Pitch
FOX
Premieres: Sept. 22
Airs: Thursdays at 9pm ET/PT
Who’s In It? Kylie Bunbury, Ali Larter, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mo McRae, Dan Lauria
What’s It All About? The marketing departments of FOX Sports and Major League Baseball team up for this new weekly hour of corporate synergy posing as entertainment. The story is about Ginny Baker (Bunbury), a pitcher who becomes the first woman to play in the majors, and all the media hype, pressure, prejudice and butt-patting that comes with breaking a social barrier. But aside from its feel-good premise, there’s nothing pioneering in Pitch, which tosses every tired, predictable sports platitude in the playbook. It’s disappointing and borderline insulting that a monumental event in sports and society — in this case, a hypothetical one — would be depicted so poorly by such a shoddily written show, which seems to exist only to cross-promote FOX Sports shows and personalities (Colin Cowherd!), and FOX’s coverage of the World Series. FOX Sports announcer Joe Buck, who plays himself in the pilot, puts it best with this line: “Honestly, I don’t know if I can watch this.” We’ll give this rookie two innings before it gets yanked.
