Ray Gotto, who passed away last week, was a top sports cartoonist who dabbled in two newspaper strips, both with sporting themes. He did Ozark Ike from 1945 to 1953, then abandoned it to others and drew Cotton Woods from 1955-1958. Ozark Ike was to baseball what Joe Palooka was to boxing, but with more than a few elements of Li'l Abner tossed into the mix…though when baseball was out of season, Ike McBatt was not above going off and playing a little football or basketball. The property was "discovered" and managed by Stephen Slesinger, whose estate is now locked in that infamous battle with the Disney folks over another Slesinger-marketed franchise, Winnie the Pooh.
Gotto's later entry in the funny pages, Cotton Woods, was a slightly more realistic version of the same thing and a better strip but it didn't last as long, probably due to being with a weaker syndicate. (One suspects Gotto created it because of the success of Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel, The Natural, which it slightly resembled. Then again, that was true of Ozark Ike, which came out before Malamud's book.) In any case, after his second strip ended, Gotto returned to his first love, sports cartooning, primarily for The Sporting News. Here, thanks to Merlin Haas who sent me the link, is an obit.