Executive producer Dan Fogelman threw a perfect game earlier this week with “This Is Us,” but he doesn’t quite pull a Johnny Vander Meer with his second outing of the season, the premiere of “Pitch” (8:59 p.m. Thursdays on Fox), which he co-created with Rick Singer. Like pretty much all previous shows in the genre of “fictional sports story,” it’s hard to take it as seriously as the script insists we should.
“Pitch” posits that in 2016, Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury), becomes the first woman to make a major league roster when the Padres call her up from the minors for a spot start. The writers earnestly run down the complete checklist of clichés. Granted, some of them can’t be avoided. If and when this story happens in real life, it will indeed be a big media event, with a sold-out stadium and reporters only being interested in what the players think about having a woman as a teammate. And yes, she’ll probably be assigned a makeshift locker-room-for-one.
The baseball ambiance is pretty well done. The action takes place in the real home of the Padres, with the official uniforms. Fox Sports’ Joe Buck and John Smoltz provide in-game commentary, with Colin Cowherd and Katie Nolan delivering punditry.
But other clichés make a viewer say “Really? They’re going there?,” like Ginny being uncomfortable with being slapped on the butt by catcher Mike Lawson (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and the manager, as if this is her first baseball game. Then the pitcher whose injury necessitated Baker’s call-up gets in her face about how she’ll just be a trivia answer. I found this to be contrived; Baker likely knows the majority of the roster from playing with them in the minors. It’s unlikely she’d be brought into a situation where her own teammates don’t support her.
The biggest problem with “Pitch,” though, is that it asks viewers to treat this fictional story as if it’s a real story, and that puts us in a weird position. When a woman does make the majors, it will be a great story that will stir up lots of thoughts and emotions, but watching a fictional version falls flat and seems to trivialize the future event.
I’m not entirely sure why this is. It would probably be the wrong move to treat this story whimsically, as if the idea of a woman pitcher is in the same category as a rubber-armed kid (“Rookie of the Year”) or a kid manager (“Little Big League”). But at the same time, it’s hard to not make those comparisons in a world where a woman has yet to make even a minor-league roster.
The pilot episode gives us some flashbacks of Baker’s demanding dad teaching her to throw a screwball (the secret weapon that allows her to compensate for her high-80s fastball) and her victory in the North Carolina state high school championship and her first visit from a Padres scout. Maybe if “Pitch” had started with Baker making her Single-A debut, it could’ve worked up a stable of verisimilitude as it built toward a major-league breakthrough by the end of the first season.
That’s not to say Baker is a superstar out of the gates. But the way the writers illustrate her struggles doesn’t have any basis in the sporting world. Shouldering the weight of the expectations of young girls the world over – and perhaps more tellingly, her dad’s – she develops a psychological misfire and forgets how to pitch. Then Lawson gives her a speech during a mound visit and she snaps out of it.
In reality, when players like Mackey Sasser and Chuck Knoblauch developed that glitch in their brain – forgetting how to throw when in game situations – they couldn’t snap out of it. For someone good enough to make the majors, the mechanics are automatic; Baker might pitch poorly in her debut, but she’s not going to lose the basic mechanics and then suddenly get them back after a few encouraging words. The nuances of a rough pitching outing would be hard to portray in a TV drama, but the shorthand gimmick is worse.
“Pitch” so far lacks a deep roster of characters. Crusty veteran Lawson and the good-hearted All-Star who came up through the ranks with Baker are likable enough; and the manager, GM and owner ring true. Baker’s agent, Amelia (Ali Larter), is completely unappealing: Her “my way or the highway” arrogance combines with ignorance of what her client actually needs, and I don’t care to see another scene with her unless it involves Baker firing her. Unfortunately, the writers for some reason think we want to see the GM pining after Amelia in a “When will they finally get together?” arc.
And Baker herself is rather bland. Admittedly, she describes herself as a friendless robot, so that’s sort of the point, but still.
SPOILER FOLLOWS.
To top off the weird experience of watching this episode, it ends with a twist where it turns out Baker’s father had died in a car crash right after Baker was signed by the Padres; all the present-day scenes with her dad were in her head. While this isn’t a game-changing twist on par with “This Is Us,” it is inevitable that viewers who are aware that Fogelman created both shows will make the connection, and it suddenly makes his work seem gimmicky. (That’s not to say that it makes me love “This Is Us” any less; only that the thought crossed my mind that a twist ending might be the only trick up Fogelman’s sleeve. To be fair, “Pitch” was not originally supposed to get a fall launch, let alone premiere within two days of his other show.)
“Pitch” will probably fail for the same reason all sports-centered dramas fail; they are incredibly expensive to make, and thus will require massive ratings to stay on the air. The show simply can’t film in a packed Petco Park every week. But also, there’s something inevitably hollow about this whole genre, even when – or perhaps especially when – it checks off all the boxes.
Main image: Fox publicity photo