Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
We’re talkin’ softball…
From Maine to San Diego.
Talkin’ softball…
Mattingly and Canseco.
Ken Griffey’s grotesquely swollen jaw.
Steve Sax and his run-in with the law.
We’re talkin’ Homer… Ozzie and the Straw.
Baseball! Is there anything more glorious than the game of baseball? (Don’t answer that if you’re going to say no…)
The Marge at the Bat update combines two fun baseball episodes of The Simpsons…”Homer at the Bat” and “Money Bart”. I feel like it’s no coincidence that those are two episodes we’ve been talking about around here lately. (For those who’ve missed it, Safi’s been talking a lot about Baseball on his Monday Morning Math Posts)
But, leave it to EA though to mess up an update about Baseball, with zero new content. Kind of like MLB is messing up the game itself these days with all these stupid new “rules”…but I digress. (hey look, I can be Cranky too 😂)
Anywho, the one thing Marge at the Bat has, that EA didn’t mess up, is a fun questline. The questline is pretty amusing for those that follow baseball, so let’s get to it…
Marge at the Bat Pt. 1
Auto starts
Burns: Smithers! Get your pasty-white dress shirt in my office right this minute!
Smithers: I’m already here, sir. Gazing at you silently like I do all night while you sleep.
Burns: Well, stop being creepy and get me Aristotle Amadopolis! We have a feud that needs settling.
Aristotle Amadopolis: I too have been here the whole time, with the aid of several bugs I’ve planted in your office.
Make Burns Get Into a Net Worth Measuring Contest- 4hrs, (requires Aristotle) Earns $350, 90xp
Make Smithers Scrub the Office for Bugs- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Burns: Curse you, Amadopolis, you swarthy Greek salad! We’ll settle this dispute once again with a baseball game. Only this time my team will win!
Aristotle Amadopolis: But your team won the last time.
Burns: It did? Jeez, my memory isn’t what it used to be. I should do more crossword puzzles.
Aristotle Amadopolis: A rematch would be my pleasure. I’ll see you on the blood diamond.
Burns: Curse you, you swarthy Greek salad! Oh God, now I’m repeating myself?
Note: Part 1 of the questline is where folks who don’t have Aristotle are getting stuck. This is a bug on EA’s part, you can try contacting them or wait until they patch it (which will hopefully be soon).
Marge at the Bat Pt. 2
Smithers starts
Smithers: So, sir, would you like me to call up the ringers again?
Burns: Ringers? No, that didn’t work last time.
Smithers: Actually, it did. You won, remember? No, of course you don’t.
Burns: I’ve seen a lot of baseball movies. What we need is a band of misfits: a nerd, a fat guy, an angry guy, and a coach who doesn’t care if we win.
Smithers: How many baseball movies have you seen exactly?
Burns: Just one so far: the Bad News Bears. I hope Part Two is as good as Part One.
Make Smithers Print Out Sign-Up Sheets- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Burns Watch the Bad News Bears in Breaking Training- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Burns: Dreck! Utter dreck! We’ll never win with a team of misfits.
Smithers: So you want to go with the ringers then?
Burns: No, that’s just what you say before you add a cool guy and a girl to your roster, causing the team to gel. Don’t you know anything about baseball?
Marge at the Bat Pt. 3
Homer starts
Homer: Burns is forming a baseball team again? Baseball was lame then, and it’s lamer now!
Carl: It’s like the old man’s run out of ideas. Or some old men somewhere have.
Lenny: We should totally not sign up for this.
Homer: Look, Mindy signed up in the slot for “Girl”.
Lenny: There’s a girl on the team. Sign me up!
Make Lenny Sign Up as the “Nerd”- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Barney Sign Up as the “Fatty”- 4hrs, Earns $260, 70xp
Make CBG Sign Up as the “Angry Guy”- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Disco Stu Sign Up as the “Cool Guy”- 4hrs, Earns $260, 70xp
Homer: These selections are really iffy. Disco Stu is the “cool guy”?
Disco Stu: Disco Stu is hurt by your line of questioning.
Homer: And Comic Book Guy is the “angry guy”? He seems harmless.
CBG: Just wait until someone makes a canonical mistake on the message boards. I’ll be on them like a hawk.
Marge at the Bat Pt. 4
Marge starts
Marge: You’re playing sports with Mindy from work?! Over my dead body!
Homer: Well, it’s me playing sports… so it’s probably going to result in MY dead body.
Marge: Mr. Burns! I demand you take Mindy off the team.
Burns: But we need a woman. You can’t have a team of misfits without at least one woman. And no more than one woman.
