Homer Simpson

Homer Simpson may live forever in baseball history as the man who pinch hit for Darryl Strawberry—who had already hit nine home runs (four-base hits often dubbed “homers”)—in the 1992 City Championship game between Springfield and Shelbyville. It was Simpson who knocked in the winning run, being knocked out in the process, and gave victory to Springfield.

Patrick Henry once uttered “Give me liberty or give me death!” Numerous other public figures have been immortalized for short or snappy sayings. No one tops Homer Simpson. Simpson’s most-noted and most-quoted words (actually, it’s just one word) are (is), “D’oh!” which may now be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, albeit without the apostrophe.

Like many baseball players of yesteryear, Homer Jay Simpson’s precise birthday may never be known. It’s commonly understood that he was born in March of 1956, though some accounts have him being born a year earlier. The latter date may have been his “baseball age,” designed to make him look younger for baseball scouts on the look for fresh prospects.

Homer’s parents were Abraham Jay-Jedediah and Mona Penelope (Olsen) Simpson. Abraham claimed that he came to America as boy from the “old country,” but has never been able to remember which old country that had been. Young Abe was raised in New York City by his parents, Orville J. Simpson and Yuma Hickman, since deceased. Abe Simpson’s occupation remains unknown, along with his true place of birth, both ripe subjects for research by genealogists. He is known to have served his country as a sergeant with the Flying Hellfish during the Second World War and to have a love for the show Matlock (1986-1995), a television series starring Andy Griffith. Abe Simpson also had a bit of a wandering eye, and had two illegitimate children, one named Herbert Powell, the other being a daughter named Abbie who was conceived while he was stationed in England during WWII. Even less is known about his brothers Cyrus and Chet. Abe Simpson was briefly married to his son Homer’s short-term wife Amber (Homer married her on a short visit to Vegas with neighbor Ned Flanders and Abe was later tricked into marrying her when she visited Springfield)—this may have been more confusing to the parties involved than to the reader. Abe Simpson was also married for a very short time to Homer’s sister-in-law Selma Bouvier.[fn]Much of the painstaking work documenting Abraham Simpson’s genealogy is available on the blog located at http://thesimpsonsrocks.wordpress.com/abraham-simpson/.[/fn]

A born storyteller, Abe’s stories sometimes seem to get lost in the telling, and his loving son Homer ultimately had to consign him to the care of the Springfield Retirement Castle.[fn]Members of SABR’s Oral History Committee are urged to contact Simpson there to take down his life story, but are cautioned to bring backup batteries for their digital recorders.[/fn]

Mona Simpson became estranged from Abe; she was forced to abandon her family after seeing Joe Namath’s long hair during Super Bowl III and consequently (quite understandably) becoming caught up in the hippie movement. She joined a commune with fellow hippies Seth and Munchie, and in time hippiedom led to yippiedom and she became politically active. At one point, protesting germ research, she was part of a group which broke into C. Montgomery Burns’s laboratory and destroyed all the biological warfare experiments in progress. She served no time for the offense but was later tried in court on another matter, a carjacking. She was acquitted, after an impassioned speech by son Homer, though the long arm of the law finally caught up with her and she was imprisoned for signing into a national park under a false name. Mona Simpson later died (well after doing her time), as documented in the episode “Mona Leaves-a,” and was cremated, her ashes thrown to the wind (where they disrupt a missile launch.)[fn]http://thesimpsonsrocks.wordpress.com/mona-simpson/.[/fn] 

Homer Simpson’s wife is Marjorie (née Bouvier, and perhaps related to Jacqueline Kennedy.) Her own mother was indeed named Jacqueline, and her father named Clancy. He was a former flight attendant. Marge was either older or younger than Homer; her birthday was on October 1, 1954—or 1956. With her twin older sisters Patty and Selma, the bevy of Bouviers attended Springfield High School, where she met Homer in their senior year. Marge never held as many jobs as Homer, who could be said to be something of a workaholic[fn]This depends, of course, on who’s doing the saying.[/fn], but in addition to her prime responsibility as homemaker, she had also held positions as a nuclear technician at Springfield’s nuclear power plant, selling real estate, running a pretzel business, working at an erotic bakery, and as a police officer for a little less than one episode. She appeared on the cover of the November 2008 issue of Playboy magazine. Not six months later, Homer Simpson became the first living former baseball player to appear on a postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.[fn]First day covers are dated May 7, 2009.[/fn]

