Old Time Family Baseball

Determined to come up with the greatest collection of television stars ever, The New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger is shockingly the first person to ever cobble together an All-Star roster of ballplayers who have made television cameos. Though you may think it easy, Genzlinger establishes a few necessary ground rules to make the exercise all the more enjoyable. They are:

• “The player can be playing himself, but the appearance has to have been in a scripted series. A few minutes in Jay Leno’s guest seat doesn’t qualify. Neither does reading David Letterman’s Top 10 list. That, alas, rules out one of the greatest moments in television history for baseball fans: Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Bill Skowron singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1958.
• No more than one player total from the New York teams and one from the Los Angeles-area teams. They turn up disproportionately on TV series because of where they play.
• No “Seinfeld.” Sorry, Keith Hernandez, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, Danny Tartabull and any other players on that show; it just feels lazy.
• No “Simpsons” or “Arli$$.” Ditto.
• No more than three cameos from any one decade. Otherwise the list might be too current; the fun is in finding the oldies.”

Click through to view the roster, setting you on an endless scavenger hunt to find all of these clips. And click here to start with Ken Griffey Jr’s appearance on Fresh Prince.