Don Mattingly, who was forced to shave off his "sideburns" by Mr. Burns during the episode, would later have an actual "haircut controversy", while he was playing for the New York Yankees. The coaching staff forced him to cut his long hair, and was briefly dropped from the team line-up for not doing so. Many people believed the joke in the episode to be a reference to the incident, but the episode was recorded a year before it happened.
Among the players Burns initially wants Smithers to round up for the company softball team is Jim Creighton, considered baseball's first star, who died in 1862.
This marks one of the very few times where Mr Burns remembers who Homer is and even remembers his name.
The episode took a long time to produce. It was written by John Swartzwelder, who is a big baseball fan, but was suggested by Sam Simon, who wanted an episode filled with real Major League Baseball players. Al Jean and Mike Reiss doubted that they would be able to get nine players, thinking that they would be able to get three at best. They succeeded, and the nine players who agreed to guest star were recorded over a period of six months, whenever they were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers or California Angels. Each player recorded their part in roughly five minutes and spent the next hour writing autographs for the staff.
Mike Scioscia accepted his guest spot in "half a second," while Ozzie Smith has stated that he would like to guest star again "so [he] can get out [of the Springfield Mystery spot]."