MLB: Woman Mistakenly Thought TV Show Pitch Was Real

The TV world blurred into the real world when a Canadian woman called to ask about Ginny Baker, the fictional major league pitcher on the TV show Pitch.

Based around the idea of the first female pitcher in the major leagues, the TV show Pitch debuted in September on FOX. The first episode shows the pitcher, Ginny Baker, making her major league debut for the San Diego Padres while also filling in background information about Ginny’s path to the majors. In the second episode, Ginny Baker wins her first major league game. This, of course, would be the first major league victory for a woman, a historic event, if it had actually happened.

Around this time, a woman called Luke Banack’s show on Canada’s 98.1 FM, saying, “On the sports this morning, you didn’t mention how the female pitcher did in Major League Baseball. She pitched last night, I thought.” The woman thought Ginny Baker was a real person and the show was documenting her journey in the big leagues.

Banack responded by telling the woman it was just a TV show. He said, “They’ve done a great job promoting it . . . I firmly believe that we will eventually see a woman in Major League Baseball, but just not right now. That’s just an actress.”

Pitch ended its 10-episode run on December 8. The pilot episode focused on the relationship between Ginny (played by Kylie Bunbury) and her very demanding father (played by Michael Beach). We learn that the key to Baker being able to make the big leagues is the screwball her father teaches her, although the grip they show in the episode looks like a circle change.

Along with her father, other key characters in the series include catcher Mike Lawson, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zack Morris from Saved By the Bell), sports agent Amelia Slater (Ali Larter), teammate Blip Sanders (Mo McRae), Padres GM Oscar Arguella (Mark Consuelos), and Padres manager Al Luongo (Dan Lauria, the father in Wonder Years). Dick Enberg and Mark Grant appear as themselves as Padres announcers during game action and the on-field scenes were filmed at Petco Park in San Diego.

Over the course of the series, we see key events that coincide with a major league season. Early on, we see Baker’s introduction to the big leagues and her attempts to fit in with her teammates. Another early episode shows the “eye for an eye” culture of beanballs in the big leagues. If they hit one of your guys, you hit one of their guys, but what if one of the “guys” is a female? We see the veteran catcher struggle with injuries, the excitement of the All-Star Game, the anxiousness of the trade deadline, and even a glimpse of the team’s Kangaroo Court. At FanGraphs, Sarah Wexler wrote about each episode. This link will take you to the season finale. There are links there for the other nine episodes.

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Pitch can be found on Netflix, Hulu, and Comcast On Demand. The series didn’t get the ratings that Fox had hoped for, but it did have better DVR results in the 18-49 age group than live TV tune-in. It was originally expected to start with the beginning of Spring Training, but was moved to the fall for its 10-episode run. The final episode had a bit of a cliffhanger ending, which makes fans hopeful that it will be back for a second season to pick up where it left off.

Whether or not Pitch returns for season two won’t be known until the spring. Because of the middling ratings, it’s very much on the bubble. The actors are hopeful. Mark-Paul Gosselaar was asked whether he thought there would be a season two and replied, “Absolutely. I’m not even entertaining the thought that we won’t come back. Mo [McRae] and Kylie [Burnbury] and myself, we’ve all said that we’ll give our bodies about a month break before we go into our preseason routine and begin training again for next season.”

It would be nice to have a season two. The ratings weren’t great, but the show has a devoted following. As the first season wound down, the hashtag #RenewPitch popped on Twitter encouraging Fox to renew the show.

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Hey, I’m on board. I watched the entire season of Pitch and very much enjoyed it (although, I will admit, I had no idea catcher Mike Lawson was played by Zack Morris; I hadn’t thought about him in 20 years). Not only does the show have some diehard fans, but it would be fun to confuse a few more Canadians into thinking there really is a female pitching in the big leagues.