In this episode, Bart becomes a pariah after he costs Springfield a Little League championship while Homer becomes a mattress salesman.

Bart catches a fly ball at a Little League Baseball game, pushing the Springfield Isotopes into the championships.

The next day, Marge is shopping at a department store, but Homer is tired and cannot find a place to sit, so he lies down on a mattress and falls asleep.

When their batter hits a pop-up towards Bart, he drops the ball and repeatedly fails to pick it up, letting all four runners score and thus giving Shelbyville the 6–5 victory.

Lisa tries to cheer him up by taking him to see Joe LaBoot, a baseball player who made the same mistake as Bart did in the 1943 World Series.

The townspeople, realizing that they have lived up to a billboard's message of Springfield being advertised as the "Meanest City in America", agree to restage the game to restore Bart's self esteem after Lisa proposes it.

[2] Bart spinning in a circle while his clothes fly off after having been hit by the ball is a reference to Charlie Brown in Peanuts.

I don't think the town has turned on Bart so savagely since that time he cut the head off the Jebediah Springfield statue.

"[3] Canning further wrote that the subplot with Homer was "one of the dullest 'B' storylines The Simpsons have ever had," and "the flash-forward to 60 years in the future only made the episode worse.

[5] On Four Finger Discount, Guy Davis and Brendan Dando liked Homer's subplot but thought Bart's story was "mean and cruel".