New TV show ‘Pitch’ throws too many cliches at viewers

Avalanche warning: You will soon by buried in ads about this new TV show “Pitch,” an audacious drama about the first female pitcher in the major leagues. It debuts Sept. 22 on Fox, just in time for the playoffs, just in time for the network to bludgeon us with promos until we scream “uncle.” Or in this case “aunt.”

Women are the new men, obviously. They win Olympic medals willy-nilly and now they want to run the world, and probably will. Have at it, I say. It awaits your magic touch.

Please keep in mind that, having been raised by two daughters, I am a devout feminist. To this day, I am convinced that women can do anything men can, often better, except for parallel parking and throwing overhand — small symbols of virility, almost like vestigial tails.

Thankfully, men could always fall back on those two activities as signs that we still had value to society, and were not being kept around to merely twist open stubborn pickle jars.

Aggressive as they are these days, seems only natural that young women would chip away at those remaining comfort zones, and now we have “Pitch.”

There is so much wrong with this new show.

Too slick, too earnest, too everything, “Pitch” sets off so many alarms that you don’t know where to turn first.

“She’s the dwarf who played for the St. Louis Browns,” catcher Mike Lawson says dismissively, when he learns a woman is going to pitch for his San Diego Padres.

Like Lawson, a depressive veteran with a lousy beard, the characters are a dogpile of cliches. There’s the hell-on-wheels agent, played to excess by Ali Larter, who treats everybody like a chew toy. There’s the up-against-it, old-school manager played by the estimable Dan Lauria, who no doubt keeps a bottle in his desk drawer.

The general manager? He’s a New Age sort, caught between an oily little owner and a clubhouse that distrusts everything he represents. He also dabbles, apparently, in sexual harassment.

The producers say that “Pitch” is not really a baseball show. It’s really a sports version of “West Wing” — flip, dynamic and smarter than you are.

Yet, tonally, the show is a stiff, without humor, without brick dust getting under anyone’s nails. The opening plays like a five-minute running shoe commercial.

Add the fact that Major League Baseball, a cozy co-conspirator in this project, having opened up Petco Park and Dodger Stadium as locations, has script approval, and you can be sure you won’t be seeing any steroid needles.

So why do I think this could be the biggest hit of the new season?

I’m not even sure, because when you look at this show’s elements, they don’t add up. The casting seems spotty, until you get to the lead, the terrific Kylie Bunbury, who plays pioneering pitcher Ginny Baker. You’ve likely never heard of her but soon will — a lot, and for good reason.

Bunbury saves the show, as does the agile story line in the pilot, which starts off predictably, but then serves up S-curves and a sensational surprise at the very end.

Like a lot of ballplayers — male and female, young and old — Baker has some major daddy issues.

“I was just a little girl,” the pitcher pleads to her overbearing old man. “I have no friends, no interests. I am a robot in cleats. It wasn’t right what you did to me.”

But I guarantee you don’t see this daddy issue coming, and the ending will make you gasp.

It will also make you root for Ginny Baker even more than you already were, a character dubbed “the next Jackie Robinson,” a cause, a polemic, a talking point in every saloon in the nation.

In Bunbury’s grip, she comes off as tough but human, a warrior who is fighting not just sports culture but the way female shoulders function.

New to the game, the actress even throws the ball convincingly, though she tends to short-arm her pitches, and her release is a little bonky. She needs to finish with her throwing shoulder to the batter, not so face on. (That’s just me talking. And I don’t even know pitching all that well.)

Her character? No short-arming going on there. She’s got everything that makes sports, and TV, worth watching.

You’ll even root for her when the dialogue reads:

Him: You ready for this?

Her: I’ve been ready my whole life.

If you can transcend that, you probably should rule the world.

Chris.Erskine@latimes.com

Twitter: @erskinetimes