Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Rom

6. Left Of Field

In Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Rom was serving bunt. He won the day, if not the game, in the most delightfully curious way, though not without breaking several of his brother's, and Worf's, bones in the process. "To manufactured triumph," and the osteo-regenerator!

Rom couldn't hit a ball if the Alpha Quadrant depended on it. Thankfully, he had other skills when it came to that. Max Grodénchik, on the other hand, as noted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, was part of a semi-professional baseball team in high school. He only stopped because he "got a hankering for the stage". In fact, Grodénchik was so good, he had to play left-handed in the episode in order to look as bad at the game as Rom was.

Written by Ira Steven Behr, Take Me Out to the Holosuite was inspired by a 1985 episode of Fame, The Ol' Ball Game, written by… Ira Steven Behr. In the one from Fame, the game is actually won by a character who can't play (softball, in this case).

For Take Me Out to…, the writers always wanted the Niners to lose the game. "I didn't want to do 'the little-team-that-comes-from-behind-to-win'. That's such a cliché," Ronald D. Moore commented in the Deep Space Nine Companion. In the end, Rom only scores one run, but clinches the moral, and personal, victory. Whatever happened to "death to the opposition"?