Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Frank's Team: A Dark Day for Baseball"| Season 18, Episode 9

"Looks like this charade of a game is going to be allowed to continue."

Think about your favorite baseball player growing up. This being my review, I'll choose Red Sox Hall of Fame slugger Jim Rice. I first became aware of big Jim Ed when I was around 6, when he, Yaz, Fred Lynn, Dewey, and El Tiante were the can't-lose giants that I imprinted on. (They lost the World Series that year.)

Rice kept on slugging his way to an eventual 382 homers, along the way channeling the sort of infallible masculine aura to really impress a little white boy from the Boston suburbs, even if he started to strike out a lot. (I secretly saved the Boston Globe where Rice revealed he wore glasses of the field in an attempt to excuse my own, bespectacled battling ineptitude.) People whispered about a hole in his mighty swing, modern metrics hinted he wasn't really all that, and he squeaked into the Hall on his 15th and final try.

But Jim Rice was my guy, and if towering home runs over the Green Monster became scarcer as he aged, they still filled me with that same tingle of hero worshipping awe. His strikeouts, or the truly maddening number of double plays he hit into, were just an off day, or bad luck. Now that you've indulged me, let's talk about the lazy groundout of an episode, "Frank's Team: A Dark Day for Baseball."