'Pitch's' Swing and a Miss at #Feminism

October 14th, 2016 2:02 AM

Within the first five seconds of Thursday's episode, I was already thankful that the events on Fox's new sports drama Pitch are fictional. Partly because I don’t understand how on earth a 23-year-old girl (sorry, woman, they emphasize) could match up to men twice her size in any sport. But mostly, it’s because I don’t know how long I’d be able to stand the hashtag #PutHerInTheGame. 

Yet, this episode, titled “The Break,” does both those things by putting female San Diego Padres pitcher Ginny Baker (Kylie Burnbury) in Major League Baseball's All-Star Game. The entire argument for her spot on the team seems to revolve around a cliché viral video featuring a pop song by Sia with little kids waving homemade signs that say #PutHerInTheGame (was #ImWithHer too obvious?) in the style of the #BringBackOurGirls craze from a few years ago. 

Woman: They're watching it now. You seen it? I got chills. 

♪♪ (Music, video plays)

Woman: It's dominating social media right now. 36 million people have signed the petition saying "Put Ginny Baker in the All-Star Game." That's twice as many votes as any player's going to get. We need to make a decision. 

Well, if she's trending on social media, who cares if she deserves to be an All-Star?! (By the way, 36 million is a laughably high number, as Entertainment Weekly points out, the top vote getter in this year's All-Star Game received 3.7 million votes, but the show writers probably thought it sounded good.) 

It’s quite telling that even the show struggles to defend her place in the All-Star Game. The Padres manager Al Luongo refers to her spot as a “pity date,” of all things. Even Ginny, the supposed trailblazer, doubts her spot, as she should. Unfortunately, the show gives no time to explore those feelings, nor is there any good argument made for, heaven forbid, questioning this. 

And by no time on that plot, I mean it barely qualifies as one in this hour. After the massive video campaign and stereotypical go-get-em speeches, the All-Star Game quickly comes and goes. I know baseball has been losing fans lately, but Pitch is supposed to treat this like a big deal. Instead, we get the marital issues between Blip (Mo McRae) and Evelyn (Meagan Holder) and the revelation that Ginny’s mother (Chastity Dotson) cheated on her husband before his death. They may be welcome stories in relief of the show’s recent onslaught of #feminism, but then what was the point of that big hashtag campaign in the first place?

By the time veteran catcher Mike (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) talks about her play at the All-Star Game, it’s nearly forgotten. Even then, her failure against a more experienced batter is attributed to her mother’s issues, not basic talent. Perhaps the show’s already losing its luster, because Mike's explanation of her poor performance - “the game is hard” - barely qualifies as an argument for me, man or woman.

It’s nice that Mike says of Ginny it “doesn't matter what you throw at her, she gets back up...[she's a] hell of a lot stronger than I am,” in typical cliché sports-speak, but spending the first minute on an even worse cliché of feminist celebration makes this point null and void.

Which is it, are we supposed to act like she's just another regular ballplayer or are we supposed to be all "rah-rah girl power?" Basically, the show wants to play both subtle and inspiring but fails at both on the grounds that it still wants to be not just feminism but #feminism.