TV REVIEWS : ‘Ballgame’ Gambit Can’t Get to First Base

Brett Sooner, the baseball superstar-turned-local-sportscaster portrayed by Corbin Bernsen in “A Whole New Ballgame,” is a womanizer. How do we know this? He’s described so by a pair of TV execs in the first scene.

Moments later, we first meet him in a bar, where his introductory come-on is: “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way and I hope you don’t think me too forward, but you have got absolutely perfect breasts.” And the slap he subsequently receives doesn’t correct him from flagrantly lusting after everything in nylons for the rest of the half-hour. Brett, to borrow a recent refrain, just doesn’t get it .

But then neither do the creators of “Ballgame”--Judd Pillot and John Peaslee (recently of “Blue Skies,” part of whose cast they have instantly reunited here). They seem to believe there’s life left yet in the old gambit of the incorrigible Don Juan who meets his match in a gorgeous but feisty career woman.

Tonight’s pilot has Brett plucked from the strike--and probable impending retirement--to a gig as a Milwaukee sportscaster, despite his complete lack of on-air experience. Soon to be even more distressed about his hiring than she suspects is his boss, Meg (Julia Campbell), whom--in a time-honored gag that may predate the chicken crossing the road--sexist pig Brett initially mistakes for (get this!) a secretary.

Bernsen--who has done the jock thing before with “Major League”--is well-cast and spirited, once the shock of his buzz cut wears off, even if his character is written as an unappealing mishmash of “L.A. Law’s” Arnie and Benny Hill. (His throwaway way of repeating “stay in school, stay off drugs” as a dull mantra is the best thing about the show.)

A slew of character actors (including Richard Kind and Stephen Tobolowsky) also provides comfortingly familiar presence. But the women (smart Campbell and a ditsy Kari Coleman), though good, are fairly demeaned; their idea of a “power suit” seems to have been directly based on time-slot competitor Heather Locklear’s, only the idea is not as funny here.