wistful tone as he lamented not getting the sketch onto the now legendary sketch comedy series.
“The duality of it struck me as funny. Never got it on though,” he concluded.
The Bill Burr baseball sketch than never made it on Chappelle 👀 pic.twitter.com/inQEYagcFr
— Games with Names (@gameswithnames) February 5, 2025
In the two decades since Chappelle’s Show was on the air, both Burr and Dave Chappelle have gone on to become perhaps two of the four Mount Rushmore stand-up comedians of their generation. Burr’s new stand-up special Drop Dead Years will be released on Hulu on March 14.