The Unofficial X-Files Companion II Stats Attack
These stats are accurate up to season 3. Will be updated ASAP; to help out, please email me. Author: N.E. Genge.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game...Any Game
Deep Throat: Colonel Buddahas, a Green Bay fan, easily recalling the Super Bowl of 1968, right down to details like Don Chandler's four field goals and the fact that it was Vince Lombardi's last game, but can't remember how to fly.
Conduit: When Mulder needs some quickie information from Danny Bernstein, his buddy over in the Cryptology section, he promises him tickets to a Redskins game from a friend of a friend is Danny will just eyeball the binary sequences young Kevin has been copying from the TV.
Ice: Dr. Denny Murphy isn't just a sports fan, he's a fanatic, listening to his own customized audiotape collection of his all-time favorite plays on his headphones. Must be an extensive collection, too; it goes at least as far back as the 1982 football playoffs.
Eve: Deep Throat offers to take Mulder to a Warriors game, as he was "just in the neighborhood."
Beyond the Sea: Even the bad guys take a break for a football game. Luther Lee Boggs strangled his family over Thanksgiving dinner, but paused to watch the fourth quarter of the Detroit-Green Bay game. Well, guess that explains why Thanksgiving is the single most active day for officers responding to domestic violence calls.
Young at Heart: For Mulder, a peacefyl afternoon watching high school kids play football in the rain can't be ordinary either. As he watches a former partner's kid play, the partner's murderer is leaving poetry in his car.
E.B.E.: Mulder and Deep Throat bemoan their inability to catch a game together at Camden Yards, Mulder is figuring that DT should have the "connections" to get great seats if circumstances didn't ake it impossible for them to sit together in the stands.
Tooms: What do stretchy mutants with a taste for liver watch on TV? Sports, of course! In addition to four hours of BaBa Booey, Tooms spent his first night out of custody taking in a Phillies game and an Orioles game.
Little Green Men: In this version of Samantha's abduction, the young Fox Mulder is wearing a New York Knickerbockers jersey with "King" and "30" emblazoned across it.
Blood: As a kid, it seems Mulder shared the usual passion for sports common to young men, playing right field.
Red Musem: How can you tell if your child has ben inoculated with hybridized DNA? See if he gives up football. When Mulder and Scully investigate the disappearance of a young man, Gary Caines, one of the sherif's key points of evidence for the boy's change is the fact that he stopped wanting to play football.
Irresistible: Perhaps the ultimate sports allusion in the X-Filean universe played on creator Chris Carter's name. In this episode, Mulder's plans to attend a Viking game are thwarted by the appearance of a necro-fetishist demanding his time and attention. As they consult with Agent Brock, the game plays on a desktop TV in the background. The footage aired features real-life Viking played Chris Carter making a first down and then a touchdown in a flying over-the-top manuever. While locked up in jail, Donny Pfaster's blockmate can't recall Mulder's name but easily comes up with: "She was Scully, like that baseball announcer."
Die Hand Die Verletzt: Think football can save the unwary from demon worship? Well, maybe. Given a choice between ending the PTA with a prayer to the dark powers or watching the game, at least one of the teachers, Paul, would rather have watched the game! Too bad they didn't have more that week. Sports allusions even turn up in the credits for this episode. San Diego Chargers fans Morgan and Wong added something special to their credits in the week before the Super Bowl.
Fresh Bones: Even if there's not a football field within miles of the scene of the action, you can still work in a football reference or two. Jack MacAlpin might have spent most of this episode just wandering about, but according to his wife, he believed in only three things: the Marines, his family, and football.
Fearful Symmetry: After all Morgan and Wong's sports references, and their public support of the Chargers as Super Bowl contenders, it was only to be expected that, following its miserable defeat, the Chargers, as well as Morgan and Wong, would come under gentle fire. Listen to the conversation between the construction workers. Wonder how often the dynamic writing team heard that over the weeks following their team's defeat!
Pusher: In episodes like "Pusher," the Bad Guy of the Week could have led the agents on any wild-goose chase he chose. He chose a driving range.
Even the set decorators get in on the act with sports equipment popping up everywhere. In season one, Lauren Kyte ("Shadows") just happens to keep a baseball bat in the closet. Mulder spends three years working off those nervous moments while awaiting an answer to his illuminated Xs by slamming a basketball against his apartment floor. Perhaps we'll eventually see him investigating the people in the apartment below. After all, how many tenants would put up with that? The same basketball turns up in other locations as well, including the bedroom of a Navajo teenager where the ball is bounced around by an earthquake instead of Mulder. With a lead character named after Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers, a creator who used to edit Surfing magazine, a male lead who hit university on a sports scholarship, and writers who actually believed the Chargers had a chance, was there ever a possibility that Mulder would choose chess as his sport of choice? Or that Scully wouldn't know there was no football on Thursday night? Not really.
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To write a "semi-article" on an episode not mentioned here that features a sports-theme, email me. I would certainly appreciate the help.
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