‘Simpsons’ Legend John Swartzwelder Releases Recording Photos From ‘Homer at the Bat’
In the summer of 1991, Major League Baseball’s brightest stars descended upon Springfield, only to leave the Simpsons’ hometown bald, beaten, burned, radiation poisoned, gigantized and trapped outside of the physical plane of existence.
The Season Three John Swartzwelder, “Homer at the Bat” was the single most star-studded episode of the series when it premiered on February 20, 1992, and its massive success inspired Fox to shoehorn a string of celebrity guest appearances into various episodes over the following years. Telling the tale of a greedy Mr. Burns ruining the spirit of the nuclear power plant softball league with a stacked team of ringers, “Homer at the Bat” also marked the MLB’s most significant contribution to the Simpsons canon — that is, until Bart discovered Mark McGwire’s spy satellite eight seasons later.
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Earlier today, the notoriously solitary Swartzwelder took to Twitter — a website he astoundingly uses with his equally out-of-character internet connection — to share a couple of never-before-scene pictures from the time when The Simpsons hosted Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Steve Sax and Don Mattingly’s sideburns:
The idea to have a bunch of real-life MLB superstars guest star on The Simpsons while playing themselves came from the late, great Simpsons producer and co-developer Sam Simon, but “Homer at the Bat” only became a guaranteed instant classic when Swartzwelder took the mound. The most prolific and respected Simpsons writer of all time is, himself, a huge baseball fan, as demonstrated by the above shots that he snapped during the recording sessions of “Homer at the Bat,” and Swartzwelder’s script transformed what could have been a gimmick plot line into one of the most quoted Simpsons episodes in history.
Thankfully, and unlike the ball-players’ animated counterparts, Clemens, Boggs, Sax and Mattingly all left the Los Angeles recording studio unharmed and unhypnotized. However, judging from these photos, Mattingly could have really used a shave.