The couple had three children (Bartholomew JoJo “Bart” Simpson, born on April Fool’s Day, 1979; Lisa Marie Simpson, born on September 28, 1981; and Margaret “Maggie” Simpson, born in November 1986 on a date not fully pinned-down.) There have been inconstant rumors (“impersistent” is not a valid word in Scrabble) that Bart Simpson was named in part with a thought to Commissioner of Major League Baseball A. Bartlett Giammati, though if so it was in honor of his presidency of Yale University, since Giammati was only named Commissioner well after his namesake was born.[fn]The rumors are traceable to suppositional remarks made by the author during SABR’s annual convention in Houston, Texas on August 1, 2014, but have never gained traction anywhere.[/fn] The Simpsons’ family respect for higher education is long-established, dating back at least to Grandpa Simpson’s noted reverence for Harvard-educated attorney Benjamin Leighton “Ben” Matlock.

One wonders, of course, if Homer’s parents had baseball in mind when they named their son.

How many baseball scouts tracked Homer Simpson in his developmental years is unknown; the answer could well be: none.[fn]A thorough search of the Hall of Fame’s Diamond Minds exhibit turned up nothing, and consultation with SABR’s Scouts Committee database was equally unproductive.[/fn]

It seems evident that Simpson did not benefit from consultation with a team nutritionist at any stage of his career, nor did he spend much (if any) time at Mark Verstegen’s EXOS in Phoenix (formerly Athletes’ Performance Institute – API).

Just three (or four) years younger than Scott Boras (born 1952), young Homer came of age just too late to truly benefit from agent representation. It was only on March 16, 1976 that Andy Messersmith was granted free agency and signed with the Atlanta Braves. Homer was available to sign as an amateur free agent but remained undrafted, beginning his career playing industrial league ball or town ball with the Springfield Nuclear Plant team.

Truth be told, the first time Simpson was seen in public was on April 19, 1987, when he and his whole family—even Maggie—appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. None of his baseball skills were exhibited during that appearance; he was not what any scout would term a “five-tool player”—though he did give eight other attributes that have been amply evident from the start: he was “crude, bald, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, lazy, a heavy drinker, and ignorant.”[fn]The characterization was succinctly supplied by an anonymous contributor to the noted website known as Wikipedia where—truth be told (or something often approaching truth)—a great deal of Simpsons’ lore may be mined. One of SABR’s standard BioProject biographies goes through a rigorous series of peer reviewers and fact-checkers. That seemed a little pointless in the current case, given that almost everything regarding the subject is fictional—whether factual or not. Credit is due, however, to various anonymous contributors to the internets. We would accord them individual credit by name if we knew their names, though we’re not sure all of them would want to acknowledge they actually took the time and trouble to know the things they post.[/fn] He ranked a solid 20 on most scouts’ 20-to-80 skills scale.

Simpson’s baseball career came in the midst of his duties as a Nuclear Safety Inspector in section 7G for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

If a lengthy resume is any sign of hard work, Simpson was a hard worker indeed. Some might counter that it was proof he was hardly working. It has been calculated that he has held 188 jobs.[fn]Larry Carroll, “’Simpsons’ Trivia, From Swearing Lisa To ‘Burns-Sexual’ Smithers” MTV, July 20, 2007. Retrieved September 21, 2008.[/fn]  “Well, those are side jobs—he’s worked at the nuclear plant forever,” one of his creators, James L. Brooks once said. “That’s his steady gig—let’s call it one job and 187 parttime jobs.”[fn]The author came across this quotation somewhere.[/fn]

Indeed, before settling in for the position he was seemingly destined to perform—that of Nuclear Safety Inspector—Simpson did have quite a number of other jobs. A partial alphabetical list of his work history is appended.[fn]Simpson’s job history, as of a certain date, is summarized below, in an unconventional alphabetical listing. Most of the jobs he seems to have held for less than 30 minutes, or fleeting mention is made of them. Presumably, these were not all paid positions, and it is safe to assume he is not drawing unemployment benefits from more than a dozen or two of them.

