Baseball!

“What you fail to understand 

in your joyless myopia is that 

Baseball is The Key to Life -- 

The Rosetta Stone, if you will. 

If you just understood Baseball better 

all your other questions your, your... 

the, uh... the aliens, the conspiracies 

they would all, in their way 

be answered by The Baseball Gods.”

SCENE 2 

FBI HEADQUARTERS

(Basement corridor for the X-Files office. There is baseball game on a small TV which is sitting on a cleaning cart in the hall. Vin Scully is announcing for the LA team.)

VIN SCULLY: It's a gorgeous day for baseball here in the City of Angels and I'm told it is a gorgeous day all over our republic today-- from Bangor to Bellflower, from Amarillo to Anchorage the sun is shining and it's a perfect day to play baseball... That ball is ripped... and it's going, going, gone...

JANITOR: Morning.

(SCULLY, carrying a heavy load of large files, comes down the stairs, acknowledges the JANITOR at the TV and [for lack of a better word -sorry SCULLY] waddles into the office and drops the large books onto MULDER's desk. MULDER looks up at her over the top of the record book he is reading. She goes over to the back wall, steps up on the boxes there and gazes wistfully out the window.)

SCULLY: Mulder, it is such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet?

MULDER: (still looking at the record book) I have seen the life on this planet, Scully and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere.

(SCULLY opens a paper bag she is carrying and removes a paper-wrapped frozen dessert. This gets MULDER's attention.)

MULDER: Did you bring enough ice cream to share with the rest of the class?

SCULLY: (smugly, beginning to eat) It's not ice cream. It's a nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicle.

MULDER: (returning to his book) Ugh. Bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that. You sure know how to live it up, Scully.

SCULLY: (stepping down and continuing to eat) Oh, you're Mr. Live-it-up. Mulder, you're really Mr. Squeeze-every-last-drop-out-of-this-sweet-life aren't you? On this precious Saturday you've got us grabbing life by the testes stealing reference books from the FBI library in order to go through New Mexico newspaper obituaries for the years 1940 to 1949 and for what joyful purpose?

MULDER: Looking for anomalies, Scully. Do you know how many so-called "flying disc" reports there were in New Mexico in the 1940s?

SCULLY: I don't care. Mulder, this is a needle in a haystack. These poor souls have been dead for 50 years. Let them rest in peace. Let sleeping dogs lie.

MULDER: No, I won't sit idly by as you hurl cliches at me. Preparation is the father of inspiration.

SCULLY: Necessity is the mother of invention.

MULDER: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

SCULLY: (taking another bite) Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

MULDER: I scream, you scream, we all scream for nonfat tofutti rice dreamsicles.

(MULDER sets the book down and lunges for SCULLY. He grabs her arm and takes a bite of the dreamsicle. The cone breaks and pieces of the dessert splatter down on the book.)

SCULLY: No-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! (delightful laugh) Mulder!

(She looks closely at the dairy-product-smeared page.)

SCULLY: (accusing) Mulder!? You cheat. I can't believe that you've been reading about baseball this whole time.

MULDER: Reading the box scores, Scully. You'd like it. It's like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect, rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny summer day back in 1947. It's like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me. They tell me that even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same. It's...

SCULLY: (interrupting) Boring. Mulder, can I ask you a personal question?

MULDER: Of course not.

SCULLY: Did your mother ever tell you to go outside and play? Mulder?

(MULDER is looking intently at a picture in the book. He wipes away the ice cream. It is a picture of two white men and one black man in a baseball jersey. They are standing in front of an old bus with "Roswell Grays" on the side. One of the white men is the ALIEN BOUNTY HUNTER. Headline is "Local Roswell police officer Arthur Dales chats with Diamond Star Josh Exley.")

MULDER: (to himself) Is that …Arthur... Dales...

SCULLY: Mulder?

MULDER: (fake) Ah... Choo!

(As MULDER pretends to sneeze, he rips the page out of the book. SCULLY stares at him in disbelief.)

SCULLY: You just defaced property of the U.S. Government.

(Carrying the torn page, MULDER gets his leather jacket and runs out of the office. SCULLY watches him go. If anything, she has a slight smile.)

SCULLY: 

You rebel.

SCENE 3 

WASHINGTON, DC

(MULDER is walking down the hall of a dilapidated old apartment building which we have seen before in an episode in late fifth season that involved Travelers, flashbacks, crab-things crawling down people's throats, and wedding rings. Sorry, this transcriber has blocked out that episode. He steps over an unconscious drunk and knocks at one of the doors. An OLD MAN answers, opening door a crack.)

OLD MAN: What in hell took you so long?

MULDER: I'm-I'm sorry, sir, I'm-I'm looking for Arthur Dales.

ARTHUR DALES: I'm Arthur Dales.

MULDER: No, you're not.

ARTHUR DALES: Don't be a wiseass, son.

