"Hey Scioscia, I don’t get it.  You’re a ringer, but you’re here every night in the core busting your butt hauling radioactive waste." – Carl
"Well, Carl, it’s such a relief from the pressures of playing big league ball.  I mean, there you make any kind of mistake and boom, the press is all over you.  Uh oh." – Mike Scioscia
“Ah, don’t worry about it.” – Carl
“Oh man, is this ever sweet.” – Mike Scioscia

I’m very ready to be done with this episode.   Unlike most Zombie Simpsons episodes this one will end up being memorable.  Not because of any quality on its part, or any of the jokes it contains, but for the return of Mike Scioscia and the whole Banksy opening.  Meh.

Charlie Sweatpants: Dave’s hopeful we can keep this to under a half an hour.

Shall we dive right in?

Mad Jon: Ok, that will leave me more Halo time.

Let’s do it

Dave: Only because I’m running on 3 hours of sleep.

Mad Jon: I hate the fact Mike Scioscia came back, but he’s right, he’ll win more rings.

Charlie Sweatpants: Not if he keeps riding that rollercoaster alone.

You know who goes to amusement parks alone? No one.

Mad Jon: Well, Mike Scioscia is allowed to.

Dave: Except cartoon Mike Scioscia.

Charlie Sweatpants: More to the point, this may have set a new bar for most bag-of -hammers stupid guest voice.

I mean, having Zuckerberg just sitting there was dumb, but at least they took the time to invent a place he sort of, maybe could be at.

This was just head scratching.

Mad Jon: Very reminiscent of Namath showing up to explain the dangers of Vapor Lock.

Dave: Oh that.

Mad Jon: Yep, that.

Charlie Sweatpants: I thought of that same thing, but again, that made infinitely more sense than this.

Mad Jon: True that.

Charlie Sweatpants: I mean, it was played with a bit of meta humor because Joe Namath shows up right when Bart’s trying to learn how to be a quarterback. The vapor lock thing was their way of acknowledging that.

Mad Jon: Good point.

Dave: It was a baseball themed episode and they needed a real player? I dunno, that’s a stretch.

Charlie Sweatpants: This didn’t have nearly that level of . . . I don’t know, cleverness? Self awareness? Whatever the opposite of oblivious is.

But he could’ve at least been doing something baseball related. Couldn’t he have been working the game where you throw baseballs or something?

Mad Jon: Funny, I think Scioscia was the one who was quoted to say that he still cashes the royalty checks, even though they aren’t worth the paper and stamp, just so the books are straight.

Charlie Sweatpants: About his first guest appearance, you mean?

Mad Jon: Your carnival game idea would have been infinitely better..

Yes, about the Actual baseball episode.

Charlie Sweatpants: Makes sense.

Speaking of baseball, did this remind anyone else of a travel episode but with the destination being baseball?

Mad Jon: I can see that I guess, but with little to no Homer involvement (other than the pseudo-fight he and Marge had that started and ended abruptly and without point) it just didn’t feel quite the same as a trip episode.

Charlie Sweatpants: Like the travel episodes, this one did have a couple of mildly funny lines. Bill James’ thing about making baseball as fun as taxes comes to mind. The problem is that they spent 22 minutes with a convoluted plot to deliver what would’ve been less than a minute’s worth of material in a mid-grade stand-up routine.

They had a fresh topic, and that always helps them.

The problem is everything else.

Mad Jon: Also, computers aren’t allowed in the dugout.

Charlie Sweatpants: Really?

Mad Jon: And managers are called managers and not coaches for a reason.

Charlie Sweatpants: Did I say coach, or did they?

Mad Jon: I don’t think anyone did. But Lisa ran her games like a coach would, not a manager. Managers put the right players (especially on offense) in the right place and let them do their thing, obviously with the exception being fun plays like suicides, stealing home and hit and runs.

Coaches call plays at all times. Like in other sports. Sports with Head Coaches. Sorry to dwell, but baseball was my first passion.

Charlie Sweatpants: As always, I defer to your superior knowledge.

While we’re on the topic of the baseball in the episode, was I the only one who noticed that the ending didn’t make any sense from a game perspective?

