Although the television drama Quantum Leap premiered on March 26, 1989, it was the year 1995 on the series when Dr. Sam Beckett “stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanished.” While Beckett moved in-and-out of random points in time throughout the show’s history, the original timeline of his colleague Al Calavicci – who appeared as a hologram – continued in a normal fashion.
Thus when Sam Beckett leaped into a high school quarterback in 1962 during Quantum Leap’s second season, it was 1996 for Calavicci. At one point during the installment, his hologram is absent for an extended period of time. When he later reappears, Beckett asks where he had been. “Watching Super Bowl XXX,” Calavicci replies. “The Steelers are down by three. You wouldn’t believe it!”
In January 1996, the Pittsburgh Steelers did indeed represent the AFC in Super Bowl XXX, and even pulled within three points late in the fourth quarter before falling to the heavily-favored Dallas Cowboys. Although Al Calavicci may have been correct with his update, however, the episode itself aired on January 17, 1990 – six years before the game was played.
While such a “prophecy” is obviously nothing more than coincidence, the Pittsburgh region played a more significant role in the series finale of Quantum Leap. During the episode, entitled “Mirror Image,” Sam Beckett finds himself in a small bar in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania. “Schlitz,” the bartender replies when Sam asks what beer is on tap. “Iron City, Duquesne, and Fort Pitt in bottles.” While Schlitz may have been “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” the other three were all locally brewed in Pittsburgh during the 1950s.
Cokeburg is an actual small town in nearby Washington County that was the childhood home of television producer Donald P. Bellisario. In addition to Quantum Leap, Bellisario also created such classic shows as Magnum P.I., Tales of the Gold Monkey, and NCIS, and served as both producer and scriptwriter for the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica.
The fact that Sam Beckett’s final television leap occurred in Cokeburg is not the only connection with Bellisario – the legendary producer likewise bestowed his birth month and birth day to Beckett, while reversing the last two digits of his birth year (Bellisario was born in 1935).
“It was August the eighth, 1953 – literally the day I was born,” Sam Beckett recites in a voiceover narration during the “Mirror Image” episode. “I had leaped into a coal mining tavern. People with names and faces both strange and familiar to me but the biggest surprise was, I was me. For the first time in years the reflection in the mirror was mine, grey hair, crow’s feet and all. So why had I leaped here, what wrong was I to put right and where in God’s name was Al?”
The answers to his questions are not immediately forthcoming, and many of the regulars at the tavern are indeed similar in appearance to people that Beckett met during his time-traveling adventures. Add the fact that it was the first leap in which Sam Beckett was Sam Beckett, and it quickly became apparent that something was vastly different about this leap.
It was also obvious that the owner of the establishment – whose name was likewise Al – knew more than he was letting on. “A good bartender has to be part philosopher, part psychiatrist, part psychic,” the man states in his defense. Sam, however, is convinced that this particular Al is responsible for his journeys through time.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Al replies before alluding to Sam Beckett himself being the culprit. “Why did you create Project Quantum Leap, Sam? Why did you want to travel through time? To make the world a better place? To put right what once went wrong? Do you really think that all you’ve done is changed a few lives? At the risk of overinflating your ego, Sam, you’ve done more. The lives you touched, touched others. And those lives, others. You’ve done a lot of good, Sam Beckett. And you can do a lot more.”
The two have an even deeper heart-to-heart conversation later in the installment. “Home,” Sam answers when asked where he’d like to go next. “But I can’t, can I? I’ve got a wrong to put right for Al.” The “wrong” in question occurred during the season two episode “M.I.A.,” in which Al Calavicci asked Sam Beckett to tell his wife Beth that he didn’t die in Vietnam as assumed but was being held as a POW instead.
“I wasn’t there to save his marriage to Beth,” Sam tells Bartender Al in regards to why he refused his friend’s request. “I was there to save an undercover cop from being killed.” Given a second chance – either by his own design or that of someone else – Sam Beckett again travels to that same point in time during the final moments of Quantum Leap and succeeds in saving Al Calavicci’s marriage.
“You remember the first time I leaped?” Beckett earlier asked Calavicci. “And we all felt that someone or something grabbed me? He’s the someone or something that grabbed me. He’s not just a bartender. I think he is God. Or time, or fate, or maybe even something that we never even thought of.”
After five years and ninety-six episodes, that “something” turned out to be a tavern owner in Washington County who subscribed to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and believed that the baseball Pirates should never have traded Ralph Kiner to the Chicago Cubs in June 1953.
God indeed works in mysterious ways.
Anthony Letizia