Since AMC’s new original series Rubicon has received such accolades, I feel a bit stupid for not liking it as much as I “should,” according to critics, but at least it has some baseball in it. Very briefly, it’s a spy show without — for me, at least — the “thriller” part. Will is the main character at a super-intelligence agency.
His supervisor/ father-in-law, Dave, dies (well, ex FIL, actually, since Will’s wife and young daughter died at the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, which is why he’s still so morose) in an “accident” in the series’ opener and leaves him a family heirloom: a vintage Norton motorcycle. But Will’s (ex)-brother-in-law, who has some mental health issues wants it. So naturally Will takes the bike apart — in his apartment. And of course he finds a secret message in the form of a list of 27 10-digit numbers. But what do they mean?!?
From the series’ synopsis on AMC’s website:
Evan, meanwhile, comes to Will’s apartment to retrieve the Norton. The two men reassemble the bike. His dad actually hated riding it, Evan claims. “I don’t think we ever had an honest conversation that wasn’t about baseball,” he says.
Will rushes to Ed [a retired agent and friend of the deceased]. “David [father-in-law] knew I hate the Yankees,” Will says. Most of the code rows represent the Yankees’ World Series wins. The others, Will suspects, refer to people. Ed decodes a row that refers to a pitcher named Travers. “Why did David leave my name in a code?” Will asks. “So you’d know when you’d broken it,” Ed replies.
Ed “decoded” on of the list’s entries to determine that the pitcher was Allan Travers of the Detroit Tigers, whose only appearance came in a 1912 game famous because Ty Cobb had been suspended for his usual sociopathic antics and his teammates, in a rare display of solidarity since they mostly hated him, staged a one-day strike. So the Tigers filled their roster with amateurs in the May 18 game against the Philadelphia Athletics. He pitched eight innings, giving up 24 runs on 26 hits and seven walks. But the good news: only 14 of those runs were earned. Final score: A’s 24, Tigers 2.
“Ed” pulled a baseball book off his shelf, wherein he found the info and a picture of Allan Travers. I’ll have to look at it again to determine if it’s an actual book or just a prop.
Update: Well, I watched the scene over and over, but can’t seem to stop on just the right spot, but the book in question seems to be a coffee-table type and older, something like Donald Honig would have published, with text and photographs. The title seems to be The Baseball Compendium, but I can find no record of a real book by that exact title.
If anyone out there knows of such a book (blue binding with letters embossed on he front), please drop me a line.
—STING—
is available on Amazon.com,
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