Mehring Monday: I believe

I wrote a little about this week's topic in a Mehring Monday from 2012 that was about Baseball Episodes of television shows and I thought that would be the end of that.

However, four years later, a new episode of The X-Files turns up on my television and I thought a look back at one of its finest episodes would be appropriate at this time.

The Unnatural is The Baseball Episode of the show about aliens and conspiracies and monsters. It is also one of my favorite episodes from the entire ten season run of the show. It edges out the one with Alex Trebek as a Man in Black, the one with the fake vampires, and the one where Scully gets a tattoo.

The episode is notable not just for the baseball theme, but also because David Duchovny wrote and directed this season six entry into The X-Files. This episode would be the first he had ever wrote by himself and directed.

From the Wikipedia entry on the episode:

While both Duchovny and Carter had wanted to write an episode about baseball for several years,^[5] Duchovny first conceived the basic premise for "The Unnatural" during the home run race in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa when he read a newspaper report about Joe Bauman. Bauman was a baseball player who, despite hitting 72 home runs during the 1954 season-at the time, a record for a professional player-never made it to the Major Leagues. Duchovny immediately connected the story of Bauman, who played for the Roswell Rockets, with the 1947 Roswell Incident, saying "I just made the association ... What if this guy was an alien? and I just started working on that idea."^[6][7] Duchovny later said that "these happy chronological coincidences" facilitated the development of the story.^[8] Duchovny worked on his idea alone, later admitting that he was satisfied that he did not receive any help.^[5]

It might just be me, but I think the idea for most stories should come from "What if this guy was an alien?"

If you have Netflix, you can watch the whole episode here.

There are a lot of great touches to the episode, including Jesse L. Martin portraying the Alien baseball player…um, spoiler for a 17-year-old episode, I guess.

But, my favorite part of the episode is the end. Mulder is teaching Scully how to swing a bat while they take batting practice against a pitching machine on a deserted diamond under the starry sky. Mulder keeps talking and talking and talking.

Then, Scully, whom creator Chris Carter named after legendary baseball announcer Vin Scully, says, "Shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball."

Get here soon, Opening Day!