While they might seem wholly disparate, comedy and sports are united by trickery, so says Judah Friedlander.

“I still look at sports as metaphors for other parts of life and creativity,” he explained.

The comedian spoke with TSN.ca about his new book, If the Raindrops United, ahead of a stand-up engagement in Toronto.

“When you’re a pitcher, there’s a reason why you try to make the wind-up the same for every style of pitch, so the batter doesn’t know what’s happening,” said Friedlander.

“There’s so much deception involved and a lot of people don’t realize it, but in joke-writing deception is so much a part of the game. In stand-up, there’s so much of that. With the set-up, you’re presenting something, but you’re actually presenting something else entirely and [the audience] doesn’t realize that until the joke’s over and that’s why they laugh.”

Friedlander’s new book – a collection of cartoons and drawings - is a departure from his stand-up and a project that the Queens, New York resident didn’t initially set out to compose. After seven seasons as the perpetual manchild TV writer Frank Rossitano on the Emmy Award-winning 30 Rock, Friedlander decided to take a step back from acting and return full bore to stand-up, something the 46-year-old has been doing for over 25 years.

“Hollywood likes to pigeonhole people and stereotype them, so all the potential roles I was getting were basically playing the same character on 30 Rock, but with inferior writing,” Friedlander said. “I wasn’t interested in it.”

Back on the road doing stand-up, the inspiration for the book came as a result of the lifestyle of a traveling comedian.

“With touring, a lot of people don’t realize when you’re a stand-up, you’re not just doing your shows,” Friedlander said. “You’re getting up very early at 5am or 6am to travel, to do local press, whether it’s TV, radio, blogs or whatever. It’s constant sleep deprivation because you don’t get to bed until 3am because you’re doing shows until late and then you hafta get up at 6am, so you can do five hours of local press. It’s tiring. So to sort of combat the stress in the downtime, to relax me, I started drawing again.”

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For Friedlander, drawing was a welcome return to a previous pastime.

“I always drew as a kid,” he said. “I would do political cartoons as a kid, as well as all kinds of other art. So I started drawing again and after about four or five months, I realized I had about 50 drawings and most of them are single-panel cartoons and I thought, ‘Hmmm…I think I’m working on a new book’ and I wasn’t even planning on it. I try to think as an artist first and not business first and this was naturally happening, so then I pitched it around and after a while, I was fortunately able to get a book deal. Then, I spent pretty much all of this year working nonstop on the book.”

In doing a collection of drawings, Friedlander was able to explore themes and ideas that stand-up comedy couldn’t necessarily afford.

“In some ways, this book might give a better insight into how my brain works,” Friedlander said. “In the book – even though it’s mostly comedy – I can take a break from the comedy and do a cartoon that’s 100 per-cent serious and not supposed to be funny. There’s more of a dramatic punchline. And that’s something in stand-up that I can’t really do and don’t really want to. I don’t want to take a five-minute diatribe and get preachy and serious. Even if I’m talking about serious issues in stand-up, there’s still tons of laughter going on. So with the book, I can do more digressions that I can’t do in stand-up.”

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Much of Friedlander’s stand-up is done under his “World Champion” persona, famous for his wide array of personalized trucker hats that Friedlander often wore on 30 Rock, as well. The World Champion is the best in the world at pretty much every sport and has a long list of exploits. He once kicked the beard off of Chuck Norris’s face, he played varsity football at DeVry for 17 years and was banned from hockey for skating so fast that the rink melted and his opponents drowned. His first book – 2010’s How to Beat Up Anybody – was written under the World Champion guise.

For this outrageous character, Friedlander has taken cues from the world of professional wrestling.

“I took that and tried to expand on it as much as I can,” Friedlander explained. “Everything I wear – I have a ‘World Champion’ shirt, I have a hat with World Champion emojis. It’s got the American flag on it. All those things – the flags, the stuff written on the hat, the shirt – they all have a storyline behind it and jokes behind it, as well. You can look at it in two ways: you can look at it as gimmicks, but also as depth of character. My ‘World Champion’ persona has changed a lot over the years. It used to be 100 per cent just the greatest athlete and the greatest martial artists, but now it’s become more nuanced. There’s still that background.”

And it’s not just the pageantry of wrestling that Friedlander enjoys. A fan of the sport, he was one of the people WWE legend Mick Foley first approached for advice when he transitioned to a stand-up comedy career after retiring from the ring.

“I think a lot of wrestlers are great actors and performers,” Friedlander says. “I remember years ago, getting into a discussion with someone about TV and they were like, ‘Are you watching Friends tonight?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m watching wrestling. What would you rather do – watch six people talking scripted lines in front of a fake laugh track or do you want to watch a few guys get in the rings on mics, live in front of 20,000 people?’ You tell me what’s more entertaining.”

Friedlander appears at Comedy Bar on Wednesday night for two shows.