MULDER: No, I-I'm sorry, sir, I know Arthur Dales and you're not Arthur Dales.

ARTHUR DALES: Arthur Dales is my brother. My name also happens to be Arthur Dales. It's the same name, different guy. The other Arthur, he moved to Florida the lucky bastard. Now, our parents weren't exactly big in the imagination department when it came to names. If it would help you wrapping your little head around this stupefying mystery, Agent Mulder we had a sister named Arthur, too and a goldfish.

MULDER: How do you know my name?

ARTHUR DALES: My brother told me all about you. He said you were the biggest jackass in the Bureau since he retired. Yeah, we're big fans. Sometimes we'd stay awake hours at night just talking about you. Just fascinating. Now, unless you're hiding some Chinese food let's call it a day.

(ARTHUR DALES shuts the door in MULDER's face. MULDER waits a moment, then unfolds the paper he took from the office and speaks through the door.)

MULDER: Mr. Dales, I have a, uh... I have a photo here of your brother. Maybe it's you. It's from many years ago and you're, you're standing in Roswell, New Mexico.

ARTHUR DALES: (from inside) Roswell. That's me. I was a cop once in Roswell.

MULDER: Okay, and you're standing with Negro League legend Josh Exley who disappeared without a trace during a season in which he reportedly hit 60 home runs.

ARTHUR DALES: Sixty-one.

MULDER: 61 home runs in 1948.

ARTHUR DALES: Forty-seven.

MULDER: '47, whatever. I don't really care about the baseball, so much, sir. What I care about is this man in the picture with you. I believe to be an alien bounty hunter.

ARTHUR DALES: (opening the door a crack) Of course you don't care about the baseball, Mr. Mulder. You only bothered my brother about the important things like government conspiracies and alien bounty hunters and the truth with a capital "T."

MULDER: Wait a minute. I like baseball.

ARTHUR DALES: You like baseball, huh?

MULDER: Yeah.

ARTHUR DALES: How many home runs did Mickey Mantle hit?

MULDER: (thinks) A hundred and sixty-three.

(Disappointed, ARTHUR DALES begins to close the door. MULDER pushes it back open.)

MULDER: Righty. 373 lefty. 536 total.

(ARTHUR DALES nods, impressed. And opens the door all the way. Later, MULDER is sitting on the couch in ARTHUR DALES' cluttered apartment. ARTHUR DALES is looking through drawers and boxes.)

ARTHUR DALES: What you fail to understand in your joyless myopia is that baseball is the key to life-- the Rosetta Stone, if you will. If you just understood baseball better all your other questions your, your... the, uh... the aliens, the conspiracies they would all, in their way be answered by the baseball gods.

MULDER: Yes, sir, that may be true. I'm thinking that your experience in Roswell could be germane to a conspiracy between men in our government and these shape-shifting alien beings.

ARTHUR DALES: Oh, don't bore me, son. My brother Arthur started the X-Files with the Federal Bureau of Obfuscation before you were born. He was working for the FBI hunting for aliens when you were watching My Best Friend's Martians. You say "shape-shifting." Agent Mulder, do you believe that love can make a man shape-shift?

MULDER: (soft laugh) I guess... women change men all the time.

ARTHUR DALES: I'm not talking about women. I'm talking about love. Passion. Like the passion you have for proving extra-terrestrial life. Do you believe that that passion can change your very nature? Can make you shape-shift from a man into something other than a man?

MULDER: What exactly has your brother told you about me?

(ARTHUR DALES doesn't answer, keeps searching.)

MULDER: Mr. Dales, if you and your brother have really known about this bounty hunter and plans for colonization for the last 50 years why the hell wouldn't you have told anybody?

ARTHUR DALES: Nobody'd believe me.

MULDER: I would have believed you.

ARTHUR DALES: You weren't... ripe.

MULDER: (standing) Not ripe? LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING: I have been ripe for years. I am way past ripe. I'm so ripe I'm rotten. This cuts to the very heart of the mystery of what I've been doing with my life for the past ten years.

ARTHUR DALES: Oh, the heart of the mystery, the heart of the mystery. Ah, there you are.

(ARTHUR DALES has found and holds up a model of a kneeling baseball player. It is a child's toy bank.)

ARTHUR DALES: Mr. Mulder-- maybe you'd better start paying a little less attention to the heart of the mystery and a little more attention to the mystery of the heart. You got a dime?

MULDER: What is this?

ARTHUR DALES: This little fellow goes by the name of Pete Rosebud. If you keep pumping coffee money into him he'll tell you a story about baseball and aliens and bounty hunters.

MULDER: (putting a dime in the toy) You're making me feel like a child.

ARTHUR DALES: Perfect. That's exactly the right place to start from, then, isn't it? Now, the first thing you got to know about baseball is... it keeps you forever young.

(Camera is close on ARTHUR DALES profile. Scene fades to …)

SCENE 4 

ROSWELL MUNICIPAL BALLPARK