A Punch and Judy Hitter

I did not grow up in a baseball household. My dad was a football guy, and took us to exactly one game, the Wichita Arrows against the Denver Bears at old Mile High Stadium in the early 1970s. He hated it, had a terrible time, and we left early. But somehow baseball found me, right around October of 1978. I started watching (not playing) and I came to learn the game. But the phrase “Punch and Judy hitter” popped up more than once on the broadcasts. Usually it came from some grizzled coach or a grumbling fan, muttered with a half-snarl after a batter poked a dinky single through the infield. It even managed to find its way in to the old Avalon Hill game, Baseball Strategy. I always understood the tone—it was not a compliment—but I never really understood the reference. Who were Punch and Judy? And why were their names forever tied to slap-happy contact hitters who could not hit a ball out of a phone booth?

According to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, a Punch and Judy hitter is someone who does not swing for the fences. He chokes up, pokes the ball, slaps it to the opposite field, and drops it just where no one can catch it. No power. No fireworks. But he gets on base. The term, it turns out, is borrowed from the chaotic world of British puppet shows. Punch and Judy, in their original setting, were not exactly known for subtlety. They beat each other over the head with sticks in violent, absurd slapstick skits that have somehow survived for centuries. A Punch and Judy hitter, then, is a batter who pokes and slaps, not one who blasts and bruises. But the deeper you go, the more curious this connection becomes.

To understand Punch and Judy, one must travel back to 16th-century Italy, where the character Pulcinella emerged from the commedia dell’arte, a wildly popular tradition of improvised comic theater. Pulcinella was a trickster, a clown with a humped back, a squawking voice, and a beak-like nose. He was a servant who always believed he was smarter than his masters, and sometimes, he was. The character spread across Europe, evolving into Polichinelle in France, Kasperle in Germany, Petrushka in Russia, and finally, Punch in England. He first showed up in London on May 9, 1662, when Samuel Pepys recorded seeing a performance in Covent Garden by an Italian puppeteer named Pietro Gimonde, also known as Signor Bologna. That date is now considered Mr. Punch’s birthday.

This was not merely a moment of entertainment. It was a cultural shift. England had just emerged from the gray, joyless grip of Puritan rule under Cromwell. With Charles II restored to the throne, a tidal wave of theatrical and artistic expression surged across the country. People craved color, noise, and irreverence. Punch delivered.

Originally, Punch was a marionette, manipulated by strings. But strings made it difficult to deliver the kind of comedy that Punch was becoming famous for—blunt-force, physical, and chaotic. The solution was the glove puppet. Now a single puppeteer could slide Punch over his hand, grab a stick, and let the chaos begin. The show took on a rhythm, a recognizable structure. Punch would arrive, gleeful and cackling through his swazzle—a little voice device held in the puppeteer’s mouth. Judy would hand him their baby. Punch would botch the babysitting, Judy would return and berate him, and then the slapstick would fly. A policeman would arrive, and Punch would clobber him, too. A crocodile might steal a string of sausages. The Devil would come for Punch’s soul, only to be chased off with a beating. Each scene followed a madcap, topsy-turvy logic. Authority always lost. Punch always won. And every time he smacked another opponent into submission, he would squeal his triumphant motto: “That’s the way to do it!”

In its original form, this was not children’s entertainment. These shows were meant for grownups, who laughed at the absurdity of it all—the nagging wife, the inept police, the corrupt lawmen, the Devil himself—all brought low by a violent, bug-eyed puppet with no impulse control. Charles Dickens, for one, loved it. He saw in Punch a harmless fantasy, a sort of absurdist release from the pressures of real life. “It is quite harmless,” he wrote, “and an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct.”

By the 1800s, Punch had a permanent place in British culture. He showed up in theaters, on streets, in traveling booths, and seaside resorts. His booth, striped red and white, became iconic. His wife’s name shifted from Joan to Judy—some say because it was easier to pronounce through the swazzle. The characters around him expanded: a doctor, a hangman, Joey the Clown, a baby, a skeleton, and of course, the crocodile. Performers were known as Professors, and their sidekick—the bottler—would drum up the crowd and collect money. This was a street tradition, a rough-and-tumble kind of folk theater with no set script, passed from one puppeteer to the next.

And then, Punch crossed the Atlantic.

He arrived in America sometime in the 18th century, popping up in Philadelphia and San Francisco. By the 19th century, performers like William Judd were selling full Punch and Judy kits to traveling showmen. Wooden figures, puppets, even pre-made booths could be purchased. The formula stayed much the same, but the delivery shifted. In the United States, Punch and Judy became part carnival sideshow, part party entertainment. Over time, the violence was toned down—at least somewhat. The hangman gave way to the crocodile, and Judy gave better than she got. Still, the core structure remained. Chaos ruled. Punch triumphed.

Modern performers like Mark Walker, also known as Professor Horn, have carried the torch into the 21st century. Walker’s version, performed at the Library of Congress, retains the slapstick chaos but redirects the aggression. He prefers to let Punch take out his frustrations on the Devil or on authority figures, rather than on his wife. In fact, recent reimaginings—such as the Judy Project in Britain—have rewritten the narrative to give Judy more voice and more agency. In these newer versions, Judy even questions the legacy of her own character, reflecting a modern discomfort with the show’s darker elements.

That discomfort is understandable. After all, there is something undeniably unsettling about laughing at puppets hitting each other. Yet, Punch and Judy has never been a morality play. It has always been more like a mirror—warped and exaggerated—showing society’s flaws through farce and folly. It is not supposed to teach. It is supposed to poke, prod, and parody.

In many ways, the Punch and Judy hitter in baseball shares that spirit. He does not play the game the way you are supposed to. He does not hit 500-foot home runs. He does not crush pitchers. He slaps, pokes, nudges, and annoys. He defies the rules of power and wins in his own oddball way. He is Punch in cleats.

There is something oddly admirable about that. In an age obsessed with dominance and raw numbers, the Punch and Judy hitter is an outlier. Like the puppet for whom he is named, he reminds us that there is more than one way to play the game, more than one way to win, and more than one way to tell a story.

That is the way to do it.