Marge: Well the only woman Homer is going to be breaking a sweat around is yours truly!
Make Marge Sign Up for the Team- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Burns Fire Mindy Without Cause- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Marge: Thank you, Mr. Burns. I probably should have mentioned earlier that I know nothing about playing baseball.
Burns: You can’t play? Then excellent, you’ll be the coach!
Homer: What?!
Burns: Those who can’t do, teach. Or coach. All that matters is that they’re in a position of power over those who know what they’re doing.
Krusty: Like non-writing Executive Producers?
Burns: Exactly.
Marge at the Bat Pt. 5
Marge starts
Marge: All right, team! Who wants to catch some fly balls? And as a unrelated question, can anyone here hit fly balls?
Softball Burns: What’s going on here?! You call this a practice?
Marge:I did in the email I sent out to everyone.
Softball Burns: They’ll have plenty of time to learn to catch and hit in the game. Practice is about fleshing out the characters. The nerd should be missing plays because he’s watching other people play baseball on his laptop. And the angry guy should just be getting really mad and yelling at everyone.
CBG: That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!
Softball Burns: That’s more like it.
Make Team Members Practice in Weird Ways- x3, 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp Freemium and $260, 70xp Premium (Can Send Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl, CBG, Disco Stu, Jasper, Moe, and Zutroy)
Softball Burns: Excellent. I like how the cool guy spiked the Gatorade when no one was looking.
Marge: He did what now?
Disco Stu: Disco Stu has an issue with alcoholism too.
Softball Burns: Now I want everyone to go home and get into giant arguments with their loved ones. Then tomorrow I want the best player on the team to quit, but change his mind at the last minute because of something his dad says. Great practice, coach!
Marge: But I didn’t even get to bring out my orange slices.
Marge at the Bat Pt. 6
Marge starts
Marge: Our team is ready. I found out our nerd only got an 1100 on his SATs. Can you help me, Lisa?
Lisa: I don’t think I should. I turned into a real monster that week I coached Bart’s team.
Marge: But you won the championships.
Lisa: Actually, we lost. You should do more crosswords, Mom.
Marge: Please, I need your help. The game is tomorrow and I haven’t even started slicing oranges yet.
Lisa: Well, I guess I could crunch some stats with Sabermetrics.
Marge: Great, and after you eat you can help me with the team.
Make Lisa Crunch the Numbers- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Marge Prepare Orange Slices- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Marge at the Bat Pt. 7
Burns starts
Softball Burns: All right, team! I’ve got a good feeling about today. This game is going to be as good as Bad News Bears Go To Japan!
Lisa: Actually, Mr. Burns, I ran the numbers and our chance of winning today is zero. Which, coincidentally, is the Rotten Tomatoes score for Bad News Bears Go To Japan.
Softball Burns: Young lady, I’ve had it up to here with your pessimism. And your hip 1990s “big data”. The Bad News Bears won, didn’t they?
Lisa: Actually, they famously lost.
Softball Burns: Curse my memory!
Marge: Does anyone know what positions they’re supposed to play?
Make Marge Manage the Bullpen- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Burns do Crosswords- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Team members Fall Apart- x3, 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp Freemium and $260, 70xp Premium (Can Send Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl, CBG, Disco Stu, Jasper, Moe, and Zutroy)
Marge: My God, this is a disaster!
Lisa: I know. We’re down by twenty runs, and there’s only one inning left.
Marge: I was talking about these orange slices. I meant to make the first slice core-to-core, but I must have done it around the middle.
Marge at the Bat Pt. 8
Homer starts
Homer: Okay Homer, this is your moment to shine. All you have to do to win the game is take a ball to the head like last time. *oof*
Marge: Homer! Are you okay?
Homer: Did we win?
Marge: No, we’re not at bat yet. You let the ball hit you in the head while you were fielding. I think you have a concussion.
Homer: I’m going to sleep for a little now.
Make Homer Sleep During his Concussion- 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp
Make Team Members Lose Game- x3, 4hrs, Earns $175, 45xp Freemium and $260, 70xp Premium (Can Send Homer, Barney, Lenny, Carl, CBG, Disco Stu, Jasper, Moe, and Zutroy)
Smithers: I’m sorry, Mr. Burns. Your team just lost.
Softball Burns: In that case, I’ll stop doing this crossword. Ah yes, my brain’s already starting to forget things. And 3-2-1… We won!
Marge: *sigh* Well, that game was humiliating.
Lisa : Yeah. But on the upside, we lost by the exact number of runs that I predicted.
Bart: And I can confirm that, because I bet that we’d lose by that much and won a bunch of money!
Marge: Is Homer still sleeping?
