Why You’ll Fall in Love With ‘Pitch’ Star Kylie Bunbury

While producers hope the series becomes the latest instance where TV serves as a groundbreaker for history, many people believe that a woman has already played in the Majors.

Bunbury also understands the significance of playing the first female Major League Baseball pitcher on the small screen. Foremost among them is Mike Lawson (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), the team’s ruggedly handsome star catcher. “You watch her on screen and she just melts you”, he marveled. After just one episode, you’ll probably be all good on the show’s depiction of wild pitches, Extreme Focusing close-ups, and wide-angle action shots.

“I do feel like we are at a time right now where women across the board, especially at the sports level, are really coming into the spotlight”, Singer told me. The show has MLB’s blessing, and Petco Park appears just as it does during real games. I think that’s what we need right now, with everything going on in the world. With flashbacks to Ginny’s childhood and adolescence as a pitching prodigy and plenty of frisson between Ginny and her handlers, her teammates (including a scruffy, almost unrecognizable Mark-Paul Gosselaar as her skeptical catcher), and her public (both the haters and those who want to put her on a pedestal), this is a well-rounded, emotionally-grounded drama. She sticks around and gets her first victory.

The Social Message: The fact that Ginny is a Black woman makes the story behind Pitch that much stronger and relatable.

Her debut is painful to watch, as she throws 10 straight balls, including three wild pitches, to fall behind the rival Los Angeles Dodgers 1-0. Some of them think she’ll only be on the team for a couple games to get attendance up and then she’ll be gone. Writers Dan Fogelman and Rick Singer nearly certainly needed a “big” moment like this to sell Pitch to executives and to convince them this is a story with a vision beyond sports.

“If you’re a baseball fan, there’s going to be some good baseball stories”, Falls said. The players may be different and this specific tale may be particularly ripe for bad takes about female athletes (shout out to Colin Cowherd, who has no problem delivering his bad takes in the show as if he wouldn’t take a similar line in real life), but the locker room tension, the initial struggle, and the ultimate triumph are all here. That’s a smart track to follow, if the show can find anything compelling about the characters beyond where they end up in the pilot.

Bunbury has spent the last several months learning how to pitch.

While a woman has yet to play in the big-leagues, history seems to be just waiting for that to happen.

Her greatest hater comes in the form of the starting pitcher whose spot she’s taking. She is selected by the baseball team San Diego Padres, and the pressure is on for her to prove her skill and worth to the world.

Fox Sports, a longtime TV home for baseball and the sole broadcaster of the World Series since 2000, has deployed its own talent, with Joe Buck, John Smoltz, Katie Nolan and Colin Cowherd all having regular cameos.

But baseball player Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury) seems up to the task, saying early on in the pilot, “I’ve been ready my whole life”.