"It's something very special: a homemade bat."

―Homer Simpson

"Homer at the Bat" is the seventeenth episode of Season 3, and the show's 52^nd episode overall.

Synopsis[]

The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's softball team is surprisingly successful thanks to Homer, but Mr. Burns decides to call in Major League Baseball ringers (all of which voice themselves) for the championship game anyway especially after making a $1 million dollar bet that his team will win.

Full Story[]

It is time for annual power plant baseball season, but none of the workers are keen to sign up. Homer does sign up the workers question why and Homer says that he has a secret weapon. The workers are now curious and also sign up, Homer has a homemade Wonder Bat, which he made from a tree branch that broke during a storm. Before long the team's leading hitter is Homer thanks to his bat. 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.

Mr. Burns makes a million dollar bet with Aristotle Amadopolis, owner of the Shelbyville plant, that his team will win. To secure victory in the game, Burns wants to hire major league stars, but Smithers tells Burns that the players he picked are all dead (they were alternately active from 1857–1937). Thus, Burns orders Smithers recruit several Major League Baseball players to work token jobs at the plant, those players include Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey, Jr., Steve Sax, Ozzie Smith, José Canseco, Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry and Mike Scioscia. Burns also encourages them to sign up for the ball team, much to the dismay of the plant workers who got the team to the championship game in the first place. In order to further boost his chances of winning the game, Burns hires a hypnotist to condition the team into performing their best and has them consume nerve tonic, which Griffey quickly becomes addicted to. Circumstances worsen for Homer when a pitch from Clemens during practice ends up destroying Wonder Bat.

However, the night before the game, all the players but Mattingly and Strawberry have different incidents that prevent them from playing: Sax is thrown in jail after Eddie and Lou accuse him of committing every unsolved murder in New York City, Scioscia is hospitalized with radiation poisoning from working at the plant, Griffey's consumption of the nerve tonic causes him to overdose and develop gigantism, Canseco becomes preoccupied with saving a woman's belongings from her burning home, Boggs is knocked unconscious by Barney during a bar fight at Moe's Tavern (over a disagreement on whether Lord Palmerston or Pitt the Elder was the best British Prime Minister), the hypnotist causes Clemens to start behaving like a chicken, and Smith vanishes off the face of the Earth after entering the Springfield Mystery Spot. Burns, fed up with Mattingly for not shaving off his non-existent sideburns, angrily kicks him off the team (with Mattingly declareing that he still prefers Burns over George Steinbrenner)

Because of these incidents, Burns is forced to use the original team, but keeps Homer benched while Strawberry plays his position. Bart and Lisa are outraged at Strawberry for stealing Homer's chance to play and proceed to jeer him from the stands. Eventually, with the score tied and bases loaded in the ninth inning, Burns decides to have a right-handed hitter against a left-handed pitcher and pinch hits Homer for Strawberry. While Homer is distracted trying to figure out Burns exaggerated and confusing signals, the very first pitch hits him in the head, rendering him unconscious and forcing in the winning run. Homer is then paraded as a hero, still unconscious. A photo shows all of the baseball players including the ones who could not play in the final game (Smith appears as an astral projection), thus finishing the episode.

During the credits, Terry Cashman, who wrote the song "Talkin' Baseball", sings a parody of his hit, "Talkin' Softball".

Citations[]