By Chris Ryall
July 29, 2004
When I was a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to be a baseball player (well, and a singer in a band and a comic book artist and…). I’ve grown up listening to Vin Scully call Dodger games and been a baseball fan my whole life. So I’m overly susceptible to baseball-themed TV shows and movies. With the exception of FOR LOVE OF THE GAME, of course. But if that makes me predisposed to be charitable toward CBS’s new baseball show THE CLUBHOUSE, well, it needn’t matter. The show works even without my affection for the game coloring my judgment.
THE CLUBHOUSE is a show about a 16-year-old lifelong baseball fan named Pete Young. His earliest, and only real, memory of his dad, is being at a baseball game. In particular, a New York Empires game. The Empires seem to be a cross between the Mets and the Yankees, existing in the same universe as the Yankees (like the Mets) but with huge fan support and multiple championships (like the Yankees). Their uniforms are reminiscent of the Yankees, although their hats just have a big apple on them.
Pete takes a job as batboy for the team, fulfilling a dream of his. He goes to Empire Stadium to start his job. The stadium seems to be Shea on the outside, Dodger Stadium on the inside, meaning overhead shots look to be taken from that Queens stadium but the field and seats were shot here in Los Angeles.
Pete’s a good kid and a good student. So good that he lies to his mom and takes the job without getting his parental consent form signed. Christopher “Doc Brown” Lloyd shows up as the team’s gruff equipment manager, and he reminds Pete to get that form signed. But Pete has stars in his eyes and barely hears him as he walks onto the field for the first time. He meets his fellow batboys, Rich, whose uncle is the team’s general manager, and Jose, the “head batboy” who keeps threatening to hit the other two if they step out of line. Then he meets the team.
First he comes across Conrad Dean (former athlete and Superman Dean Cain, believe it or not), an Derek Jeter stand-in who’s as nice as he is talented and beloved by the city. He also meets a Carlos “C.T.” Tavares, a rookie just up from AA, and also Kenny Baines, a star player who’s also a bit of an asshole.
During the first game, Pete sits in left field and makes a Ferris Bueller-like catch of a foul ball, a scene televised for the world (and his unsuspecting Catholic school principal) to see. He also meets a girl in the stands, Jessie, to whom he gives the foul ball. She later gives it back with her phone number on it.
Kenny Baines demands that Pete take his Ferrari into the shop for him, threatening him if he messes it up. He gets to the shop too late, so he has to keep the car overnight. He also misses his granny’s birthday party, but he tells his worried, overprotective mom (Mare Winningham) that he was at a Scrabble championship. His older, rougher around the edges sister doesn’t believe a word of it.
He calls Jessie, and they set up a date at an upcoming game. Of course, before that, Pete takes the Ferrari to school, gets pulled over for speeding, and in the process of looking for the car’s registration in the glove compartment, pulls out a bag of steroids. Seems that ‘roids make TV athletes much more careless than they should be. He gets arrested. However, ever loyal to his team, and not wanting to cause a big scandal after only one day on the job, he tells the police the drugs are his. Now, since Pete looks like Anthony Michael Hall in SIXTEEN CANDLES and the player who owns the car has suddenly bulked up, well, they don’t quite buy it.
Things go badly for Pete. His mom gets a call from the school and comes and drags Pete out of the dugout (but not before Baines makes it clear that he’ll have no problem with Pete as long as Pete takes the fall for the drugs). His mom then tells him that the only reason his dad (and her ex-husband) took him to baseball games was because he had a gambling problem. On top of all this, Sister Marie Harmon, his principal and another big Empires fan, is about to suspend Pete for lying and having character undeserving of an Empire. Everyone hates him.
At the stadium, Lou tells Pete about the flux capacitor, er, I mean, he tells Pete that even Joe DiMaggio got booed at Yankee Stadium. Everyone gets booed. “You ain’t arrived in this town ‘til you been booed,” he says. This makes Pete, on his way to go meet with league officials and the team’s G.M., feel no better. But he decides to come clean anyway, to square things at least with his principal and with himself. He admits the drugs weren’t his. Kenny Baines is suspended indefinitely, and the team loses a game. What’s more, Pete is fired (ostensibly for having no parental consent form, but we all know the real reason). And worst of all, he misses a date with Jessie.
Pete is miserable. Until Conrad Dean shows up at his house and tells him he did the right thing, and offers him his job back. His mom refuses, scared of losing her son to the big city the way she lost her husband. That is, until granny sets her straight. Pete is given his job back. He takes the field…and promptly gets a big Bronx cheer. He’s bummed about all the booing until he sees Jessie in the stands with a sign saying You Did the Right Thing. Lou walks by and hits his cap, saying, “you’ve arrived, kid.”
And with that, so has the show. I have to admit, I didn’t quite think the show would tackle something like ‘roid use right away. Beyond just the overly obvious hiding place for the drugs, it was handled in a pretty solid, if a bit overly simplified, way. But it’s nice to see a first show do more than just introduce the characters and shy away from anything really happening. Instead, Pete was given a good moral dilemma to set the tone for his character.
This is one of those shows that's already endorsed by the Family Friendly Coalition or whatever they're called (a few overly protective Bible-thumpers, basically). They like that the show has a clear focus on good old-fashioned morals and lessons, and where that can turn a show into pablum in some cases (no names, but the shows usually have some sort of religious title or storyline), here, it worked pretty nicely. The few scenes of baseball felt more real than most TV show sporting events, and the show had some nice production values, with good camera work on the Ferrari driving shots and overhead angles. Right now, the show makes me think of Spring Training. It’s fresh and just starting, so hopes are high and the potential for greatness, or at least solid goodness, is there. Hope it remains a contender.
If you want to check out a preview of the show, click here.
CBS's THE CLUBHOUSE airs this Fall on Tuesday nights at 9 PM.
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