Devotees of the Pixar’s “Toy Story” franchise are eagerly anticipating the release of the fourth installment of the beloved film series on June 21, 2019, and now comes evidence that one of baseball’s most iconic players has a cameo in the movie by way of bobblehead.
Susan Slusser, the San Francisco Giants beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, was reviewing stills released ahead of the premiere of “Toy Story 4” when she happened upon the presence of a Rickey Henderson bobblehead.
Henderson, MLB’s all-time steals leader, is portrayed sporting an Oakland A’s uniform standing alongside Woody and other members of the “Toy Story” gang.
It may seem like an odd “cameo” at face value, but it turns out “Toy Story” producer Jonas Rivera is an A’s superfan, as noted in a column from Peter Hartlaub.
From the piece:
Rivera was interviewed for an entire chapter in the 2019 book “If These Walls Could Talk: Stories From the Oakland A’s,” co-written by Slusser and A’s announcer Ken Korach. The producer compared the renegade spirit of Oakland and the A’s to Steve Jobs and his work helping to build Pixar into a creative animation force.
“The A’s, to me, are born out of that attitude,” Rivera told Slusser and Korach. “This city is born out of that, always in the shadow of San Francisco, and always the underdog. The city of Oakland and the teams here have to fight harder. Pixar, in my mind, is cut from the same cloth. Especially in the early days. Jobs was all about counterculture and throwing the ball the other way, so to speak.”
It will be interesting to see if any other sports-related Easter eggs in “Toy Story 4,” as a “Man of Steal” bobblehead makes for a pretty fantastic start.
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