 New Red Sox 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 turning down a ton 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 a week ago 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 touches the mug ready to pick it up, but instead does his bar slide trick perfectly. This begins a new phase in Sam s life with a new lucky bottle cap charm.