In the summer of 1991, as staff writers for The Simpsons began working on the show's third season, co-creator Sam Simon pitched an idea for an episode featuring several real major league players as guest stars. It was an ambitious undertaking for a still-young show that had already scored some big names in its first two seasons (Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson, Magic Johnson and Ringo Starr, to name a few) but never featured that many in one episode. Nine players were eventually lined up, including future Hall of Famers Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey Jr. and Ozzie Smith, to voice themselves in an episode in which they played expensive ringers brought on to replace titular patriarch Homer and his co-workers at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on a company softball team for a championship game.
Curse of the Springfield Nine: Did a Simpsons episode predict the fall of MLB stars?
