Show: Numb3rs
Season: 3
Episode: 8
Title: Hardball
Original Air Date: November 10, 2006
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Favorite Quotes:
* Colby: If they don’t run, they skateboard.
* Kitner: Can I ask what you’re arresting me for?
David: In your case, skateboarding is a crime.
* Agent: I love this game just as much as Vick did.
Don: You’re what’s wrong with this game.
Synopsis: A baseball practice is taking place. One of the players comes up to bat. He takes a swing and gets a good hit. He slides in to second and doesn’t move. He’s dead. The coach called LAPD when he found some vials in his locker. The dead man had been in the big leagues for a while, but injuries got him sent to the minors. He was trying to get back to the majors. There is a math equation in sabermetrics that they ask Charlie to analyze. The medical examiner tells them the man died of a stroke. His steroids were purposely spiked. They were thirty times stronger than they should have been. Charlie visits Larry in his office. He has a guest who breaks a vase trying to throw a curveball. The vase breaker is a baseball lover who is obsessed with fantasy baseball. He’s very familiar with sabermetrics and offers to analyze it for him. Megan pays the deceased wife a visit. She points Megan to the coaches for the source of the drugs. Megan pays his agent a visit. He was aware of the steroid use. He also considered Vic to be one of his best friends. The fantasy football junkie has tracked down the person who created the formula, Kitner. Charlie heads off to tell Don. Charlie and Larry finish going over the formula now that they know what it all means. It’s a formula to detect steroid use, without doing a drug test. The two have an in depth discussion of sabermetrics. At the office, Megan comes in not amused as she was relaxing in her PJ’s. Larry is now distracted. The next day is the deadline for fantasy football draft, Kitner has been untraceable, but he’ll have to get online if he wants to get into the new fantasy leagues. David and Colby are staking out the downtown computer café areas and run into Kitner. He takes off on his skateboard. They split up to catch him. David takes him down. Megan questions him. Megan asks him why he ran. He tells her last week two giant goons were ripping his apartment to pieces when he got home and he’s been hiding. He tries to play dumb about the math. He says he never showed it to anyone or emailed it to anyone. It only works for him to win fantasy baseball if no one else knows about it. It doesn’t give them any of the answers they’ve been looking for. Kitner meets Charlie at his office at the campus. Charlie again tells him he’s impressed with his analysis. Charlie asks him to consider going to school at Cal Sci. Kitner is taken aback. Don arrives home as Alan is heading out for a round of golf. He invites Don, but he has a case. They have a deep conversation about sacrifices you make in life. Charlie and Kitner are walking outside when inspiration hits. The two race to Don’s office, luckily he’s outside. Kitner tells him he got in an argument with a fan of the deceased. They pay him a visit, but find his apartment is trashed and he’s missing. David and Colby track his car down. But it’s abandoned with the drivers door wide open. They look in the trunk and thankfully don’t find a body in it. But there is an odor in the area. He’s in the dumpster a few feet away. Don breaks the news to Charlie and Kitner. He’s able to give them a list of cyber café’s the man has used. Charlie show Kitner the garage. He has all Don’s minor league stats. He wants him to take a look and see if Don had a chance to make the majors. He comes into the dining room and delivers the verdict. It’s up in the air, but if he had taken steroids he would not have made the majors. Colby and David pay a visit to the manufacturer of the steroid. The manager gives them complete sales records of the steroid. David finds name that pops for him. David and Colby find the good doctor injecting the steroid into a college student. He flips instantly and gives them a list of everyone he sells the steroid too. Vick Johnson’s high school coach is on the list. He was Vick’s supplier of the steroid. Vick had called him and he was going to quit using the steroids because he didn’t want to get caught. Charlie takes Kitner to lunch. He still wants him to study math. Megan, David and Colby discuss the chain of supply of the steroids. Megan realizes that only the manufacturer could mak ea lethal dose. As Charlie leaves Kitner someone opens fire on him. He’s ok but got grazed. They all convene in Charlie’s office. They discuss motive and greed. The drug lab that makes it is the obvious choice. They go back to the lab. He’s got Kitner’s analysis. He’s linked to the dead man in the dumpster now too. They wind up back at Vick’s agent again. Don and David arrive at the garage and let Charlie and Kitner know that they caught the guy. David tells Kitner that the FBI Lab in Quantico would like him to work with them on the formula. That night Alan is excited as the case is big news. Alan points out to Don that baseball was not his first love, playing cops and robbers was. He was always the cop.
Categories: Blog Archive, Numb3rs
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