"The Simpsons" is now in its 28th season making it the longest-running animated series of all time. It has brought in several celebrity guests in many of its episodes, but one that is considered to be one of the show's very best episodes brought in a slew of baseball superstars. The Season 3 episode "Homer at the Bat" will be honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The episode originally aired on February 20, 1992, and is fondly remembered by the show's fans for featuring several MLB All-Stars as guests. The episode will be honored on May 27 in celebration of its 25th anniversary in Cooperstown followed by a roundtable discussion featuring some of the show's creators as well as baseball Hall of Famers Wade Boggs and Ozzie Smith, who both appeared on the episode as guest stars. The announcement was made by the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
Other players who also appeared on the show include Ken Griffey Jr., Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens, Darryl Strawberry, Steve Sax, Don Mattingly, and Mike Scioscia. In the episode, Mr. Burns' company baseball team has been performing poorly for a long time, so he hires some professional baseball players to work nominal jobs in the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant so they could play for his team.Boggs, Smith, Clemens, Strawberry and Canseco all lent their voices for this episode. Their characters all suffer from hilarious mishaps which gives Mr. Burns no choice, but to field Homer and the other plant workers to play in their absence.
According to the Washington Post, "Homer at the Bat" is also notable for beating "The Cosby Show" in ratings when it originally aired. This episode also garnered more viewership numbers than the Albertville Winter Olympics which also aired on the same night.
The episode was given a highly detailed historical recap by Deadspin in 2012 with producers calling it one of the most difficult episodes they ever had to make. The players who lent their voices to the show could only swing by the studio to record their lines whenever their respective teams were scheduled to play in L.A.
Some of the players were also notorious for being difficult to work with compared to the others (Smith, Sax). Jose Canseco's wife also demanded that his character's original storyline of having an affair with Ms. Krabbapell be rewritten so he could appear more heroic.
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