Sliders: For ‘The Simpsons,' MLB's gambling ties make a perfectly cromulent premise

New York Times

25-04-2025

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball.
Nothing celebrates life's absurdities quite like 'The Simpsons,' the longest-running sitcom in television history. For nearly 800 episodes since 1989, it's been an animated masterpiece of satire, gleefully skewering pretty much every topic imaginable. Itself included.
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'It's hard to do, but we look at what's in the news and we make a comment on it a year and a half later,' said Joel Cohen, an executive producer. 'That's our policy.'
A little over a year ago, the big news in baseball was the scandal involving Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, who stole more than $16 million from Ohtani to cover his gambling debts. Inside the Simpsons writers' room on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles, an idea started to percolate.
'Matt Selman did a bit in the room where he was pretending to be Otani's interpreter, like misinterpreting everything Ohtani said to cover his own betting,' said Michael Price, another executive producer, referring to 'The Simpsons' show-runner.
'So he was like, 'Uh, yeah, yeah, everything's great!' We thought it would be really funny if Moe became that guy, and that's where the Macedonian part came in. Like, why would a (baseball star) want to come to Springfield? And then Joel had the idea that Moe was Macedonian, and it just sort of made sense.'
In the Simpsons-verse, it's natural to picture Moe Szyslak, a scheming bartender with a sketchy past, entangled in a gambling scandal. Springfield does have a pro baseball team called the Isotopes (that's where the Albuquerque Triple-A team got its name), and if the show could break canon and make the 'Topes an MLB franchise … well, Price and Cohen knew they were onto something.
That's the genesis of 'Abe League Of Their Moe,' which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Jamie Demetriou voices Aeropos Walkov, who yearns to bring his two-way talents (.358 average, 2.03 ERA) to the majors. He studies hype videos from every team — Chris Rock promotes the Mets, Danny Trejo pushes L.A. — but only the Isotopes court him with an actual Macedonian speaker.
Walkov chooses Moe, and a team with just two fans — Grampa Simpson is the other — suddenly becomes a hot ticket. Grandpa even convinces Bart to join him at the ballpark, which is covered in ads for gambling sites.
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To Grampa's horror, Bart becomes hooked on sports gambling. To Moe's horror, Walkov does, too. When the repentant star calls a confessional press conference, Moe tries to cover it up with misinterpretations and winds up taking the fall.
For Price, the co-runner for the episode, the Ohtani vehicle was a chance to comment on MLB's embrace of legalized gambling as a revenue source. The Ohtani/Mizuhara story has faded from the headlines, but the league has retained its partnerships with betting sites. (The Athletic has a partnership with BetMGM.)
'Gambling — like all things, I guess, is fine in moderation — but people get their lives destroyed by this,' Price said. 'And in the Ohtani deal, the official story is that Ohtani wasn't doing it, (Mizuhara) was — but even in that version of it, it's ruined this guy's life. It's a really horrible thing, and (the fact) that it's just promoted so baldly, I think, is not great.'
It's been almost 15 years since the last baseball-themed Simpsons episode, 2010's 'MoneyBart,' in which Lisa uses analytics to manage Bart's Little League team. The show's famous softball episode, 'Homer At The Bat,' aired in 1992, and one-off jokes are peppered through the series — a comic book called 'Radioactive Man Meets The Kansas City Royals,' a ventriloquist's dummy who imitates Vin Scully, a barrage of pretzels injuring Whitey Ford, and so on.
In Sunday's episode, random references abound.
'We had a goal when we first started writing it — Joel said, 'Let's aim for this to somehow have a joke about every one of all 30 teams,'' Price said. 'I don't know if we succeeded or not.'
'We stopped checking, but we think we might have hit every team,' Cohen added. 'If any team isn't offended, let us know and we'll send something up on Signal or something.'
Besides Demetriou, Rock and Trejo, the episode features Fox's Kevin Burkhardt, MLB Network's Kevin Millar, SNY's Steve Gelbs — and me! The other guys have speaking roles. My character merely gasps, too stunned by Moe's chicanery to ask a question at the press conference.
But that's me, all right, along with Anthony DiComo of MLB.com, who is also drawn into the press conference scene. Price — a diehard Mets fan whose brother, Bill, is a former sports editor of the New York Daily News — decided to animate some media members who are known to be fans of the show.
For me, it's more than the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It makes up for a gaffe I've never lived down.
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About 12 years ago, I got an email from a producer for the movie 'Million Dollar Arm.' I opened it on my phone, scanned it too quickly and forgot about it. Turns out, the email was an invitation to actually appear in the movie. Other baseball reporters, including our own Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal, did just that. I let the pitch sail by.
I've still never been in a movie, but now I don't care. This is better, even if my character didn't get to meet Homer. He's barely in this episode, however, and wouldn't remember me if he were.
'We wanted to really focus it on Moe and Grampa, so there wasn't a lot of room for Homer,' Cohen said. 'But I'll say this: Homer gets more drunk in this episode than he's probably ever been in any episode. So you could make that your headline: 'Homer Simpson, the drunkest episode ever.''
Griffin Canning was not expecting to win a Gold Glove in 2020. He made 11 starts for the Angels in that shortened season, going 2-3 with a 3.99 ERA, and didn't remember any spectacular plays.
But because teams played so few opponents that season, Gold Gloves were determined strictly by analytics, without input from coaches. And the numbers said Canning was best, and they weren't wrong.
Canning, now thriving for the Mets, also stood out for his fielding at UCLA. While he did not grow up playing multiple sports, Canning regularly shows his agility on comebackers and has an exceptional pickoff move, especially for a right-hander.
