The real story behind Star Trek's most famous baseball game

The author Chris Snelgrove
| Published 32 seconds ago

Star Trek is often strangely attached to baseball. Deep Space Ninefor example, shows that Captain Sisko has a fierce passion for the old sport and keeps a baseball in his office as a prize. That throwback even gave us a fun baseball game where the DS9 team battled snarky volcanoes, and fans still love to cheer wearing the same Niners baseball jerseys worn in Take Me Out To the Holosuite. Star Trek's though the majority The famous baseball game was undoubtedly the one referred to The next generation “Evolution” series, which references the 1951 National League tiebreaker between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

The Star Trek writer likes baseball

If you're one of the many Star Trek fans who don't watch much real-life baseball, a major plot point in Evolution might be confusing. This episode features an eccentric scientist with a passion for baseball, and instead of recreating classic games on the holodeck, he recreates them in his mind as a kind of reward for himself. He demonstrates his ability by reciting “Lockman on first, Dark on second, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound,” which is a direct reference to the aforementioned game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, although the retelling is very important. errors.

Star Trek: The next generation showrunner Michael Piller wrote “Evolution” and is a huge baseball fan (more on that later), and he chose this game because it's so special. This clash of baseball titans led to the so-called “Shot Heard 'Round the World”. That's the affectionate nickname for New York Giants shortstop Bobby Thomson's ninth-inning homer that clinched the National League pennant. It made this 1951 game memorable for sports fans, but the baseball superfan at the center of Evolution, Dr. Paul Stubbs gets key details wrong when talking about the game.

Despite Star Trek guru Michael Piller's great love of baseball, he got some details wrong when Stubbs wrote, “Lockman at first, Dark at second, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound.” With the Giants' Clint Hartung out, the lineup was a little different. To be completely accurate, former great Stubbs should have said, “Lockman at second, Hartung at third, Thomson at the plate, Branca on the mound.”

While he may have gotten a few details wrong, we doubt the late, great Piller lost any sleep over the mistake…after all, it was this Star Trek script and its baseball references that landed him the showrunner job. The next generation. Before Piller, Michael Wagner briefly hosted the show 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 between the eyes,” leading to a “partnership” that saw Piller become the host of the wildly popular game show. science fiction spinoff.

There you have it, folks: if Star Trek: The Next Generation “Evolution” series wasn't so obsessed with baseball, Michael Piller probably wouldn't have gotten the job as showrunner, and LPG could have continued to be a hot mess instead of “developing” into one of the greatest shows in television history. And without Berman and Piller's mutual love for America's greatest pastime, we might not have gotten Captain Sisko's own obsession with baseball, much less “Take Me Out To the Holosuite,” a near-perfect DS9 episode.

As a franchise, Star Trek fans owe a lot to the creators' passionate love of baseball, so we're here to ask the big question: when will Trek baseball legend Buck Bokai finally get yours Picard-style solo series?