Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
There’s a moment in 2010’s The Other Guys when superstar detectives Danson and Highsmith—played by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively—heroically and confoundingly leap off a 20-story building in pursuit of the bad guys (even though there wasn’t even an awning in their direction).
At the pair’s funeral, it’s the titular other guys—Mark Wahlberg’s Terry Hoitz and Will Ferrell’s Allen Gamble—who see their chance to step up and fill their voids, even if the timing for plotting such a career climb lacks the proper decorum. There’s a whole whisper fight that ensues at the reception that effectively illustrates the fervor that can grab hold of people who see sudden vacancies as golden opportunities.
