Pitch - The Revisit II, With Spoilers

Okay, I think that 2 years is long enough to embargo spoilers on a single season cancelled show.

If you plan to pick up and watch Pitch this week and don't want to know what happens, stop reading.

Actually, don't.  I have like 3 readers and can't afford to lose you.

So, Pitch ran for all of 10 episodes in 2016.  It was generally great as I've said but it just didn't find the audience to keep it going.  Shame, that.

What I can't imagine is why not.  With the full support of MLB and particularly the San Diego Padres, this show had one thing that most baseball movies set in the modern day lack and that's the presence of real baseball players, if only in the background.  They mention Jeter, Posey and a bunch of other players who ACTUALLY EXIST in the real world.  Most baseball and sports movies in general don't do this because they aren't allowed to.  Sports organizations play pretty close to the vest with their players and trademark team stuff.  To see the real deal teams and players in a show like Pitch is pretty rare.

I think the trouble here was the non-baseball stuff.  When Pitch is on the diamond it looks and feels like real baseball, right down to commentary by real MLB commentators in the various cities.  The wheels don't fall off when it's off the field but they definitely wobble.  In fact, the further from the field it gets, generally the less appealing the show is.  The club house and front office stuff works, most of the Ginny Baker off field drama works but I think that's because the character can be at a bar and her head is still on the mound.  It's the non-Ginny drama that is less engaging. 

Mike Lawson's character is SUPERB when he's a baseball player, team captain and mentor.  When he's a damaged man looking for love and acceptance off the field...meh.  Same goes for best buddy Blip.  The show tired too hard to give us an ensemble piece where it would have been better served with a vehicle for the Ginny Baker character alone, leaving the development of other characters for a second or later season.  We just didn't get enough baseball and Ginny in her show.

The show ends with Ginny suffering a possibly career ending injury as she makes the last out of an eight inning no-hit gem of an outing, an all too real baseball moment that nearly broke my heart.  The 10th and final episode is probably the strongest of the show and the final moments manage to elate and then gut punch the audience in rapid succession.

If Kylie Bunbury or any of the Pitch team ever reads this, I have the perfect way to bring Ginny back for one more outing.  I have the plot and pacing in my head for a PERFECT baseball movie that would bring back the great Ginny Baker and put her once more on the mound.  In my movie, Lawson has retired as a player, never having won the World Series ring he dreamt of and has taken a hitting coach job on the Padres, Ginny is toiling away in obscurity in the minors, her star fallen and her life in shambles.  From there, a series of baseball moments brings Ginny back to the Padres as a reliever, still the only woman ever in the majors.  She is the odd man out in the bullpen, getting the call to eat innings in losing games.  Struggling with her control and having all but lost her screwball trick pitch, she's regularly rocked.  Lawson helps her get her stuff back, a scandal rocks the clubhouse, putting Lawson in the manager's office as interim skipper and lo and behold the team makes a run to the playoffs.

Well, I won't give you the whole thing but it totally hangs together.

Call me, Kylie.  Ginny deserves it.