• Army private (“G.I. (Annoyed Grunt)”)
• Agent (3 times)
  – Lurleen Lumpkin (“Colonel Homer”)
  – Lisa and Cameron, Aka Johnny Rainbow (“A Star Is Torn”)
• Ambulance driver (“Diatribe of a Mad Housewife”)
• Amateur-Division Professional Arm Wrestler (“Marge›s Son Poisoning”)
• Astronaut for NASA[2] (“Deep Space Homer”)
• Attack-dog trainer for the Pitiless Pup Attack Dog School (“I Married Marge”)
• Baby Proofer for his own baby proofing company “Wee Care” (“Bye Bye Nerdie”)
• Bartender for Moe’s Tavern and Homer’s Hunting Club (“Homer the Moe”)
• Blackjack dealer of Monty’s Casino (“$pringfield”)
• Bodyguard of Mayor Joe Quimby (“Mayored to the Mob”)
• Bootlegger
  – Of beer as the “Beer Baron” (“Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment”)
• Bowling alley employee, or “Pin Monkey”, of Barney’s Bowlo-rama (“And Maggie Makes Three”)
  – His dream job, but held only briefly.
• Boxer (“The Homer They Fall”)
• Butler (“The Frying Game”)
• Candle maker of Ye Olde Candlemaker, Olde Springfield Towne (“I Married Marge”)
• Car designer for Powell Motors (“Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”)
• Carny (“Bart Carny”)
• CEO of nuclear power plant (“C.E. D’oh”)
• Chauffeur for Classy Joe’s (“Homer vs. Patty & Selma”)
• Springfield Chief of Police (“Papa›s Got a Brand New Badge”)
• Child Caretaker of Uncle Homer’s Daycare (“Children of a Lesser Clod”)
• Choreographer for the Super Bowl Halftime Show (“Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass”)
• Chiropractor (“Pokey Mom”)
• Clown – Krusty Impersonator (“Homie the Clown”)
• Coach for Bart’s Little League American football team (“Bart Star”)
• Cook at a diner when fleeing from a Florida sheriff (“Kill the Alligator and Run”) • Con artist/Grifter with son Bart (“The Great Money Caper”)
• Conceptual artist (“Mom and Pop Art”)
• Convenience store night-clerk for the Kwik-EMart (“Lisa›s Pony”)
• Detective (“King-Size Homer” not shown, but mentioned by Marge)
• Door-to-door knife salesman for Slash-Co. (“I Married Marge”)
• Door-to-door sugar salesman (“Lisa’s Rival”)
• Door-to-door spring salesman (“The Old Man and the “C” Student”)
• Employee at Gulp ‘n’ Blow Drive-through (“I Married Marge”)
• Executive of Globex Corp., Cypress Creek (“You Only Move Twice”)
• Executive Vice President of Power Plant (“Weekend at Burnsie’s”)
• Farmer (“E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)”)
• Film critic (“A Star Is Burns”)
• Film producer (“Beyond Blunderdome”)
• Fireman (volunteer) (“Crook and Ladder”)
• Fish gutter (“Thirty Minutes over Tokyo”)
• Fisherman (“The Wife Aquatic”)
• Food critic for the Springfield Shopper (“Guess Who’s Coming to Criticize Dinner?”)
• Foot Locker employee (“Marge Gamer”)
• Fortune cookie writer (“A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love”)
• Founder and Junior Vice President Compu-Global-HyperMega-Net (“Das Bus”)
• Garbage Commissioner – see Sanitation Commissioner (“Trash of the Titans”)
• Grease collector (“Lard of the Dance”)
• Guard of Springfield Juvenile Correctional Facility (“The Wandering Juvie”)
• Ice Cream Truck Driver (“Ice Cream of Margie (With the Light Blue Hair)”): He takes the Ice cream truck from an ice cream truck driver who dies.
• Impotency Spokesman for Viagrogaine (“Barting Over”)
• Informant for the F.B.I. (“The Trouble with Trillions”)
• Internet service provider (“Das Bus”): Sets up his own small business, “compuglobalhypermeganet” in which he gives himself the title “Junior Vice President.”
• Inventor (“The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Flaming Moe’s, The Old Man and the “C” Student”)
• Mall Santa Claus (“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”)
• Manager of Country Music performer Lurleen Lumpkin (See Agent)
• Marriage Counselor (“Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play”)
