After a rather dry spell of dull episodes, we get a very good one which not only adds to the X-Files story, but also brings us love, humour and good old fashioned anti-racism messages.

The tag line is the most clever yet – reading ‘IN THE BIG INNING’ … get it? It starts with the usual sunny Saturday and Mulder’s spending it in the office, looking over old files from 1947. Scully voices her objections in the form of a low fat ice cream, which Mulder promptly takes a bite of.

After the great ice cream explosion of Mulder’s office, he notices a photo in an old newspaper dating back to 1947, which features Arthur Dales, a famous baseball player named Exley, and the Bounty Hunter! Mulder instantly heads over to Arthur’s house to find out what happened, and what he knows about the men. It’s from this point on the episode is played through not the Arthur Dales we know, but Arthur’s brother – also named Arthur.

Mulder listens has Arthur explains how he was a cop in Roswell during 1947, and was assigned to protect Exley – a black baseball player during a time of unrest between the black community and the KKK. It’s during this protection that he learns of Exley’s true identity. He’s an alien that came to Earth for reasons unknown, only to fall in love with Baseball. He didn’t want to get into the big league games for fear of his true origin being uncovered, but remained in Roswell as an active member of the ‘Grays’ baseball team.

Arthur learns that aliens do not have a word for laughter, and do not feel the same emotions humans do, so when he took on the form of a human, these new emotions were available to him, and he couldn’t leave. During this time the bounty hunter – disguised as a member of the KKK is hunting Exley, attempting to either return him home, or kill him.

Eventually the bounty hunter catches up and kills Exley – Arthur witnesses all this, but then at the end there is a hint this could all be made up to humour Mulder – the story only contains as much truth as the listener is willing to entertain.

The episode ends with Mulder summoning Scully to the baseball field late at night, where the two of them share a bat – Mulder offers Scully her very early, or very late birthday present – her first baseball experience. Together they forget about their troubles, their biological clock, their being at the centre of a massive government conspiracy, and Mulder’s massive XXX bill, and hit balls into the night sky.