Imagine that. I’ve been thru Williston quite a few times in trips from Aiken down to Charleston, stopping and eating along the way as well. Nice little town.

Also, I currently live a long but manageable walk from the Homestead Grays Bridge, albeit on the Pittsburgh side of the river. (The walk back is beastly, though, so if I want to cross the river I’ll drive.)

Also also, I heartily agree that we need more pop culture about the Negro Leagues, to which end I’ll offer this one: While there may be room for debate about whether opera qualifies as “pop culture”, there does exist an opera about Negro Leagues power hitter Josh Gibson, and I have seen it. While I don’t know enough about opera as an art form to comment on its aesthetic merits, I did think the operatic treatment suited Gibson’s story really well.

Mulder visits retired agent Arthur Dales’ brother, Arthur Dales (“our parents weren’t exactly big in the imagination department”) and hears a heartwarming baseball story set in 1940s Roswell. At the center of the tale is Josh Exley, an alien invader who defects from his fleet, disguises himself as a black man, and joins a minor league baseball team, all for the love of the game. “The X-Files” was often at its best when it wandered from its established milieu of sci-fi horror, and this episode is unmistakably a departure: a combination sports story, period piece and loving tribute to postwar UFO nuttery (which has its own special flavor distinct from other UFO nuttery). It could stand on its own as a short film. Jesse Martin is great as Exley, and tell me the ending doesn’t make you tear up at least a little.