• Mascot, known as “Dancing Homer” (“Dancin’ Homer”)
• Mattress Salesman (“The Boys of Bummer”)
• Mayor of New Springfield (“A Tale of Two Springfields”)
• Mayoral candidate (“See Homer Run”)
• Mexican wrestler (“Jazzy and the Pussycats”)
• Mini-golf assistant for Sir Putts-A-Lot (“I Married Marge”)
• Missionary (“Missionary: Impossible”)
• Monorail conductor (“Marge vs. the Monorail”)
• Mountain climber (“King of the Hill”)
• Musician
  – Member/Songwriter/Frontman of the Be Sharps, winning a Grammy Award[2] (“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”)
  – Composer of “Everybody Hates Ned Flanders” single with David Byrne (“Dude, Where’s My Ranch?”)
  – Composed songs for Lisa Simpson’s music career (“A Star Is Torn”)
  – Member/Songwriter/Frontman of the grunge band Sadgasm (“That 90’s Show”)
• Night school teacher (See Teacher)
• Nuclear Power Plant manager (“Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore”)
• Oil-rig worker (“Half-Decent Proposal”)
• One Man Band (“Bart Gets Famous”)
• Opera singer (“The Homer of Seville”)
• Ordained Minister (“There’s Something About Marrying”)
• Outsider Artist (“Mom and Pop Art”)
• Owner
  – ZiffCorp (“The Ziff Who Came to Dinner”) Majority Stock Holder
  – SpringShield (“Papa’s Got a Brand New Badge”)
  – the Denver Broncos (“You Only Move Twice”)
  – CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet – Internet based company – (“Das Bus”)
  – the Springfield Power Plant (“C.E. D’oh”)
  – Mr. Plow (“Mr. Plow”)
• Paparazzo (“Homerazzi”)
• Performance artist -Getting hit with a cannonball (“Homerpalooza”)
• Personal assistant
  – Briefly becomes the assistant and friend of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. (“When You Dish upon a Star”)
  – Briefly taking Smithers’ place as Mr. Burns’ right-hand man. (“Homer the Smithers”)
• Prank monkey for Mr. Burns (“Homer vs. Dignity”)
• Public speaker (“HOMR”)
• Roadie (“How I Spent My Strummer Vacation”)
• Railroad Engineer (implied) (“Maximum Homerdrive”)
• Rollercoaster Rebuilder (“Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em…”)
• Referee (“Marge Gamer”)
• Safety inspector – Homer’s main job.
• Safety Salamander (“See Homer Run”)
• Sailor in the Naval Reserve (“Simpson Tide”)
• Salesman (see Used Car salesman and Matress salesman)
• Sanitation Commissioner (“Trash of the Titans”)
• Security Officer (“Papa’s Got a Brand New Badge”)
• Silhouette Model (“Midnight Towboy”)
• Singer (“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”)
• Smithers (Assistant) (see personal assistant)
• Smuggler
  – of beer (“Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment”)
  – of prescription drugs (“Midnight Rx”)
  – of vegetables (“Itchy & Scratchy Land”)
  – of Sugar (“Sweets and Sour Marge”)
• Snowplow proprietor and driver (“Mr. Plow”)
• Soccer referee (“Marge Gamer”)
• Street musician (“Bart Gets Famous”)
• Superhero (“Simple Simpson”)
• Spokesperson/Walking Billboard (“My Fair Laddy”)
• Sprawl-Mart greeter (“On a Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister”)
• Talk Show Host (“Today I Am a Clown”)
• Teacher (“Secrets of a Successful Marriage”)
• Television Producer
• Telemarketer (“Lisa’s Date with Density”)
• Tomacco Creator/Farmer/Salesman (see Farmer) (“E-I-EI-(Annoyed Grunt)”)
• Tow Truck Driver (“Midnight Towboy”)
• Town crier (“Lisa the Iconoclast”)
• Traveling salesman of Simpson & Son, Revitalizing Tonic (“Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacyts”)
• Trucker (“Maximum Homerdrive”)
• Union leader (“Last Exit to Springfield”)
• Used Car salesman (“Diatribe of a Mad Housewife”)
• Voice actor (“The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show”) – playing “Poochie the Dog”
• Webmaster (“The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”)[/fn]

