4. Take Me Out to the Holosuite

The starship T'Kumbra docks at Deep Space Nine for repairs. Its captain, Solok, is a longtime rival of Sisko, who believes that his all-Vulcan crew are superior in every respect; he challenges Sisko to a baseball game in the holosuite. Sisko accepts, recruiting his crew and friends on the station to form a team, even though he has only two weeks to get the team into shape, and only his son Jake and his girlfriend Kasidy Yates have played the game before.

Sisko's team trains hard and suffers injuries. When Sisko dismisses the inept Rom from the team, the squad nearly quits in protest. Sisko admits to Yates why he is taking Solok's challenge so seriously: at Starfleet Academy, Sisko drunkenly challenged Solok to a wrestling match, after Solok provoked Sisko by mocking humans' illogical emotion-driven behavior. Solok won the match easily, and later used the incident as evidence that Vulcans are superior to humans, publishing multiple papers using the wrestling match as an example. Yates quickly tells the truth to the whole team, making them understand just how much this means to Sisko.

When the game begins, the Logicians (Solok's team) immediately build up a considerable lead. Sisko gets into an altercation with the umpire, security chief Odo, and is thrown out of the game for laying a finger on him.

When Rom's son Nog throws out a runner who failed to touch home plate, Sisko is reminded of why he loves baseball in the first place: its unpredictability. Seeing Rom's pride in his son and dejection at being excluded from the game, Sisko decides to allow him to play. Near the end and down 10-0, the Niners (Sisko's team) are desperate to score a run. Nog makes it to third base, and Rom has his first at-bat. Rom accidentally hits a perfect bunt, which brings Nog home, giving the Niners their only run in a 10-1 loss. The team's celebration confuses Solok, who protests to Odo, but also touches him so Odo ejects him too.

After the game, the crew relax at Quark's bar, toasting the triumph of team spirit over Vulcan superiority. Solok protests their celebration as a "manufactured victory", only to be mocked by the Niners. The team presents Sisko with a souvenir of the game: a baseball that his whole team has signed.