Bart: It looks like it. But at least he’s not snoring anymore.
And there you have it my friends, the full dialogue version of Marge at the Bat. The only thing new to hit with this update, so we mine as well enjoy it right?
Thoughts on the questline? How about the content with this update? Wish they would have done more? What would you have added? (besides the baseball players) Sound off below, you know we love hearing from you!
Is this the whole thing? I finished it 2 days ago and have been waiting for more stuff to pop up. But it sounds like that was the whole game for this one, there’s like 10 days left still…
Yup, that’s it. 32 hours only (or 28 hours and 48 minutes if you clicked ‘free’ when the tasks got down to 24 minutes (or even less if you used donuts to speed through))!
I had the same reaction. I came here wondering if I’d missed something, because surely there must be more to this….
I will say on a positive note about this update, I got 3 new skins for free (I’ve ignored tapped ball updates in the past)
tennis courts….! buy em now for a huge xp boost and keep them busy in the heights for more before it’s fixed
Thanx for the note. I didn’t realize that! Great tip!
Baseball diamond. I still have not gotten it. Does all the quests have to be completed before I get access to it? And the costumes for characters?
That would be GREAT if they existed. Which they don’t. EA fail. Unless there is a huge surprise at the end of this.
Don’t want to be a Gloomy Gus but The Doors (google if you have no idea what I’m talking about) keep playing in my head. This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend
The end
Of our elaborate plans
The end
Of everything that stands
The end
No safety or surprise
The end
I’ll never look into your eyes
Again
I can only hope that you are talking about the game?
I am not sure what “the end” actually looks like for TSTO. But yes…if you mean, finally succumbing to age, and being shoved into Hospice with only a thread of life support tangling from your various parts…then, this could be the end.
COULD BE.
I’ve gone back to look at other “lulls” in the game. This isn’t really even close to the longest between really good content. But, we’ll see. The fact that the last two “updates” were pretty thin, outside of offering old content in new ways, it does add to the “super-lull, near coma” aspect in which we seemingly find ourselves.
What raised the red flag is the only new item in this “event” is the dialogue. EA has been lazy in the past but this really lowers the bar
Agreed. EALP doesn’t begin to cover it.
Koolviruz, iirc, you had to pay premium for the gold stadium parts during the Tap Ball event.
LelandGaunt imho, the clay skin makes the stadium look somewhat smaller when next to other buildings.
The golden skin will cost you even more donuts, no more available.
TSTO Fandom Wiki tagged this event as a Promotion. I think they are not so wrong, but I don’t know. They made me thinking.
funny dialog… but I’ll be rushing the tasks with sprinkles and get it done to have time to ‘design” and re-design areas of my SP… happy Thursday everyone…
*snores* – what is this crap? A funny dialouge, yes, something new and excitning to take part of? No. And what about the returning items in the store? Most of them are already in the yearbook mystery box, so what the hell are they thinking – who wants to pay more than neccesary? This will probably be the last few months of playing for my own part, sadly.
Sad but true, update quality is degenerating quickly. I already fear what might come next. If no small miracle will happen, I can’t see myself staying with the game in one or two months…
How do i get aristotle amandopolis? I cant do The first task without him 🙁
He popped up for me when I went into the store and viewed the content for the event.
This update reminds me all too much of the way Futurama “ended”. Thrown together no new content “update” leading to nothingness. Sure the game is still up and running, but once you’ve maxxed out everything, is there really a point?
~MIB👤
I wish they bring back the gold and clay cover for the stands
Yay, for getting grandpas new skin. Even if it is for bullfighting. Heads up for anyone wanting it, that item is missing out of the Yearbook. Finished my yearbook same day it came out. While more of an event would be nice, im just happy for the new skin. Any characyers im missing make me happy at this point!
*Fingers crossed for Simpson kids elf skins, coming very, very, quickly* 🤣
(“Like non-writing Executive Producers”) 😂
I wholeheartedly agree that the dialogue is very funny and clever, but once again we have an Event of some sort that is “baseless” (unless you are a Noob, then this offers you more freebies than you ever got before). 🤷🏼♂️
So, with nothing to grinder over (yes!) I am free to Farm for 🍩’s and spend sprinkles on whatever I want. Am I happy with the direction EA going? Not if this is going to be the norm Event wise for the rest of the year!
Am I going to let it get me cranky? Nope! I can voice an opinion, but I can still have fun without desperately trying to obtain Premium content that’s only available for a week or two.