A right-hander, he signed up for a company softball team that had come off a tough 2-28 season in 1991. It had been their best season to date. Standing in at 5-foot-9 7/10, Simpson is listed with a weight that usually fluctuates around 239-241 pounds.[fn]How-tall.com puts his height at 177 cm. See http://how-tall.com/homer%20simpson but competing site howtallis sees him at 183 cm, or 6 foot even. See http://howtallis.info/homer-simpson.html. The unassailable HIPpomanguyperson wrote, “In one episode he weighed 239 lb, and another much later episode he weighed 241 lb. However he weighed 260 lb in Season 2 episode 18 entitled “A brush with greatness.” He was trying to lose the weight by dieting. The most he has ever weighted was 315 lb in the episode entitled “King Sized Homer” (Season 7 episode 7).The least he has weighted was probably 140 lb-150 lb … in the episode entitled “Hungry, Hungry Homer.” See http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_Homer_Simpson_weigh.[/fn] That puts him perhaps a little under Rich Garces and a full 40-plus pounds less than Adam Dunn.

His principal claim to fame in the National Pastime came during the 1992 season when he hit home run after home run with the Wonderbat, his customcrafted home-made bat. It was Simpson who inspired and led Springfield’s Nuclear Power Plant team to a worst-to-first season that year. As indicated, the prior season had been their best year ever, but they still had finished in the cellar. In 1992, with Homer hammering homers in game after game, the team rose in the standings, right up to the point when the city championship was on the line.

With expanded rosters, and new field manager C. (for Charles) Montgomery Burns taking charge, a number of very recently-hired Nuclear Power Plant employees were penciled in for postseason play. Some of the names were well-known former ballplayers from other leagues, and three of them—Wade Boggs, Ozzie Smith, and Ken Griffey Jr.—are members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

When Roger Clemens, pitching b.p., fired an underarm fastball that shattered Simpson’s bat during warmups for the 1992 City Championship game, the evidence was clear: the Wonderbat was a legitimate one. This was no corked bat, nor was it stuffed with superballs.[fn]Graig Nettles of the New York Yankees’ bat was found to contain six superballs when it broke on September 7, 1974, and when home run hitter Sammy Sosa’s bat shattered on June 3, 2003, it was found to have been corked.[/fn] It was indeed a smooth, round stick not more than 2¾ inches in diameter at the thickest part and was one piece of solid wood. Carved by Homer himself from a limb struck by lightning in his own backyard, he had perhaps not secured approval from MLB’s Rules Committee prior to use. The Commissioner of Major League Baseball declined to acknowledge a request for data on the Wonderbat.[fn]Author letters to Acting Commissioner Allan H. Selig dated December 8, 1992, with followups on the same date in 2002 and 2012. The UMass-Lowell Baseball Research Center declined to offer a comment for publication.[/fn]

Just prior to the game itself, what could be described as “a series of unfortunate events” befell all but one of the new members of the Springfield team. The only remaining one of the new men was Darryl Strawberry, who already had eight seasons with the New York Mets under his belt and, following a November 1990 free agent signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, had continued to play right field on the West Coast. Burns assigned Strawberry to play right for Springfield, leaving Simpson on the bench for the critical title game against the Shelbyville Nuclear Power Plant nine. The 1992 City Championship was on the line.

Needless to say, Simpson was not pleased by having Strawberry supplant him. As the leader of the team, he was now the only one on the team no longer in the starting lineup. He gripes that Strawberry is “bigger than me, faster than me, stronger than me, and he already has more friends around the plant than I do.” Simpson grabbed some bench; his moment was yet to come.

The story is told elsewhere, but the score stood 43-43 in the bottom of the ninth. There were two outs and the bases were loaded, with Strawberry striding to the plate. He already had nine home runs in the game (the major-league record is a trifling four, a record shared by 16 players.) Strawberry is a left-handed hitter who later wrapped up his career in the big leagues with 335 homers and exactly 1,000 runs batted in.