Mad Jon: Well, first of all, he was clearly safe.

Charlie Sweatpants: There’s no reason given for Bart to steal home.

Dave: Except to make a scene.

Charlie Sweatpants: I said "given". I know the real reason.

Mad Jon: I didn’t even know the score… But I may have been bored into semi-consciousness.

Also, I think the lack of available players was a stupid point as they only had like seven guys to begin with.

Charlie Sweatpants: The last play in "Homer at the Bat" made perfect sense. The bases were loaded, and Burns makes the hilariously overthinking-it decision to pinch hit. Homer wins the game by getting knocked unconscious. This . . . didn’t do any of that.

Mad Jon: Was that like the championship or something? Other than the "Homer the Boxer"-esque leader board, they didn’t really play up to it. The Softball league championship with a million bucks on the line, now that’s a plot setup.

Charlie Sweatpants:   That too.

It’s that classic story-apathy I’m always railing about. They needed a dramatic baseball moment to finish things, they just didn’t bother to set it up.

Mad Jon: They really, really didn’t. They almost went out of their way to avoid setting it up.

The only think I snickered at the whole time was the background joke about Lenny Dykstra.

Although that was topical about 4 or 5 years ago…

Charlie Sweatpants: The entire montage was fucking lame. Homer at the Bat has a montage, but it’s a parody. This was just a Casio-keyboard arrangement of "Take me Out to the Ballgame".

Nails.

Sorry, that’s all I remember about Dykstra.

Mad Jon: Oh man, there was a great SI article about his financial scamming a few years back, look it up, it’s worth it.

Charlie Sweatpants: Noted.

This may be a minor point, but I hated Moe’s little rant about things managers do wrong.

Mad Jon: Do tell, I was rather indifferent.

Charlie Sweatpants: This is another of those poor writing examples, but there’s no need for Moe to exposit there.

Mad Jon: Fair enough.

When he heckled the patrons who didn’t even mention they were playing fantasy baseball.

Charlie Sweatpants: Any show worth its salt in the least would’ve had Moe showing reactions to something that actually happened. He could yell at the manager’s decision, then turn around and hypocritically praise it when it worked. Instead he monologued apropos of nothing.

And while I’m hating on that scene, did Carl sound off to anyone else?

Dave: I don’t remember. Did he sound ragged or aged like some of the other voice actors?

Mad Jon: Meh, he only had like 10 words, so its hard to tell.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’ll take "meh".

Sounded off to me.

Mad Jon: Oops, it was an ESPN article I think, from early 2009, but it was still interesting to read, that part I got right.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4084962

Charlie Sweatpants: There you go.

Before we close things up, I think we have to talk about the opening. I was going to write a longer post about it today but I didn’t have time.

Mad Jon: Ugh, that 12 minute thing?

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah.

Dave: The internets are buzzing.

Over nothing, mind you, but they’re buzzing all the same.

Charlie Sweatpants: Typical.

Long story short, I don’t think this would be the least bit interesting if a celebrity wasn’t involved.

Mad Jon: Go on.

Charlie Sweatpants: The show has made fun of FOX before, the only reason people care about this is because Banksy was involved. It’s standard Zombie Simpsons: leech off the popularity of others. This just worked a little bit better than handing the show over to Seth Rogen or Ricky Gervais.

Dave: That’s a nice summary.

It wasn’t really that dark or edgy.

It was just… long.

Charlie Sweatpants: Very long.

Mad Jon: High Def cartoons don’t really have the same impact power as graffiti.

Just saying.

Charlie Sweatpants: One final thing, what was with the opening with the Yale woman?

Mad Jon: Inspiration for Lisa to manage baseball, it was the perfect setup.

Charlie Sweatpants: I know the openings don’t typically have much to do with the rest of the episode any more, but that was even more random than usual.

Even ignoring my typical complains about the fact that she was apparently there for no reason, was any part of that supposed to be funny?

Mad Jon: Whenever I think about attractive Yale female grads, my following thoughts almost exclusively lead to baseball, or specifically 8 year-old managers.

Charlie Sweatpants: So do the writers.

I guess.

Mad Jon: Well, we all know how talented they are.