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Bart the Lover
Homer at the Bat
Separate Vocations


It's something very special: a homemade bat.
Homer Simpson

"Homer at the Bat" is the seventeenth episode of Season 3.

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[]

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. Homer is the team's leading hitter, thanks to his homemade Wonder Bat.

Hmoe

Video of Homer at the plate hitting a ball -- an unflattering portrait since it shows in slow motion the flab at Homer's waist shifting with the effort

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 (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 due to Eddie and Lou accusing him of committing every unsolved murder in New York City. Scioscia is hospitalised 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 out by Barney during a bar fight at Moe's (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 (Mattingly declares 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[]

Season 2 Season 3 Episodes Season 4
Stark Raving DadMr. Lisa Goes to WashingtonWhen Flanders FailedBart the MurdererHomer DefinedLike Father, Like ClownTreehouse of Horror IILisa's PonySaturdays of ThunderFlaming Moe'sBurns Verkaufen der KraftwerkI Married MargeRadio BartLisa the GreekHomer AloneBart the LoverHomer at the BatSeparate VocationsDog of DeathColonel HomerBlack WidowerThe Otto ShowBart's Friend Falls in LoveBrother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?
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