Did ‘The Simpsons’ Predict the St. Louis Cardinals’ Hacking Scandal?
What’s the difference between a crystal ball and The Simpsons? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
As you may know, the St. Louis Cardinals are in hot water right now. Since as early as 2012, they’ve allegedly hacked into the Houston Astros’ internal network to steal statistics, scouting reports and trade information. Why? Nobody really knows. Could be revenge against Jeff Luhnow, who left the Cards to become the GM in Houston, or maybe they’re just fans of Silicon Valley. Either way, the club is reportedly being investigated by the FBI to get to the bottom of the madness.
However, it turns out that this whole ordeal could’ve been avoided had — believe it or not — we just listened to The Simpsons 16 years ago.
Long story short, in the 1999 episode “Brother’s Little Helper,” Bart becomes a conspiracy theorist after being put on behavioral medicine, and comes to believe Major League Baseball is spying on the good people of Springfield. Turns out, his suspicions are correct, and after shooting down an MLB satellite sent into orbit to obtain “market research,” Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire is promptly choppered onto the scene to set things straight.
“Young Bart here was right,” McGwire says. “We are spying on you, pretty much around the clock.”
Eerie, huh? Bart then asks Big Mac why MLB would go all NSA on the citizens of Springfield, to which McGwire replies, “Do you want to know the terrifying truth? Or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?”
Turns out, everybody loves the long ball. And though all it took for Springfield to forget about the league’s dirty espionage was a few dingers, the 2015 Cardinals probably won’t get off so easily. As for the rest of us, we should probably be concerned that Matt Groening and his staff predicted one of the most ridiculous sport scandals in recent memory. What does Groening really know?