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Matlock:: The Professor First Season, Episode 11, 1985
There is no baseball cap on a hat rack in The Professor episode of Matlock ('86). There is a hat on top of the 4th edition of Black's Law Dictionary in the opening sequence. It's about Ben Matlock's defense of his former Law professor at Harvard who is framed for murder by an obsessed assistant teacher at a University in Georgia. The killer poses as the professor wearing his hat and coat and stealing his car.
Christopher McDonald's character is a conspirator in the murder/ frame-up plot. He helps to put the drugged professor into his car after the professor's assistant uses the car as a murder weapon to kill a man getting off a bus. That important detail is implied, rather than shown, by other facts in the case. It had to be him because he was the only one who could have done it.
Christopher McDonald as a fellow conspirator in the frame-up stands out for three reasons:
1) The name Christopher is, of course, the same as Assistant D.A Christopher Darden. Moreover, playing the Scrabble game with CHRISTOPHER MCDONALD gives you CHRIS DARDEN. 2) Mc
3. In Chances Are, McDonald is an assistant D.A. struck and killed by a car on his first wedding anniversary. He is reincarnated as a Yale journalism student who works in the Law School library.
In "The Professor," some portion of Black's Law Dictionary is visible throughout the entire opening sequence. A baseball cap isn't really required in "The Professor" or "The Hunting Party." If you've seen enough Fuhrman inspiration movies you know that caps, ski masks, wigs, combs, hair brushes, and hats of all kinds are interchangeable. It is the head of the person identified with those items of evidence on murder scenes that counts. A "suspiciously parked" vehicle in
It's hard to believe that the professor's birthday party where the frame-up began and the bloody white dog in front of his Ford station wagon (with blood on it) didn't also figure into Fuhrman's thinking about his prep sessions with Chris Darden. Darden accepted all of the blood evidence against O.J. on Rockingham that started with Fuhrman's discovery of blood on the Ford Bronco. The key elements linking The Natural with Fuhrman's birthday and the frame-up conspiracy in "The Professor" and "The Hunting Party" are all present. They are just modified to fit existing circumstance and moved around a bit in Fuhrman's testimony.
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Donald is directly linked to the two-part, 4th season episode of Matlock called “The Hunting Party” ('89) as a
different character who is also involved in murder/frame-up conspiracy. In a scene in front of the courthouse you catch a glimpse of a young man with blonde hair in the crowd
wearing a New York (The Natural) Yankees baseball cap. In the scene where Christopher McDonald’s character is busted along with his duck hunting buddies in a police raid, the
policemen are wearing black baseball caps. 
"The Professor" is the professor's
Ford station wagon on the grass next to a driveway parked at the angle of the Bronco
on Rockingham -- according to Fuhrman, but not according to police photos. On Rockingham a stick was on the grass and the car was on the street. According to police photos the stick
was on the side of the Bronco. According to Fuhrman, the parking angle of the Bronco was so great that the stick on the grass was in front of the Bronco. In "The Professor," the dog is in
front of the station wagon. The link to Christopher Darden at the prosecutor's table in court is the
black assistant prosecutor. He has no lines in the teleplay. He just sits there as a living prop to indicate a prosecution team.
