All the players were cooperative except for José Canseco, who Al Jean considered intimidating. He disliked his original part and insisted it be rewritten, and the writers grudgingly made him as heroic as possible. He was originally slated to wake up in bed with Edna Krabappel and miss the game (in a parody of "Bull Durham"), but Canseco's then-wife, Esther Haddad, objected. He disliked his caricature, saying "the animation looked nothing like " but said he found the acting was very easy. When asked in 2007 about his part by the "San Jose Mercury News" he responded, "that was 100 years ago," hung up the phone and did not answer any of the paper's subsequent calls.