How Homer Simpson’s Comical Gluttony Saved Lives
On February 20, 1992, one of the best episodes of The Simpsons made its debut. “Homer at the Bat” — the 17th episode of the third season of the iconic show — aired for the first time that night. Fans of the Simpsons and baseball alike were delighted as Homer, the ne’er-do-well father of the titular family, tries out for the company softball team. With his secret weapon, a homemade bat called “The Wonder Bat,” he leads the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant squad to an undefeated record, earning them the right to face rival Shelbyville Nuclear Power’s team in the championship game. Montgomery Burns, the very rich owner of the Springfield plant, decides he wants to win that game — so he hires nine Major League Baseball players to take the spots of his actual employees, effectively rigging the game for Springfield. I’ll not ruin the rest of the episode for you, because it’s not relevant to today’s story.
What is relevant, though, is how Homer discovers there’s a company softball team in the first place. Here’s that clip:
If you don’t want to take the 26 seconds to watch the video, here’s a quick recap. Homer finds a box of doughnuts in the break room and, unable to help himself, goes on a binge, eating one after another in rapid succession. His friend and coworker, Lenny, warns him to slow down, as he could choke. Homer does not heed Lenny’s advice and — you guessed it — chokes. As Homer scrambles around the room, trying to breathe, Homer’s coworkers discuss what to do, but to no avail. That’s when Lenny says “hey, look at this” as the camera focuses on a poster about the Heimlich Maneuver (showing a man coughing up a whole lobster). But Lenny isn’t talking about the poster — a signup sheet for the company softball team is what caught Lenny’s eye. Homer coughs up the doughnut and excitedly says, “softball!” and signs up for the team.
That’s the whole gag, pardon the pun. And the Heimlich Maneuver poser is on the screen for only three, maybe four seconds, But that was long enough for the joke to land — and for it to save at least two lives.
The first Simpsons-inspired lifesaving Heimlich came just a few months after the episode’s original air date. In May 1992, the Associated Press reported that “Chris [age 10] and Alex [age 8] Bencze were home alone when Alex began choking on an orange. Chris stood behind his brother and squeezed his chest until the fruit popped out.” According to Karen Bencze, the children’s mother, Chris learned the maneuver from the Simpson’s episode. And he wasn’t alone. In 2007, Aiden Bateman, a ten-year-old from Yorkshire, England, saved his classmate, Alex Hardy when the latter began choking on a ham sandwich. As Bateman told the press, he saw the Heimlich on The Simpsons: “It just came into my head and I did it. I put my arms around Alex’s back and pushed his stomach in. He was going purple and the veins had started coming up his head — I was shaking all day afterward.”
Both Alexes were better off because of Homer’s folly. As for Homer, he’s still going strong more than thirty years after his choking incident.
Bonus fact: In 2006, a 17-year-old volunteer firefighter named Kevin Stephan was in a restaurant in upstate New York. A woman named Penny Brown started choking and Stephan, knowing what to do, performed the Heimlich and possibly saved her life. And while he didn’t know it at the time, he was just returning the favor. As NBC News reported, seven years earlier, Kevin “was a bat boy for his younger brother’s Little League baseball team. A player who was warming up accidentally hit him in the chest with a bat,” causing his heart to stop beating. One of his teammate’s mom was a nurse — she performed CPR, saving Stephan’s life. That nurse was Penny Brown.
From the Archives: Why You Shouldn’t Eat Those “Do Not Eat” Packets: They’re not poisonous. But they’re a choking hazard. And The Hole Truth About Ballpoint Pens: Why the caps have a hole at the top. (You probably can figure out the “why” here, though.)