Right back at Griffin Canning as he completes 6 strong innings! pic.twitter.com/CWw5Df36dz
— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) April 18, 2025
Canning went 6-13 with a 5.91 ERA last season, leading the AL in earned runs allowed (99), and the Angels quickly traded him to the Atlanta Braves for Jorge Soler. With Canning eligible for salary arbitration, the Braves let Canning go and the Mets signed him for $4.25 million.
Now Canning is 3-1 with a 3.12 ERA in five starts, so he's been a good investment — good as Gold, perhaps.
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'I won a Gold Glove in college, too, so that's something I want to win every year,' he said. 'I was a finalist last year, but if you have a (lousy) year, you don't really get the favoritism to win.'
Never lose the position player in you: 'Like most guys, I played a position in high school; I played all over — shortstop, second base, center field, third base. I went to UCLA and playing West Coast baseball, there was a lot of small ball, a lot of bunting, a lot of emphasis the inside game — stuff going on the infield, like getting over to first base, being able to field your position, being to get off the mound and field a bunt. It was just kind of my outlet once I got to college — not playing the field anymore, it was just fun for me to be able to do that. I just took it really seriously and prided myself on being able to field my position. I worked on it a ton in college, so kind of just something that got ingrained in me.'
Never let a potential out get by you: I'm pretty twitchy, I can jump a little bit, (and) once the ball is off the bat, if you watch, I'm always reaching, trying to see if I can get that ball. It's just like a habit. Any way I can find an out, that's something I'm gonna try to do. I try and remind myself to kind of look behind me and see where we're playing, like the shifts and stuff. But for the most part, it's just instinctual to try to get the ball.
Zack Greinke was a role model: 'I know early in his career he was a pretty dominating pitcher, but as his career got on he wasn't necessarily the biggest, hardest-throwing guy. He was just a pitcher — changed speeds, understood the game really well and fielded his position really well, too. He was just someone I kind of gravitate towards because I kind of compare myself to him.'
Today's rules mean a renewed emphasis on fielding: 'Holding runners, all those little things I think have come back into the game a little bit more now with the pitch clock and the pickoff rules and stuff. You've got to be on top of holding runners a little more and being quick to the plate, stuff like that. But it's tough now with all the video out there now. Teams are really good at picking up little things you might do when you're going to pick over.'
MLB's Gold Glove comes with a perk: 'It's pretty much the same trophy (as in college), but I get a gold label on all my gloves now, and you can only get this label if you win the Gold Glove. So that's cool.'
A 30/30 season has long been the benchmark for power and speed. It's been done 72 times by 47 different players, including Shohei Ohtani, José Ramírez and Bobby Witt Jr. last season. But it happened only once before 1956, by a guy who never achieved either mark in any other season.
He was Ken Williams of the 1922 St. Louis Browns, and he qualified for Tuesday's Immaculate Grid, which asked for a player with a 100-RBI season and a 6-WAR season. Williams met those thresholds easily (155 runs batted in, 7.9 WAR) while smashing 39 homers and stealing 37 bases.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was most impressed. Williams' SABR biography includes this poem from the paper's L.C. Davis:
Whose name is on every tongue? Ken Williams
Whose praises are now daily sung? Ken Williams
Who is the rooter's joy and pride?
Who gives the pesky pill a ride?
And separates it from its hide? Ken Williams
Who is our most admired youth? Ken Williams
Who makes the fan forget Babe Ruth? Ken Williams
Who is the guy so calm and cool?
Who swings his trusty batting tool?
And knocks the pellet for a gool? Ken Williams
Williams' efforts helped the Browns to a second-place finish at 93-61, the best of their 52-year stay in St. Louis. And while 1922 was a career year, Williams had several more strong seasons and finished at .319/.393/.520.
The problem, historically, is that Williams did not become a regular player until age 30, after serving in World War I. He collected only 1,552 hits and got almost no consideration for the Hall of Fame, roundly rejected by the writers in the 1950s and by a veterans committee in 2003.
Still, Williams has a case. Of the 51 players who appeared in 1,000 or more games in the 1920s, Williams ranks fifth in OPS at .947, behind Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann and Tris Speaker. He's eighth in WAR for the decade, and everyone else in the top 14 has a plaque in Cooperstown.
Thirty years ago on Friday, Major League Baseball finally returned after a devastating work stoppage that cancelled the 1994 World Series and bled into 1995, when owners tried to unilaterally impose a salary cap. The season nearly began with replacement players until future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — then a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York — issued an injunction against the owners, bringing back the real players for a hurried spring training.
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The first game took place in Miami on April 25, 1995, with the Florida Marlins hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers. A sold-out crowd of 42,125 saw the Marlins lose, 8-7, but it sure beat the 'exciting, competitive alternative' that 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' had devised eight months earlier.
A team of 8-year-olds faced off against a team of 80-year-olds including Carl 'Oldy' Olson, who hit a ball out of the infield but may have broken a hip. The Turbo Ninjas beat the White Stockings, 8-5, in a game that featured 26 errors and a bench-clearing brawl.
'They really went at it,' said O'Brien, narrating the action. 'This makes really young people look bad and really, really old people look bad. It doesn't do much for the game. I don't know, I thought the whole thing was shocking and very sad.'
(Top photo from 'The Simpsons': Courtesy of The Simpsons™ and ©2025 20th Television)