"Cheers,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," the classic long-running sitcom about the denizens of a Boston bar, ended its 270-episode run 20 years ago today,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], on May 20, 1993.
The show was inextricably linked with baseball, and particulary with the Boston Red Sox, from its very first episode in 1982, when viewers were introduced to Sam "Mayday" Malone, the bar's owner and former Sox relief pitcher. Baseball references abound throughout the series' 11-year run.
Here are some of the most memorable:
Wade Boggs gets pantsed
Episode: (March 31, 1988)
Boggs, then in the midst of a streak of four-straight batting titles with the Red Sox, appears as himself in this sixth season episode. Boggs is sent to Cheers as an olive branch by the owner of a rival bar. The gang, however, doesn't believe it's the real Boggs and chases him into the street:

Sam relieves Luis Tiant
Episode: (Jan. 6, 1983)
In its early years, Cheers made multiple references to real-life 1970s players,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], including Boog Powell, Charlie Spikes and Bobby Murcer. But the only player from that era to appear on the show was three-time All-Star Tiant,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who pitched for the Red Sox from 1971 to 1978. In a spoof of a then-popular series of Miller Lite commercials featuring former athletes, Sam comes in to relieve Tiant, who can't complete his pitch during this season one episode.

Forgotten Malone
Episode: (April 25,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], 1986)
Over the years,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the show makes it clear Sam's career was something less than legendary. The point is never demonstrated more clearly than in this fourth season episode. Sam donates his old Red Sox jersey for a public television auction, but is humiliated when nobody bids on it.

Sam at Yankee Stadium
Episode: (March 28, 1991)
By its later seasons, Sam's baseball career is referenced less and less. There were occasional exceptions, however, such as this ninth season episode in which Sam's old nemesis, the fictional Dutch Kincaid wants Sam to pitch against him on the New York Yankee's Dutch Kincaid Day. Sam decides to do it so he can finally strike out Kincaid, who owned him during their careers.

Mayday back to the minors
Episode: (March 29, 1992)
The arrival of an old baseball buddy prompts Sam to try-out for — and make — the Red Sox' Double-A farm team in New Britain, Conn. (a real life Boston affiliate, by the way). By the end of the episode, he decides he's much too old for the life of a minor leaguer and returns to Cheers.

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