I got my hopes up when I seen the news of an update especially a baseball themed one… immediately thought of new characters/skins which could be coming…
Howard K. Duff VIII
Hunger strike Homer skin/animation
Buck Mitchell
Tabitha Vixx
Charlie (Power plant worker)
Iso-totes skins for kids
But once update started it was fairly disappointing too see no new content plus old items on sale which can be won in the yearbool for far less!
Sadly this is the first time i think they may be winding down the game at least for new content…
20 minutes ago my B game didn’t have Aristotle. Now he has magically appeared. Rushed Burn’s task with donuts to send him on the questline task with Aristotle. Guess EA patched that glitch fairly quick – about 8 hours.
yea, they’re pretty good about fixing it once attention is called to it (especially something as simple as that)
Tennis courts!
I for 1 enjoy watching our national league pitchers take an at bat!!! If it ain’t broke…don’t fix it! But I digresss….. Lol
They coulda done such cool stuff with this baseball event! Meh.
Agreed on all counts! The American League…pffffttt…
Tennis Courts for 10 Heights Statues = 2.25% bonus EACH!!!! Best value of the event!
Totally missed that…you are a God among men for pointing it out!
I had 300 statues and just bought 30 tennis courts. That’s 67.% bonus % increase!!!!
Nice.
Yeah, I just spent my 1,000 statues and got 100 tennis courts. Love it!
How do you get 1000 statues with a max of 300?
Googolplex. I had over 1,000 of everything.
I forgot the Googoplex even existed. Just took me a actual minute to find in my town lol. Not yet that cash rich to use it anyway
It’s not fun if you already have all the skins from bigger event previous
***DISCLAIMER*** I have not personally tried the following as I am cash and donut poor, but I think it should work…
For those of you with ca$h and D’oh-nuts to spare, here is a way to get .5625%/Donut using the Googolplex…
1-Watch “The Return Of The Titanic Ben-Hur” for $200,000
2-Speed up with 2 Donuts
3-Claim your 5 Statues
4-Repeat and purchase/place a Tennis Court every 10 Statues
If the mystery box return is about 1% per 8 Donuts, that comes out to .125% per Donut. For a short time, you can get 4.5 times the return per Donut as opposed to the mystery box.
For a quick extrapolation using this method:
1 Tennis Court = 2.25% from $400,000 & 4 Donuts
5 Tennis Courts = 11.25% from $2,000,000 & 20 Donuts
10 Tennis Courts = 22.5% from $4,000,000 & 40 Donuts
50 Tennis Courts = 112.5% from $20,000,000 & 200 Donuts
200 Donuts would net you about 25% through the mystery box. Looks like a good way to bump up quickly if you can without grinding.
I’ve been doing this sporadically the past couple days and now have over 700 tennis courts and raised my bonus nearly 2,000%.
@ SAFI :
WOW 1000 statues that a whole lot of SH grinding!
Any chance of a screen shot of watch you have done with 100 tennis courts?
Right now, complete disarray. I just used the new land and have put out all the tennis courts there. I’ll implement in a redesign soon..
lol, I had 328! 72%! Woohoo! And now I can send people to get oscars again…i have over 500 of the other things needed to “build” them, so it gives SH a new reason to exist again! Thanks, Bill! I coulda sworn I saw them for 30 donuts yesterday, and I thought, “wow, who would pay 30 donuts for tennis courts?”…and I mean, I know some people would, but 10 statues is a given!
Yep same here. i’m going to grind out as many statues as i can until this event is over. Bonus % now above 3,000.
Yes i agree,great deal .i will be buying a lot of tennis courts.
I would never have seen that. I just bought 21 and plan on buying more. Thank you so much.
I don’t see any changes in my percentage. Did they change it? I just bought 12 tennis courts and my percentage is the same. 🙁
Odd event, not much to it. But funny dialogue.
Rushed it and had most of the content already. Just picked up Abe as Toreador. Still need that Bart skin and Furious D. Was hoping for it since it’s sports related. Ah well.
Rushed it ???
It’s a 2 week event that will take 4 days to complete at a leisurely pace !!!
I loved the Bad News Bears in Breaking Training when I was a kid and it’s awesome they make reference to the movie. 😃
Had most of the parts just needed to put it all together 😀
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfs6yczfo6h83iz/IMG_20190410_203301.png?dl=0
OH MY GOD, IT’S AN ANGRY GIANT!!! The size of those stadium parts is completely ridiculous. Was thinking about building a battle arena with all those chained nerds fighting robo scorpion and the army of ants, but it looks bad enough as it is 😀
Maybe a quidditch stadium for some teeny tiny elves?
Bravo!🏆
gold?? I don’t recall them being GOLD!!! I got cheated!!!
looks nice 🙂