‘The Simpsons’ episode ‘Homer at the Bat’ gets Baseball Hall of Fame honor
Homer Simpson will be "inducted" into the Baseball Hall of Fame in May 2017. Credit: Handout
“Homer at the Bat” long has ranked highly in the pantheon of sports-themed sitcom episodes, alongside classics such as Joe Namath visiting the artificial turf backyard of “The Brady Bunch” and “The Boyfriend” on “Seinfeld.”
Come May 27, “The Simpsons” episode will get official recognition from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum during its Hall of Fame Classic Weekend.
The episode premiered on Feb. 20, 1992 – the same month as “The Boyfriend” – and will be given a full 25th anniversary treatment, complete with a roundtable discussion including Wade Boggs and Ozzie Smith.
They were among the players portrayed in the episode, which involved — spoiler alert — Homer winning a softball championship for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant team with a walk-off hit-by-pitch.
The roundtable, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 9:30 to 11 a.m. outside the library entrance in Cooperstown and also feature the show’s executive producers, director, executive story editor and casting director.
That event will be followed by a ribbon-cutting on a new “Simpsons” exhibit at the museum. Oh, and Homer will be “inducted” into the Hall of Fame.
Other players (and their voices) featured in the episode included Ken Griffey Jr., Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly and Darryl Strawberry. It frequently is ranked at or near the top among the best episodes in the series’ history.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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