Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 6 – "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place"
Summary
- Grand Nagus Rom's love for baseball is not a ruse – he genuinely loves the game and it holds a special place in his heart.
- Baseball brought Rom closer to his Starfleet friends and allowed him to form a bond with his son, Nog, outside of Quark's bar.
- Rom's return to Star Trek: Lower Decks signifies a historic step forward for the Ferengi Alliance, as he plays a key role in their formal intent to join the Federation.
Grand Nagus Rom's (Max Grodénchik) love of baseball on Star Trek: Lower Decks began with one of the funniest episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In Lower Decks season 4, episode 6, Rom and his wife, First Clerk Leeta (Chase Masterson), negotiate the Ferengi Alliance joining the United Federation of Planets with the USS Cerritos' Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) and Admiral Vassily (Fred Tatasciore). Rom and Leeta's "dumb cop/reasonable cop" routine totally bamboozles Vassily, as Rom behaves like an imbecile obsessed with baseball. But the Grand Nagus really does love baseball.
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 7, episode 4, "Take Me Out To The Holosuite," Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) recruits DS9's entire senior staff to form a baseball team, the Niners. Sisko is incensed when his Vulcan rival from Starfleet Academy, Captain Solok (Gregory Wagrowski), challenges him to a baseball game against his Vulcan squad, the Logicians. Rom asks to join the Niners as a chance to bond with his son, Ensign Nog (Aron Eisenberg), but the Ferengi bartender is inept at the game, and an increasingly unhinged Captain Sisko kicks him off the Niners. However, after Sisko himself is ejected from the game, Rom is called back in to bat, and his bunt allows Nog to score the Niners' only run, which the Niners hilariously celebrate as their "manufactured triumph" over the Vulcans.
