'Modern Family': Home plate equity

In last night's episode, "Diamond in the Rough," Manny (Rico Rodriguez) and Luke’s (Nolan Gould) Little League team somehow makes the playoffs despite its YouTube videos "Boy Stuck in Batting Helmet" and "Pitcher Beans Self." But all the fields in town are booked, so Claire (Julie Bowen) and Cam (Eric Stonestreet) dream of transforming a junky vacant lot.

Inspired by their progress, they set out to flip a house and, bingo, find a long-forgotten acting extra from "The Rockford Files" whose asking price indicates that she still thinks it's 1974. When they attempt to bring their less-excited spouses in on the incredible deal, Phil (Ty Burrell) and Mitch (Jessie Tyler Ferguson) fight over who will be the bad guy who tells them no.

Phil plays both sides, however, which provokes Mitch to double-cross him and feign even greater encouragement. (Mitch calmly explains the diabolical plan to Phil while petting his cat: “I know it’s underhanded, but that’s the way I throw.”)

Both are exposed when they agree to re-team up to shut down the sale. They mistakenly use a group text, which includes their spouses, from the day before.

"What really kills me is you didn’t believe in me and you believe in everything," Claire tells Phil. (The same text exposes to Cam the fate of an itchy blue sweater he knitted for Mitch: It was tossed, not stolen, from a car.)

Right after the four agree that it's not a good idea to go into business with family members, they receive word that the sale has gone through and flash a terrified smile for the cameras.

The site of the remarkably transformed field rekindles Phil's belief in Claire (although Mitch thinks the baseball diamond would be perfect without "that little hill in the middle").

"That’s the funny thing about marriage," Phil says. "You fall in love with this extraordinary person and over time they begin to seem ordinary.

"I think it's all the nagging."

At the Pritchetts, a poppingly prego Gloria (Sofia Vergara) tours her unborn baby around the mansion and performs unique renditions of children's songs that are as tuneful as they are accurate (“Twinkle Twinkle Little Lamb”) using a microphone wired with electrodes into her womb. Jay (Ed O'Neill) objects to the international torture, grabbing the microphone to fill his fetus in on news of the latest global catastrophe as a pleasant distraction.

The two agree never to fight in front of the baby, after which Jay expresses some honesty about his wife's singing that provokes a list of grudges she will hold until after the birth. ("I didn't think this all the way through," Jay says.)

Some of Jay's karma is instant, too, as when it comes time for the National Anthem and Gloria takes the field for a Roseanne Barr.