01E10 - Endless Slumper

New Red Sox relief pitcher, Rick Walker, is in a slump. The Red Sox pitching coach mentions that Sam might be able to help, just because no one knows better about pitching slumps than Sam. After Rick turns down a bunch of suggestions, Sam says that a lucky charm might do the trick, Sam having one himself, that being a bottle cap. Willing to try anything, Rick asks Sam if he can borrow the bottle cap, to which Sam reluctantly agrees. As soon as that bottle cap leaves Sam's possession, Rick's slump ends and bad luck befalls Sam, starting with a crashing beer mug when he tries his infamous bar slide trick. After several weeks, Sam, with his continuing string of bad luck, is desperate to get the bottle cap back. He soon learns that Rick lost it and was putting off telling Sam. Sam, in a state of panic, admits to Diane that the bottle cap represented something significant in his life: it was off the last bottle of "anything" he drank in his life and it stops him from drinking. More desperate, he opens a bottle of beer, pours it into a beer mug and stares at it, meanwhile Diane's nervous facial tick is going a mile a minute. Finally, Sam does what he's wanted to do for a long time.