Homer at the Bat
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"Homer at the Bat" is the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' third season. The episode involves Homer's boss, Mr. Burns, trying to guarantee victory in a softball game between the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and the Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant by signing several Major League Baseball players. Things do not go as planned. The episode's title is a play on the Ernest Lawrence Thayer poem "Casey at the Bat".
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[edit] Synopsis
The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team has gone through their season undefeated, and in the championship game, they will face the Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant. Homer is the team's leading hitter, thanks to his homemade bat (a takeoff of the plot of the film The Natural).
Mr. Burns makes a million dollar bet with Aristotle Amadopoulos, owner of the Shelbyville plant, that his team will win. To secure victory in the game, Mr. Burns wants to hire major league stars, but Smithers tells Mr. Burns that the players he picked are all dead (mostly from the 1920s-1930s). Thus Mr. Burns orders Smithers to find some current superstar players and hires several Major League Baseball players to work at the plant (Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey, Jr., Steve Sax, Ozzie Smith, José Canseco, Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry and Mike Scioscia) and to play on the team, much to the dismay of the plant workers who got the team to the championship game in the first place.
However, the night before the game, all the players but Strawberry have different incidents that don't allow them to play. Because of this, Mr. Burns must use actual employees, but keeps Homer on the bench because Strawberry plays his position. Homer does get in, though, with the score tied and bases loaded in the 9th inning, when Burns wants a right-handed hitter against a left-handed pitcher. The very first pitch hits Homer in the head, rendering him unconscious and forcing in the winning run. Homer is then paraded as a hero, still unconscious.
During the credits, Terry Cashman, who wrote the song "Talkin' Baseball", sings a take on his hit, "Talkin' Softball".
[edit] Baseballers
The players in this episode were an extremely talented group. They combined for 77 All Star selections, 34 Gold Gloves, 7 Cy Youngs, and 4 league MVP awards. They also won a combined 12 World Series. Smith and Boggs are presently the only members of the Baseball Hall of Fame from this group, although several players are not yet eligible for election. As of December 2006, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Roger Clemens are the only remaining active players (Mike Scioscia manages the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, José Canseco plays for the Long Beach Armada in the Independent Golden Baseball League, and Don Mattingly serves as the New York Yankees bench coach). At the time, only Steve Sax and Don Mattingly had played for the New York Yankees. Four of the other ringers would later play for the Yankees (Boggs, Clemens, Canseco, and Strawberry).
[edit] Production
José Canseco was originally slated to wake up in bed with Edna Krabappel and miss the game, but Canseco's then-wife, Esther Haddad, objected. Because of the change, Marcia Wallace was listed in the credits, even though Mrs. Krabappel didn't appear at all in the episode.
In the DVD commentary, Al Jean hints that eight of the baseball players were really nice guys, except for one guy whose name rhymes with "Manseco". He later says that Canseco had a hard time saying his lines and was really difficult every time he was told to do a retake. As well, he insisted that his original part be rewritten, so he was written as a hero.
Several of the players in this episode are purposely given distinctly different personalities than what they are known for. Darryl Strawberry, well known for being self-serving and hard to deal with is depicted as an ass kissing coach's dream. Jose Canseco, known for his self-promotion and grandiosity is shown as a hero who rescues everything a woman owns from a fire.
[edit] Recruited players
| Player | Position | MLB Team | Misfortune |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Scioscia | Catcher | Los Angeles Dodgers | Scioscia becomes fatally ill after spilling a wheelbarrow of toxic waste. |
| Don Mattingly | First Baseman | New York Yankees | Montgomery Burns cuts Mattingly from the team after he fails to shave his “sideburns”. The incident is a parody of an argument he had with George Steinbrenner. |
| Steve Sax | Second Baseman | New York Yankees | Eddie and Lou arrest and sentence Sax to serve six consecutive lifetimes in prison for every unsolved murder in New York City. |
| Wade Boggs | Third Baseman | Boston Red Sox | Barney Gumble knocks out Boggs following a heated historical debate at Moe’s Tavern. |
| Ozzie Smith | Shortstop | St. Louis Cardinals | Smith mysteriously vanishes in a space-time anomaly at the Springfield Mystery Spot. |
| José Canseco | Left Fielder | Oakland Athletics | Canseco misses the game whilst rescuing a woman’s child, pets, and furniture from a burning house. |
| Ken Griffey, Jr. | Center Fielder | Seattle Mariners | Griffey overdoses on a nerve tonic, resulting in an extreme case of Gigantism. |
| Darryl Strawberry | Right Fielder | Los Angeles Dodgers | Strawberry is the only player on the team to not suffer from any misfortune. He goes to have a stellar game, but is eventually benched during the bottom of the ninth in favor of Homer. |
| Roger Clemens | Pitcher | Boston Red Sox | The team’s hypnotist makes Clemens believe he is a chicken. |
[edit] Burns' first-choice team
When Burns gets the idea of acquiring ringers, he unveils a team of 19th century and dead-ball era players that he wants Smithers to sign. Smithers then has to tell Burns that all these players have retired and passed on, and that the right fielder (Jim Creighton) has been dead for 130 years.
- P: Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown
- C: Gabby Street
- 1B: Cap Anson
- 2B: Napoleon Lajoie
- SS: Honus Wagner
- 3B: Pie Traynor
- LF: Shoeless Joe Jackson
- CF: Harry Hooper
- RF: Jim Creighton
It should be noted that although most of these players were contemporaries, Traynor (the youngest member of the team) was born more than half a century later than Creighton. In fact, seven of the players (Anson being the exception) weren't even born yet when Creighton died. Anson, too, is a lot older than the rest of the team. He was 44 years old and close to retirement by the time Lajoie and Wagner made their Major League debuts, and had retired before any of the other players reached the Majors. Furthermore, Traynor is significantly younger than the rest of the team, and when he made his Major League debut in 1920, only Hooper was still active.
[edit] Cultural references
- The episode makes several allusions to The Natural, a movie starring Robert Redford and which is based upon Bernard Malamud's book by the same name. Homer's secret weapon, his self-created "Wonderbat", is akin to Roy Hobbs's "Wonderboy". Both bats are eventually destroyed. The scene featuring the explosion of stadium lights as Homer circles the basepaths is taken directly from the film, as is the scene with the team and the hypnotist.
- The end song "Talkin' Softball" was actually re-written from an older song "Talkin' Baseball" by Terry Cashman, singer/writer of the song. Cashman has rewritten his lyrics several times for particular teams.
- This episode marks the second time in the series that someone mentions the phrase "It's like there's a party in my mouth and everyone's invited!" Ken Griffey Jr. says it after trying Mr. Burns's nerve tonic. The first being Moe's exclamation upon sampling the episode's titular beverage in the season 3 episode "Flaming Moe's". This line was parodied in "Parasites Lost", a season 3 episode of Futurama, another cartoon created by Matt Groening, when Fry eats a very expired egg salad sandwich and exclaims "It's like there's a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up!" Griffey had trouble performing the line, a number of outtakes of which are presented as a hidden feature on the Season 3 DVD set.
[edit] External links
- "Homer at the Bat" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
