Rueben's Ramblings

Just last week FOX announced that it had cancelled the new drama Pitch after just one season. As the start of the baseball season is heating up, it feels wrong – on a personal level – to cancel the drama that made a professional baseball team into a real group of people seems ill-timed.

Actually, the whole way in which Pitch was marketed didn’t do the show justice. Of course, FOX was able to put the show on right as Major League Baseball’s Post-Season occurred, but in having the show on while there was plenty of compelling baseball on in real life made it awkward.

As a fan, would I want to watch fictional baseball with a female in the game or would I want to watch the games that count and matter for ten teams down to two teams?

For me, as a female fan, I wanted to root for Ginny and watch her team do well, and even though I did, there were parts of her narrative that probably did it few favors.

Setting Ginny’s rise to the Majors with a team that has only been in two World Series (and who have never won) along with the team being a smaller market make it hard for general baseball fans to want to root for The Padres. Amongst fans in southern California, the Padres aren’t even the popular team (except around San Diego), whereas a team like The Cubs, The Yankees or even The Braves could have drawn more fans.

Regardless of the fanbase of the team depicted in the show, the show had a difficult job of trying to tread the line between being too much about baseball and too much about Ginny’s personal life and the difficulties of being a woman in baseball.

For all the aspects of the show that didn’t succeed this year, there are still plenty of fans of the show around. As another friend (or was it a friend of a friend), I’d love to see more Pitch – especially on MLB Network.