Twenty-five years ago this month, tragedy struck Major League Baseball when Steve Sax was arrested for committing every unsolved murder in New York City, Wade Boggs was knocked unconscious in a barroom brawl, and Ozzie Smith disappeared into an endless vortex. It would take America’s pastime another seven years to recover from these bizarre incidents (thanks, steroids!), but at least we got a classic episode of The Simpsons out of it.
“Homer at the Bat,” in which Mr. Burns hires a bunch of ringers, including Roger Clemens, José Canseco, and Daryl Strawberry, to play for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team, aired on February 20, 1992. To celebrate a quarter-century of Ken Griffey, Jr.’s grotesquely swollen jaw, the Baseball Hall of Fame is “inducting” Homer Simpson into the museum.
There will also be a roundtable discussion with Boggs and Smith, as well as episode director Jim Reardon, executive story editor Jeff Martin, casting director Bonnie Pietila, and executive producers Mike Reiss and Al Jean, who commented, “When I struck out in tee-ball, I never dreamed I’d make it to the Hall of Fame. It shows what not following your dreams can do.”
The event, which will be held on Saturday, May 27 (during Hall of Fame Classic Weekend), is free and open to the public, and will be followed with an “official ribbon-cutting on a Simpsons-themed exhibit display in the Museum.” With 600-plus episodes in the can, The Simpsons could be inducted into so many museums: the Race Car Bed Museum, the Sex Tonic Museum, the Box Factory Museum. Maybe on the 25th anniversary of “Bart Gets Famous.”
(Via Baseball Hall of Fame)
