Beyond The Baseball TV Grave is a sub-series of Beyond The TV Grave, taking a look at short-lived baseball-themed TV shows. This inaugural edition focuses on FOX’s Hardball, a baseball sitcom that aired just seven episodes in 1994 before being pulled from the schedule.
Background
When FOX announced their fall 1994 schedule, Hardball landed the best time slot imaginable for a sitcom: Sundays at 8:30 pm, sandwiched between The Simpsons and Married…with Children. The former finished the 1993-94 season as FOX’s highest-rated series, and the latter their #3 series. Hardball was co-created by Jeff Martin, a writer for The Simpsons who had left the series to focus on his new creation, and Kevin Curran, a writer for Married…with Children who had done the same. Martin had previously worked on (but did not write) The Simpsons’ classic baseball-themed episode Homer at the Bat.
Synopsis
At its core, Hardball focused on the struggling MLB team the Pioneers, including a mix of players, coaching staff, general management, and team ownership. In practice, Hardball struggled to find its voice. It started off primarily focusing on on-field dynamics, with the introduction of a new manager in Dann Florek’s (of Law & Order fame) ‘Happy’. Hardball proceeded to let viewers in more on the characters’ personal lives, still often tying their individual storylines into that of the team’s.
By the fourth episode, Hardball’s focus shifted again to address the elephant in the room: the ongoing real-life MLB strike. Hardball resolves the strike by the end of the episode, but in reality, the MLB strike that began that August would last until April 1995. This proved to be a challenge Hardball could not overcome.
Ratings & Cancellation
There are a myriad of reasons that led to Hardball’s early cancelation. The MLB strike was arguably one of them, as it’s impossible to semi-realistic satirical sitcom about an MLB team while the actual MLB is on strike with no end in sight. And while Hardball had been ordered to series and placed on the fall schedule before the strike began, negotiations began in early 1994 and tensions that led to the strike had been rising for years. From that perspective, the 1994-95 TV season was simply not the time to launch a baseball sitcom, even if it’s given the best time slot imaginable.
It didn’t help Hardball that said best time slot imaginable wasn’t as great in 1994-95 as it was the previous season. Both The Simpsons and Married…with Children slipped in the ratings, and while the latter sitcom held onto its third place ranking on FOX, the former slid from first to fourth. Still, that’s no excuse for Hardball to tie for 15th on the fourth network with a 7.4 Household rating. Its midseason replacement improved on its ratings, and even that got canceled. Ultimately, its seasonal average was slightly above FOX’s average, inexcusable for a series in such a prime time slot.
Ultimately, Hardball had a niche premise and lacked focus. It didn’t punch the same amount of laughs as its lead-in or lead-out, and really wasn’t all that compatible with them either. If Hardball was in a lower-priority time slot and the MLB wasn’t on strike, maybe it could’ve found an audience. But there was one other sign that Hardball may have been doomed from the start.
Aftermath
Unlike the vast majority of shows that get pulled from the schedule and aren’t available on any streaming service, Hardball actually has something of a legacy. Hardball gave Joe Rogan his first major acting credit. Rogan talked about the sitcom on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2017, and claimed FOX had little faith in the show’s creators to act as showrunners. The network brought in a separate showrunner, likely explaining the uneven tone after the pilot — the series premiere is arguably the show’s funniest episode. When a show doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be, it’s hard to find the size audience Hardball needed to survive.
While Hardball did not survive to the streaming era, all seven episodes that aired can be viewed on YouTube. The final two episodes produced, which never aired on FOX, are considered lost media.