Is Fox's new TV series "Pitch" a home run?
By Shannon Scovel
On Sept. 22, Fox premiered its new television series “Pitch,” a show depicting what life could be like for the first woman to pitch in the MLB. Simply put, the plot tells a baseball story, but Fox executive producer Dan Fogelman told Entertainment Weekly reporters at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on August 8th that “Pitch” is more than a story about baseball, it’s a “coming of age” story.” Fogelman expanded on the themes of the plot in an interview with “The Hollywood Reporter” describing the series as one that explores “friendships, love, success and fame,” according to an article published by the site on May 11, 2016.
Did Fox produce a show that depicted women in sports in a way that moves gender equality forward? Does “Pitch” help or hurt the climate of women in sports media? ESPNW writers Katie Barnes and Claire Atkins debated the issue and addressed the possible legacy of the show’s message. But the split opinions on “Pitch” didn’t end with EPSNW’s article, and they didn’t just focus on the narrative of the show.
Six days out from the premiere of the show, the New York Times sent out a tweet wondering if “Pitch” could be successful. Can one series bring together “hard-core baseball fans” and “women?”
(embedded tweet for the website) <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">How will "Pitch" cater to the hard-core baseball fan expecting authenticity while still appealing to women? <a href="https://t.co/GFBVlJnJEZ">https://t.co/GFBVlJnJEZ</a></p>— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimesarts/status/776832296263544839">September 16, 2016</a></blockquote>
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The tweet, which read “How will ‘Pitch’ cater to the hard-core baseball fan expecting authenticity while still appealing to women?” drew heavy criticism from news outlets and fans across the country. Fans and writers alike insisted that the tweet carried sexist connotation, insinuating that women could not be hard-core baseball fans and that hard-core baseball fans would not want to watch women. The Sporting News, a general sports website and magazine, interviewed female baseball fans and writers to hear their perspective on the tweet, and one of the women interviewed in the story, Kate Morrison (known on Twitter as @unlikelyfanatic) argued that men have the opportunity to watch characters like themselves in film all the time, but female characters are never given the same roles.
“Women are only allowed to dream about being tangentially included in those stories, as the brooding or worried or harried or haggard or annoying or nitpicking wives or girlfriends,” Morrison said in the interview with Sporting News. “We’re only supposed to be there for the appearance of the athletes, and then are mocked for it.”
Her comment addressed a frequent concern that has been brought up by critics and scholars in regards to previous sports media about women: female characters remain almost entirely one-dimensional on screen. Even in monumental women’s sports films, female athletes still experience degradation and often fit a stereotypical model. For example, in “A League of Their Own,” a film widely considered to help break gender barriers in sport, women are still shown as needing to be pretty, sexy or flirty in order to capture the hearts of fans and the media.
In a personal interview, Morrison expanded on her Sporting News comment, adding that she hopes that "Pitch" will usher in a new wave of interest for women's sports, but she still remains skeptical that the show can have a permanent impact on women's sports coverage.
"While 'Pitch' has been good for one or two more stories from local news sites about girls on Little League or high school baseball teams, I think that getting more coverage, and more serious coverage, of women in sports and women's sports is going to take more than just this one TV show," Morrison said. 'The realist in me understands that until we can remove sexism from our everyday life, it will remain as embedded in sports as everything else."
“Pitch” spent 40 minutes focused on baseball and the issues that come with being a professional athlete on the field, such as the pressure, the media, the team drama. Typical sports shows, such as ‘Friday Night Lights’ or the recent “Last Chance U,” go deeper than sports, and touch on the issues that affect the players off the field almost immediately. But “Pitch” falls into the trap of showing a female athlete as just a female athlete and doesn’t discuss the related issues? The last five minutes of the pilot episode, however, hint at more dramatic events to come, so the official verdict on “Pitch’s” portrayal of women cannot be reached quite yet. FOX should be praised for putting a woman in the spotlight and giving her an athletic role, but the full impact of the show and its coverage of women in sports, even fictional, will only be revealed as the episodes continue.
