"Not likely to tickle his funnybone?"

What about stimulating his hyena gland?

Roly-Poly ain't gonna be happy about that, to be sure...

Greensward seems to be Quality for certain.

*gets out his dolls of Stella Winterbough and Greensward and does the "now kiss" meme*

*amused headshake*

Getting called out like that?

Not likely to make his day, that's for certain...

So Greensward doing a Shohei Ohtani, eh? Or Bugs Bunny?

Being the Red Sox fan I am, I had Ruth in mind. I think an announcer reading off a team list consisting entirely of a roebuck would give the whim-whams to Gawain.

The only problem with that is that Ruth was far more of a braggart than Greensward appears to be...

Using claws on the ball would tear the covering, would it not?

That very much would depend on how the ball is gripped. In thinking about this, I used as a model the grip for the knuckleball, which, despite its name, is actually gripped with the finger-tips, and not the knuckles. I figure that a fur with claws hurling a post-ball might well slightly gouge the ball, which would have very interesting non-magickal effects. (Supposedly, the man who invented the knuckleball, Ed Cicotte [later one of the Black Sox] discovered the properties of scuffing a baseball by banging one against an exposed concrete pillar.)