Author Chris Snellgrove
| | Published 32 seconds ago

Star Trek is often set in a weird way about baseball. Deep Space Ninefor example, it shows that Captain Sisko has a terrible passion for old games and keeps a baseball in his office as a prize. That run also gave us a fun baseball game pitting the DS9 team against the snooty Vulcans, and fans still love to play in the Niners baseball jerseys they wore in the episode “Take Me to the Holosuite.” However, Star Trek’s many The famous baseball game is of course the one it is named after The Next Generation “Evolution” tells the story of the 1951 National League tiebreaker showdown between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

Star Trek Writer Loves Baseball

If you’re one of those Star Trek fans who doesn’t really watch baseball, the main idea in “Evolution” might be confusing. The story revolves around a scientist who is obsessed with baseball, and instead of recreating the classic game in the holodeck, he recreates it in his mind as a reward for himself. He demonstrates his ability to do so by repeating the phrase “Lockman first, Dark second, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound,” which directly points to the aforementioned match between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, although the repetition makes it necessary. errors.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Michael Piller wrote “Evolution” and is a huge baseball fan (more on that later), and he chose the game because it’s so special. This battle of baseball stars led to the song “Shot Heard ’round the World.” That’s the famous name for New York Giants pitcher Bobby Thomson’s ninth-inning home run, which allowed his team to win the National League pennant. This made the 1951 game unforgettable for sports fans, but the great football fan at the heart of “Evolution,” Dr. Paul Stubbs, makes a huge mistake in describing sports.

Although Star Trek guru Michael Piller loves baseball, he made a slight mistake when he labeled Stubbs as “Lockman at first, Darkness at second, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound.” Because Giants quarterback Clint Hartung had been replaced, the lineup was a little different. To be fair, the old wunderkind Stubbs should have said “Lockman at second, Hartung at third, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound.”

Although he may have made a few mistakes, we doubt of late, the great Piller has lost sleep over his mistake… The Next Generation. Before Piller, Michael Wagner was the showrunner briefly but soon left the production, and the “Evolution” script helped Piller win over executive producer Rick Berman. Piller later said that Berman “shared my love of baseball” and that Stubbs’ speech “hit him right in the eye,” leading to “a bond” in which Piller became the epitome of this insane popularity. sci-fi sprout.

That’s it, folks: like Star Trek: The Next Generation The story of “Evolution” didn’t know much about baseball, Michael Piller probably didn’t get a show job, and TNG it would have gone on to become a distraction instead of a “revolutionary” one of the greatest shows in television history. And without Berman and Piller’s love of America’s classic sports, we wouldn’t have Captain Sisko’s baseball passion, let alone “Take Me to the Holosuite,” the excellent DS9 episode.

As a franchise, Star Trek fans owe it to their creators to love baseball, and that’s why we’re here to ask the big question: When will Trek baseball legend Buck Bokai act? finally to take his own Picard-style solo series?