Three Strikes, You're Out

The woman with the largest extended family on television Jessica Fletcher is visiting spring training for the Tucson Comets where Todd Bryant yet another nephew is a pitcher recently traded to the team and he's trying to make good.

Publicist Terri Garber comes on to a big story and unfortunately she's killed for it in her room which is right across the hall from where Angela Lansbury is staying.

Besides the players there are a lot of suspects which include Alpha male manager Vince Edwards, Sports agent Paul Sorvino, and snake oil salesman type General Manager Robert Mandan. Garber was his personal squeeze.

A lot of suspects for detective Reni Santoni of the Tucson PD to wade through. Angela Lansbury has to keep him on track as he seems more worried about the Comet pennant chances than solving the case.

A simple glass fragment is the key and it's Jessica Fletcher who puts it together of course.

At least you know it wasn't her nephew, or was Bryant her late husband's family?

Jessica's nephew has a golden opportunity to pitch in Major League baseball - until murder steps up to bat. Average MSW, but still enjoyable. The setting is baseball and the politics are just as heady.

During the course of "Murder, She Wrote", there must have been 45028 epsides (give or take 45000) where Jessica Fletcher visits a niece or nephew....and "Three Strikes, You're Out" is yet another one. It seems that her nephew is a baseball player who was just traded to another team. Jessica comes to watch him in a few games and during this time, a woman is killed...and the killer made it look like it was a robbery turned bad. Of course, Jessica looks into it and there's more to it than some robbery!

This is a decent episode....but not an outstanding one. The mystery is okay but the nephew angle...well,...it certainly was overused. Still, if you can look past this cliche, it's not a bad show.

Jessica goes to Scottsdale, Arizona for a writers' seminar, and then plans a short side trip to Tucson to visit another nephew, this time a high-prospect minor league baseball player named Johnny. He is a member of the fictional Titans, who train in Tucson. Jessica was about to check out of her hotel to head south to see her nephew when she learns that he and another minor leaguer have just been traded to the fictional major league team, the Comets, who have their spring training home in Scottsdale.

Other reviewers have nicely gone over the plot of this show, so I will forego another basic rundown of what was a nice, typical episode of this series that mixed in a bit of humor with the dramatic plot. I enjoyed the manager calling Jessica "Aunt Minnie" and trying to get her out of the clubhouse by suggesting he was about to take of his post-shower towel in front of her. It worked, as Jessica beat a hasty retreat for the door.

I wish to focus on the baseball aspects, and include corrections on some misinformation given by other sources on this website. The brief summary and story line combine to say that the two young players were "recruited" to play for the "Scottsdale...minor league...team." They were traded for a 35-year-old star thought to be on his way down-proving this was no minor league team. It was not mishandled in the show as far as I can remember (I just watched the episode), but people recounting it are a bit off.

One reviewer who normally does an excellent job recounting plot lines gets a few things mixed up. The club has one manager, Harry Dial, while the other "manager" cited, Irving Randolph, was clearly stated on the episode to be the club owner. It is also incorrectly stated that one player served prison time before changing his identity. He actually jumped bail before trial.

This reviewer identifies the two young players' agent, Al, as a sportswriter, and says he helped explain the game to others in his seating area. In fact, he only explained two simple points in response to questions from Jessica, one in each game depicted. The odd thing about those two scenes is that after telling Jessica what "WP" and "PB" on the scoreboard meant, he said nothing more to explain it to her. He didn't seem annoyed at her lack of knowledge, so I would have expected a one-sentence explanation of what is meant by the two rulings.

The biggest flaw in the show concerning the club's activities is that the Comets and Titans were supposed to be playing a three-game series of exhibition games. Teams do not do that in spring training. They might occasionally play a game at one team's home and then go to the other team's home the next day, but not three in a row at the same park, nor even two.

Another "goof" is that in his second game with the Comets, Jessica's nephew, a pitcher, is sent up to hit by the skipper as a pinch hitter. Pitchers in the National League in 1989 would rarely take an at bat in an exhibition game, and surely only if their turn came up in a game when they were pitching. Or course, American League pitchers who never batted all season in those years would not be hitting at all in spring games.

Another reviewer got mixed up on the two teams, calling one the "Tucson Comets." Not only was neither team based in either Scottsdale or Tucson for the regular season, but the one that was supposed to train in Tucson was the Titans.

In the trivia section comes the most erroneous tidbit, claiming the title "Three Strikes, You're Out" comes from "the umpire's announcement to the batter...when he has completed his time at the plate..."

Umpires on calling batters out on strikes never say more than "Strike Three" and not always do they say that much. The phrase, as most people know, comes from the chorus of the popular baseball anthem "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", written in 1908 and played at virtually every pro baseball park in the country at every game to this day.

Overall a good episode, garnering an 8 from this reviewer.

Jessica is on hand to witness her Johnny Eaton land a big baseball post, naturally her presence spells doom.

It's not a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination, but it just doesn't have anything original about it, what this series has done so very well, is give us variety, stories have been original and varied, we were even given a variety of genres. We've been here before, it's an easily forgotten story.

There's a scene where Jessica is watching the baseball, and looks totally disinterested, in afraid I feel the same way, nothing here grabs you. No amount of muscled jocks or pretty reporters will mask the dull script.

Lansbury is great as always, and hard to fault, sadly none of the case are given any challenging material to complement her.

Disappointing, 5/10.