I’m a fan of the new Fox show “Pitch.” I support all things baseball. But I do have an interesting point to make. Either the story is trying to be very progressive and insightful, or Mike Lawson’s character seems to have developed entirely too fast. We started the first episode with Lawson being an irredeemable shit-heel: he slapped Ginny’s ass with entirely too much familiarity and with complete disregard for the power imbalance in that slap, and he shit-talked Ginny to the other guys on the team, while being overheard by Ginny in the locker-room.
Great, every story can benefit from an asshole that can be redeemed with some hard-won knowledge and appreciation for other people’s perspectives. But “Pitch” did not choose to take that route. Instead, Lawson turns around in the middle of the first episode, and decides that he is going to hitch his wagon to the Ginny caravan, the only hope that he has of securing his legacy. Instead of having one irredeemable shit-heel to redeem this series, we have the rest of the 25 man roster, who are still having trouble accepting Ginny as a major leaguer. It is just one woman against the world, and one man willing to vouch for her.
Obviously, women do not need vouching for: Ginny has no problem getting the other male baseball players out. In other words, she is able to get by on her own merits. So the argument that “Pitch” makes–that women can only integrate into a traditionally male-only space when a man helps to make a place for them within that space–is a little sad. However, I leave it to women who have had experience moving into male-dominated fields to say whether or not this depiction is realistic. As a cis-het-male in a STEM field, I can only imagine that “Pitch” is a realistic depiction of sex-discrimination that occurs everyday. Which is why I am sure that this show is important. Damn the corny dialogue and shot composition: “Pitch” is doing important work. If you like baseball and/or women and have a stake in the progress of either, I suggest that you watch “Pitch.”
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