The wily Mr. Burns told Strawberry to hit the showers so he could put in a right-handed batter against Shelbyville’s southpaw. “It’s called playing the percentages,” he explained. “It’s what smart managers do to win ballgames.” Burns called on Homer Simpson. But Simpson was without the Wonderbat. Burns reminded Simpson of the signals, but Simpson became confused and was clearly distracted watching Burns in the third-base coaching box. The pitch came in high and hard—and hit Homer in the head. He fell down, knocked out cold, across home plate. The runner on third moved his unconscious body aside and stepped on the plate, forced in thanks to the hit-by-pitch with the tie-breaking run. Simpson had won the game for Springfield, 44-43.

Questions regarding Simpson’s use of androstenedione during the regular season were deflected by Simpson’s agents, as the supplement was not banned by the International Olympic Committee until 1997, and later Major League Baseball. Credentialed sportswriters who regularly covered Springfield Nuclear Plant games … actually don’t exist, but it was observed that Simpson’s locker often contained empty cartons of doughnuts and empty cans of Duff Beer. Neither are subject to testing under the Dangerous Contaminated Supplements list agreed to in collective bargaining by MLB and the Players’ Association. Despite his athletic accomplishments during both the 1992 regular season and the championship game, a study commissioned by London’s Daily Mail concluded that 59% of parents in the United Kingdom felt that Homer promoted an unhealthy lifestyle.[fn]What do they know about baseball, you might ask? See the article “The influence Homer Simpson has on children,” Daily Mail, August 13, 2005. This from the country which brought us Reggie and Ronnie Kray, and Jimmy Savile. Harrumph.[/fn]

It appears that Simpson was content to go out on top and declined to pursue a career in the game. Strawberry reverted to the major leagues.

Despite having played on the same team as Darryl Strawberry and the rest of the ringers, and driven in the winning run, an exhaustive search of the records of The Sporting News and databases Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Reference.com turn up no player of the name Homer Simpson in Organized Baseball.

SABR’s Minor League Database also lacks a player of the name. There were eight major-league ballplayers with the surname Simpson, including two All-Stars (Harry “Suitcase” Simpson and Wayne Simpson), and 117 minor leaguers named Simpson, 21 of which have no known first names. Those with unknown first names played in years ranging between 1887 and 1946, so there is the possibility of a baseball pedigree there, but this will require further research by SABR’s dedicated Minor Leagues Committee members. There was one player intriguingly listed as “H. Simpson” but he played in 1910 in the Class D Southwest Texas League (61 games, batting .210 for the Bay City Rice Eaters.) Clearly, this couldn’t have been the Homer Simpson born in the mid-1950s, but might perhaps have been a progenitor should Abe Simpson’s notion of coming to America from the Old Country been confused.

There have been 13 with the first name Homer, but that’s probably neither here nor there. There are none at all with the first name of Single, Double, or Triple, and none with names such as Sacrifice Fly.

Simpson has continued to work for Springfield’s nuclear plant at 100 Industrial Way. Not once during his tenure has the plant experienced a complete meltdown.

Being the safety inspector at a nuclear power plant is a job requiring dedication and diligence. One has to be on one’s toes at all times, and run a shipshape shop. The only surprise inspection during his tenure turned up some minor violations, as any unannounced visit is wont to do: the emergency exits signs were actually just painted on walls that really went nowhere. There were only 340 violations on the visit, things such as luminous rats and mutant three-eyed fish and the like, perhaps due to some of the pipes and drums leaking radioactive waste. Some of the waste was dumped a little out of the way in a children’s playground. Possibly the plutonium paperweight was not proper. All in all, though, Simpson had held his trusted position for more than 25 years so things couldn’t have been too bad.

In any particular stressful day monitoring plant safety, he can always look back on the day he made Springfield proud, being carried off with the trophy after the 1992 championship game.

This biography is included in “Nuclear Powered Baseball: Articles Inspired by The Simpsons Episode ‘Homer At the Bat’ ” (SABR, 2016), edited by Emily Hawks and Bill Nowlin. For more information or to purchase the book in e-book or paperback form, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author did not consult any player files or player questionnaires from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and his consultation of the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, or the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com, was all in vain. Efforts by SABR’s Oral History Committee to reach Simpson proved fruitless, apparently due to his lifelong aversion to modern dentistry. 

Photo credit

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation