Well Mr. Burns had done it

[Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast]

The power plant had won it
With Roger Clemens clucking all the while
Mike Scioscia's tragic illness made us smile
While Wade Boggs lay unconscious on the bar room tile



Happy 29th to my favorite Simpsons episode.

[Jaws the Shark]

This is also my favourite Simpsons episode. As a kid it was a funny story about a softball team, and it took me growing up to really understand how clever and impeccably observed it is. In part it's a story about the malevolent influence of money in professional sports and games becoming a contest of who has the wealthiest owner. Who would have thought things would get even worse after 1992?

Really though, I think it's a story about men living out their unrealised childhood dreams. In reality Homer was merely a legend in his own lunchtime, but in his head he and the others were probably living out all the fantasies they had as boys of being superstar athletes that for a lot of people who love sports never really go away.

I also love that Homer was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the 25th anniversary of it airing.

[Hit Girl]

"Arghhhhhhhhhhhh....ooh...-takes picture-......arghhhhhhhhhhhh"

[Bang Bang Bart]

Good lord! Gigantism.

[Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill]

I'm telling you England's greatest prime minister was Lord Palmerston!

[SmashTV]

Uh-Oh; I don’t understand a word he’s saying. Why won’t he just let me bat? I wish I was at home with a nice big bag of potato chips. Mmmm....potato chips.

[SmashTV]

Feb 20, 2021 18:14:38 GMT -5 Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill said:

I'm telling you England's greatest prime minister was Lord Palmerston!

And I’m telling you that England’s greatest prime minister was Pitt the Elder!

[Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill]

Feb 20, 2021 18:20:25 GMT -5 SmashTV said:

Feb 20, 2021 18:14:38 GMT -5 Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill said:

I'm telling you England's greatest prime minister was Lord Palmerston!

And I’m telling you that England’s greatest prime minister was Pitt the Elder!

LORD PALMERSTON!

[The Dark Order Inferno]

I'm not american, I don't care about baseball and had no idea who any of the guests were, but that didn't matter at all, I didn't need to, to enjoy the episode as the storyline and the various side stories, the misedventures of the players all held up. It's night and day to how they've handled celebrity cameos over the past decade, where the episodes built around celebrity involvement hold up about as well as a chair made from the cardboard tubes from toilet rolls, usually Homer being a bully or a new character moving into town who's just like a family member, only better.

[Magnus the Magnificent]

Feb 20, 2021 18:26:26 GMT -5 Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill said:

Feb 20, 2021 18:20:25 GMT -5 SmashTV said:

And I’m telling you that England’s greatest prime minister was Pitt the Elder!

LORD PALMERSTON!

PITT!
THE!
ELDER!

[mrtuesday]

The fact that The Simpsons got the original singer to parody his own song was nice.

[Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill]

Feb 20, 2021 19:01:51 GMT -5 Magnus the Magnificent said:

Feb 20, 2021 18:26:26 GMT -5 Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill said:

LORD PALMERSTON!

PITT!
THE!
ELDER!

LORRRRRRRRRRD PALMERSTON! *punches*

[Push R Truth]

I personally think this is one of the best episodes of any show in TV history

[msc]

Genuinely all I know of MLB comes from this episode.

[Kalmia]

I don't know anything about baseball or any of the players either but this is easily in my top 3 Simpsons episodes (maybe even my top one.) Some of the voice acting is pretty bad but who cares when the episode is so good?

DA-RRYL, DA-RRYL

[Milkman Norm]

Putting my homemade football on hold...

[Deleted]

Will...I...be...able...to...play...softball...tomorrow?

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Some trivia:

All of the players were cooperative except for Jose Canseco, who was intimidating. He disliked his original part and insisted it be rewritten, and the writers grudgingly made him as heroic as possible. He was originally slated to wake up in bed with Edna Krabappel and miss the game, but Canseco's then-wife, Esther Haddad, objected. He disliked his caricature, stating that "the animation looked nothing like [him]," but that he found the acting was very easy. When asked in 2007 about his part by the San Jose Mercury News, he responded, "that was 100 years ago," hung up the phone and did not answer any of the paper's subsequent calls for an interview about his guest spot.

Don Mattingly, who was forced to shave off his "sideburns" by Mr. Burns during the episode, would later have an actual "haircut controversy", while he was playing for the New York Yankees. The coaching staff forced him to cut his long hair, and was briefly dropped from the team line-up for not doing so. Many people believed the joke in the episode to be a reference to the incident, but the episode was recorded a year before it happened.

The episode has been credited with helping to save at least two lives. During the scene in which Homer chokes on a donut, a poster explaining how the Heimlich maneuver works is on the wall behind him. In May 1992, Chris Bencze was able to save his brother's life by performing the Heimlich Maneuver on him, having seen it in the episode, and in December 2007, Aiden Bateman was able to save his friend Alex Hardy's life by recalling the same.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Feb 20, 2021 21:49:49 GMT -5 @heyitsfriskeyagain said:

Will...I...be...able...to...play...softball...tomorrow?

No. By tomorrow you'll barely be able to breathe.

[Deleted]

Feb 20, 2021 21:56:15 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

Feb 20, 2021 21:49:49 GMT -5 @heyitsfriskeyagain said:

Will...I...be...able...to...play...softball...tomorrow?

No. By tomorrow you'll barely be able to breathe.

Oh....man....