Yellow-flowered medicinal plant / THU 1-5-23 / Veep actress Duvall / Good name for a marine biologist / Risky baseball strategy that's indicated four times in this puzzle? / Acclaimed HBO comedy series whose creator stars as himself / To whom Mama Cocha was goddess of the sea / lab hosp location for stent placements

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SQUEEZE PLAY (54A: Risky baseball strategy that's indicated four times in this puzzle?) — the title of a "play" (a Broadway musical, to be much more specific) can be found "squeezed" into four boxes in this grid:

Theme answers:

• LEVITATE / INEVITABLE (17A: Rise in the air / 2D: Certain to happen) ("Evita")
• THAI RESTAURANT / COCHAIRS (21A: Establishment offering tom yum soup or pad woon sen noodles) [I think the "soup" and "noodles" bits here are redundant] / 5D: Runs together, in a way) ("Hair")
• "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" / PARENTAL (36A: Acclaimed HBO comedy series whose creator stars as himself / 28D: Kind of guidance) ("Rent")
• CAT SCAN / CATSUP (61A: Body image? / 61D: Condiment for a burger) ("Cats")

Word of the Day: SQUEEZE PLAY —

In baseball, the squeeze play (a.k.a. squeeze bunt) is a maneuver consisting of a sacrifice bunt with a runner on third base. The batter bunts the ball, expecting to be thrown out at first base, but providing the runner on third base an opportunity to score. Such a bunt is most common with one out. According to Baseball Almanac, the squeeze play was invented in 1894 by George Case and Dutch Carter during a college game at Yale University.

In a safety squeeze, the runner at third takes a lead, but does not run towards homeplate until the batter makes contact bunting.

In a suicide squeeze, the runner takes off as soon as the pitcher begins the windup to throw the pitch, and before releasing the ball. If properly executed, and the batter bunts the ball nearly anywhere in fair territory on the ground, a play at home plate is extremely unlikely. However, if the batter misses the ball the runner will likely be tagged out, and if the batter pops the ball up a double play is likely.

These plays are often used in the late innings of a close game to score a tying, winning, or insurance run. A pitcher's typical defense against a squeeze play, if he sees the batter getting into position to attempt a bunt, is to throw a high pitch that is difficult to bunt on the ground. (wikipedia)

• • •

The thing that stunned me most about this puzzle was the sudden realization that ... well, I like the band Squeeze, and I own many of their albums ("LPS" and "CDS"), and one of those albums is entitled "East Side Story" and another of those albums is entitled "Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti" and one of those albums is entitled "Frank" but (most relevantly) still another of those albums is entitled simply "Play" ... and never, not once, not until I was taking preliminary notes for this blog post, did I notice (~30+ years late) the Squeeze / "Play" connection. The album is not baseball-themed, that I'm aware of, and the album cover, well, I don't really know what's happening there (pictured) but there's nothing to suggest the baseball angle, so you can see how one could miss it, but dang ... I like Squeeze, I like baseball, and ... I never put 2 + 2 together. Maybe Squeeze intended no baseball implications when they named the album "Play," I don't know, but I should've noticed. *I* should've noticed. Again, I say, dang. As for the puzzle, this is a completely acceptable rebus theme, undermined only by the fact that "play" doesn't really fully capture what's being squozen here (these are musicals), but they take place on stage and have dialogue, so sure, "Plays," fine. 

The only real difficulty is uncovering that first rebus square. To do this, I had to go down and find the revealer and solve it early. I was totally stumped in the NW despite having all but one square seemingly in place. The main problem was the not-as-clever-as-it-imagines clue on RAE (4D: Good name for a marine biologist). After rejecting ROE, I thought "ah, RAY, that works perfectly." Which left me L-TY for 17A: Rise in the air. No hope. With those "good name for a ___" clues, the right answer should be bam, spot-on, undeniable, not "eh, pick from half a dozen or so." But annnnnyway, that was why I couldn't get that square. Also, "EVITA" is way longer than your typical rebus string, so it's hard to parse the missing parts of INEVITABLE until you know more about the theme. After I got the revealer, and then that first rebus square, the rest of them came pretty easily. The hardest one was probably the "Cats" square crammed all the way down in the SE corner. I had SCAN at 61A: Body image? and (like RAY) it seemed perfect, so it took some doing before I figured out to put the "Cat" part in there too. I thought the rebus square was two squares down from there, and was seriously wondering if there was some play called, I dunno, "Oran Gep" or something (67A: Negroni garnish => PEEL). But "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" and THAI RESTAURANT were absolute gimmes, and the few names I didn't know (CORTEZ) or couldn't remember (CLEA) were not too hard to draw out. 

Little problems, now. Read "flowers" as "followers" in 1D: The flowers in Amy Lowell's "Your great puffs of flowers / Are everywhere in this my New England" (LILACS), so I was looking for, I dunno, a religious sect or something like that for a bit. I thought the kind of "guidance" that was called for at 28D was MORAL, but that was before I got the theme. Oh, there was this:

But that was more of a goof. Less of a goof was when I had it as "TECH lab" and "PATH lab." Shrug. I remembered SENNA—how, I don't know (26A: Yellow-flowered medicinal plant). Very flowery puzzle, this one. I couldn't stand ISLATE so when I was done I just rewrote the section to make myself happy:

HEAT RASH sounds bad but it's a good answer (8D: Summer eruption). That's all I've got on this one. Overall: acceptable and enjoyable. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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