How did The Simpsons inspire a minor league baseball team?
The fictional Springfield Isotopes from the long running TV series The Simpsons were the influence for the new name of the team. In the episode “Hungry Hungry Homer”, Homer Simpson attempts to thwart the team’s plan to move to Albuquerque. Subsequently, when an Albuquerque Tribune online survey helped the team decide its new name, “Isotopes” received 67 percent of the 120,000 votes. Though team president Ken Young admitted that the name came from the series, he said at the name’s unveiling that “We picked it because over the past year it has become a popular name, and it does have something to do with Albuquerque.”In the three months after the team’s name was announced in September 2002, before the team ever took the field, the team sold more merchandise than the city’s previous team, the Dukes, sold in any single season, and led minor-league baseball in merchandising revenue in 2003. The team said they were able to tell when episodes featuring the Springfield Isotopes would air in dif
