Pitch

Fox’s drama about a female pitcher who makes it to Major League Baseball toys with our emotions, but star Kylie Bunbury makes it hard to resist — for now.

- Daniel J. Fienberg

CONFESSION: WHEN I’M ON AIRPLANES, I like to settle into the over-oxygenated air and get weepy over mediocre underdog sports movies. From its peak, almost to its nadir, it is a genre to which I am susceptible. But it isn’t a genre that television thrives in. The rare exceptions, such as Friday Night Lights or Survivor’s Remorse, are shows to cherish, but most TV series about sports succeed by pretending they’re not actually about sports.

For at least one episode, Fox’s new drama Pitch is a series about baseball. Sure, it’s also about shattering glass ceilings, about the fear and misunderstanding that surface when someone new tries to break through in a milieu that’s set in its ways and about the courage of going for it when the system is stacked against you. But when Major League Baseball is supporting a show, the San Diego Padres are letting it use its uniforms and half of the sports journalism establishment is making cameos, it’d be silly to claim athletic agnosticism.