‘The Simpsons’ Tried to Make A Joke About Every Single Major League Baseball Team in This Week’s Episode
Despite having once illustrated that Major League Baseball is virtually unwatchable without the mind-numbing effects of alcohol…
…The Simpsons has devoted several episodes to the sport over the years. Most famously, there was “Homer at the Bat,” which guest starred several prominent baseball players as Mr. Burns’ softball ringers. As a testament to the show’s popularity, some of these baseball legends have even found that this one ‘90s cartoon has overshadowed their athletic careers.
Then there was “MoneyBart,” in which Lisa coaches Bart’s Little League team. Although the baseball storyline was seemingly overshadowed by Banksy’s controversial couch gag at the start of the episode.
This Sunday, The Simpsons will once again explore America’s pastime with “Abe League of Their Moe.” The episode finds Moe luring a Macedonian baseball megastar to the Springfield Isotopes with a “hype video.” Surprisingly, the Isotopes win out, all thanks to Moe who, apparently, is Macedonian now? Unfortunately for the ‘Topes, the player becomes embroiled in a sports betting scandal, and Moe ends up having to take the fall for him.
As Simpsons writer and executive producer Michael Price told The Athletic, the storyline was inspired by last year’s scandal in which Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter was convicted of stealing $17 million from his boss in order to pay off gambling debts. “(Simpsons showrunner) Matt Selman did a bit in the room where he was pretending to be Ohtani’s interpreter,” Price explained, “like misinterpreting everything Ohtani said to cover his own betting. So he was like, ‘Uh, yeah, yeah, everything’s great!’”
The episode’s plot line itself sounds not so different from the conspiracy theories claiming that Ohtani was really the one doing the gambling. According to Price, in addition to poking fun at one of the league’s most high-profile scandals of the 21st century, they also tried to ridicule every single Major League Baseball franchise. “We had a goal when we first started writing it,” Price explained, “(executive producer Joel Cohen) said, ‘Let’s aim for this to somehow have a joke about every one of all 30 teams. I don’t know if we succeeded or not.”
“We stopped checking,” Cohen noted, “but we think we might have hit every team. If any team isn’t offended, let us know and we’ll send something up on Signal or something.”
Carving out space to mock all 30 MLB teams certainly sounds like a daunting task. But if anyone can do it, it’s the folks who were somehow able to get a literal cartoon character into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
