Pitch

The show feels realistic in the locker room, on the field and in the media circus that surrounds her. (The synergy with real-life Fox Sports commentators and on-screen graphics provides more verisimilitude.)

The producers of Pitch of course say that it’s a character-driven drama with baseball action in the mix but not a focal point of each weekly episode. Episode One, however, is appealingly diamond-centric, with Ginny’s travails and resolve (plus some well-chosen mood music) providing more than enough tension to engage even hardcore non-sports fans.

The pilot about a woman pitcher (Kylie Bunbury) who gets called up to the San Diego Padres is a winning one, and as much about coping with overnight fame and the weight of other people's dreams as it is about baseball.

This being a broadcast premiere, Ginny is forced through many predictable expositional and emotional hoops, and Bunbury makes that exercise seem effortless. Though she is the center of the story, Ginny remains something of a cipher.

It’s formulaic as can be, yet still incredibly compelling.

Occasionally the dialogue veers toward the kind of TV patter that has a slightly contrived sheen, but so much of the show steers clear of unnecessary exposition that it usually has a streamlined feel, and much of what occurs in the first hour simply flies by.

Bunbury is great and the rest of the cast is solid. ... The show’s downside is that it’s virtually an infomercial for Fox Sports.

We don’t know if Pitch can sustain its uplifting premise, but after a fun and engaging pilot episode, it’s ahead in the count.

Pitch is doggedly inspirational. And despite its hackneyed moments, the pilot introduces enough meaty stuff to warrant a wait-and-see response. It’s a fresh concept amid TV’s sea of cookie-cutter franchises.

All the tropes are present and accounted for, but they’re beautifully played out.

Hitching so many wagons to her star drags the story, which otherwise has a certain breathless quality to it. Baseball is obviously a collaborative sport, and Ginny is green and therefore in need of some help. But Pitch has a strong, charismatic lead, and would work best if it kept other players off the mound.

As played by the relative newcomer Kylie Bunbury, Ginny is a delightfully flinty and occasionally nervy champ to root for, and she helps Pitch’s pilot episode overcome some of its biggest clichés through sheer charm, even if the show’s long-term future is murkier.

The dialogue is occasionally overripe (“I’ve been ready my whole life”; “You do this for you!”) but for the most part modestly crisp.

Bunbury is a star in the making as the leading character. ... Gosselaar is unrecognizable thanks to some newly acquired facial hair. As a result viewers will pay more attention to his equally strong performance and interactions with Bunbury throughout the hour. Mo McRae, Ali Larter and Tim Jo round out the solid cast, making for a pretty entertaining hour.

Pitch has an admirable sense of scale and not overselling its main plot. ... The Pitch pilot ends with a twist that doesn't enhance anything and, in fact, made me concerned about how the show might be structured moving forward.

For the most part, Pitch is an engaging drama about a woman negotiating a man's world with the added glitz of big-time sports. Bunbury has the charisma needed for the role.

Pitch has a simple enough premise: It follows the first female player in major league baseball. Interesting. But what do you do with it? That’s the question that lingers over this new Fox show, which is undoubtedly timely but also seems somewhat dramatically limited. ... The series wisely looks at the isolation that’s resulted from Ginny’s single-minded pursuit of baseball.

Bunbury is breakout great and Gosselaar is something of a revelation. ... The storytelling relies too much on real-world sportscasters to narrate and debate the action. Their dialogue is canned and their performances are stiff, undermining the pursuit of authenticity.

The first [strike] is that Pitch is virtually surprise-free, save for a twist that feels more like a gimmick, and a dead-end one at that. The other is that while the writers no doubt have more stories to tell, you can't help wondering whether they've already told the most interesting one.

Too bad the pilot simultaneously tries too hard and not hard enough. The actors are mostly good, and a few are terrific.

When you get beyond the premise--Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury), a minor leaguer who throws in the high 80s and has a highly effective screwball, gets called up by the San Diego Padres to make a start--you’ll find that Pitch is a highly conventional sports tale, a fastball down the middle rather than a darting curve. You’ll also discover that the soap opera beats and sylvan images of the traditional baseball picture are still pretty effective.

The dialogue often comes across Aaron Sorkin-lite and the plot mechanics are too familiar to anyone with a decent familiarity to these kind of sports stories. ... The longer the pilot goes on, the stronger it becomes--at least, until its eye-rolling last minute twist--and that’s usually thanks to its outstanding performances, particularly two great turns from Bunbury and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Mike Lawson.

The heartfelt but sometimes stiff pilot (with unnecessarily jerky camera work) struggles to tell the story of a young black woman breaking into a men’s professional field without turning it into a mini Hallmark movie. And though by the end of the hour we don’t have much of a sense of Ginny, we do get to know star catcher Mike Lawson, played with conceited yet charming aplomb by an almost unrecognizable Gosselaar.

Pitch” does a lot of things right in its first hour, especially in the buildup to her first game. Anyone looking forward to relishing the image of a woman in uniform standing tall on a mound for a professional baseball game should get goosebumps when she does. But those feelings are quickly betrayed by the exaggerated manner in which Baker blows up.

The writers telegraph every single point, especially the sentimental ones, because subtlety can be so darn challenging. Bunbury, though, delivers an appealingly tough performance.