This article was originally published on April 6.
"Schitt's Creek" signs off, sadly, for the final time this week.
The Canadian TV show focuses on the uber-rich Rose family — Johnny, Moira and their two adult children David and Alexis — who lose all their money because of a nefarious business manager. They are forced to move to Schitt's Creek, a small town Johnny bought as a joke for David years ago.
While the Roses are the farthest thing from being an athletic family, the show's creators, father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, who play Johnny and David, respectively, did have one baseball-related episode in Season 5.
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Part of the premise of the episode, "The M.V.P," has David and Johnny added as players on opposite teams on the morning of the championship so neither team has to forfeit. David, who of course is very anti-playing, suits up for Patrick while Johnny cannot help but be a supportive dad despite being on the other team.
Here are four things you may not know about the episode.
Dan Levy can actually play
The premise of the episode came about after Levy attended co-star Noah Reid's (who plays David's fiancee Patrick) annual baseball game.
"I went thinking, this is going to be fun, I'm not going to play, I'll watch and cheer people on," Levy said in the shows Behind the Episode video. "I ended up playing."
Levy played little league as a kid, and according to Reid in the clip below, he had at least four hits in the game.
The only fudging done in this episode is that Dan Levy is apparently "bad at baseball." He's a pure hitter.
— Schitt's Creek (@SchittsCreek) March 6, 2019
🗣 @danjlevy @olreid @Realeugenelevy @karenrobinson01#SchittsCreek pic.twitter.com/bxJTRG9NFj
Johnny didn't hit David with the throw
Early in the episode, Johnny brings up that David actually played baseball as a kid and "holds the little league record for most times hit by a ball."
Later on, David is hit in the back by a ball. Eugene Levy, who is a big Toronto Blue Jays fan, reveals below it was the assistant director George that repeatedly hit David and not him. Dan Levy said he did the scene at least 25 times and there's a fantastic montage of him repeatedly getting hit in the video below (scroll ahead to 1:48 to see its epicness).
The town changed its baseball team's name
While Schitt's Creek's exact location is unknown, it is filmed in the town of Goodwood, Ont. According to Eugene Levy, the town loves having the show film there, so much so that the town's baseball team changed its name during their season in honor of the show.
"They had a minor league kind of baseball team there that actually changed their name from the Goodwood Bears to the Schitt's Creek Bears for an entire month," he told NPR back in 2015.
'Flying Latkes' do exist
When Johnny walks in on Ronnie and Roland discussing how they need a player, he says he "used to play a little ball in my day." That team? His Hebrew school's Flying Latkes baseball team.
Although we don't actually know the origin of the name on the show, "The Flying Latke" is actually a children's book written by Arthur Yorinks. The book was adapted into a play that Theatermania describes as, "the story of young Danny Silverstein and his 'meshugge' family" — do we see a connection here? — "as they celebrate the first night of Chanukah. Their holiday food fight sends a latke sailing out the window and over the city, causing a UFO frenzy that traps the Silversteins in their home with their extended family visiting and nothing but latkes to eat."