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 third edition focuses on ABC’s A Whole New Ballgame, which aired seven episodes in 1995 before being pulled from the schedule.
Background
In fall 1994, ABC chose to replace their 8 pm newsmagazine Day One with a comedy hour. The veteran football sitcom Coach, which ranked fourth on ABC and sixth overall, would move from its cushy post-Roseanne time slot to Mondays at 8 pm for its seventh season. It would be followed by the new workplace sitcom Blue Skies at 8:30. Monday Night Football, which finished the 1993-94 season as the #8 program on television, would continue to air at 9 pm in the fall, followed by a movie in the winter and spring.
Despite being sandwiched between two of the highest-rated shows of the 1993-94 TV season, Blue Skies was a flop, getting pulled from the schedule after seven episodes. It certainly didn’t help that Coach lost 40% of its audience and failed to rate within the top 50 programs. Blue Skies would be temporarily replaced by Coach reruns, with midseason replacement A Whole New Ballgame taking over in January 1995. It premiered on January 9, alongside the return of The ABC Monday Night Movie — this time, a drama about a woman who is attempting to save her teenage daughter after the latter was captured by a prostitution ring.
A Whole New Ballgame stars Corbin Bensen in the leading role. Bernsen was best known on the small screen for his starring role on L.A. Law, which had wrapped its eight-season run the prior season. However, he likely landed the role through his work as third baseman Roger Dorn in the 1989 blockbuster baseball movie Major League and its sequel, spring 1994’s Major League II.
Synopsis
On A Whole New Ballgame, Corbin Bernsen played Brett Sooner, a self-centered MLB player who gets a job as a sports analyst at a local TV station in the wake of the MLB strike. Among the supporting cast of A Whole New Ballgame was Julia Campbell as Meg O’Donnell, the uptight station manager; Richard King as Dwight King, the quirky sales manager who wants to shift the local newscast’s focus to Brett Sooner; and Stephen Tobolowsky’s Dr. Warner Bakerfield, a nerdy, gaffe-prone weatherman. All three also co-starred in previous time slot occupant, Blue Skies. Both Blue Skies and A Whole New Ballgame were co-created by John Peaslee and Judd Pilot, who wrote and produced for lead-in Coach.
The sitcom follows Corbin Bernsen’s Brett Sooner as he navigates his new life at the local TV station. He finds his traditional ballpark antics, like putting a match in someone’s shoe and setting it on fire, to not translate well to the workplace. In the second episode, he takes a sexual interest in his boss, who does not reciprocate the interest. Sooner is portrayed as someone who isn’t really as good as he thinks he is, whether it comes to his job, his personal life, or his devotion to baseball during the strike.
Ratings & Cancellation
A Whole New Ballgame premiered with promise, scoring an 11.1 Household rating in between Coach’s 11.3 and the 9 pm movie’s 11.5. That was a substantial improvement to the 7s Blue Skies was receiving in the fall. It came in second place in its time slot, ahead of the NBC sitcom hour but behind CBS’s. What happened after secured A Whole New Ballgame’s early demise.
A Whole New Ballgame’s competition increased considerably in its second week on the air. Not only did it have to compete with two sitcoms in CBS’s popular Dave’s World and NBC’s less-popular Blossom, it also had increased competition from FOX with a two-hour Melrose Place special skyrocketing from the previous airing. Most notably, A Whole New Ballgame’s second airing coincided with the premiere of new network UPN, and with it, Star Trek: Voyager. The UPN series premiered surprisingly strong, nearly winning the hour and well-outpacing ABC’s new sitcom, which shed over a quarter of its premiere audience and stood out as a weak link. A Whole New Ballgame’s failure can hardly be blamed solely on the new competition from UPN, though, as the sitcom continued to decline even as Star Trek: Voyager did the same. At its lowest, A Whole New Ballgame notched just a 6.3 rating, easily coming in fifth place in its time slot.
At the time of its cancelation, A Whole New Ballgame averaged a 7.8 rating, coming in 32th place on ABC out of 36 programs. While the second-lowest-rated comedy on ABC of the season, A Whole New Ballgame still earned the distinction of out-rating Blue Skies. It also was not the lowest-rated baseball sitcom of the season; that honor would go to FOX’s Hardball. Despite these mini-accomplishments, the ratings as a whole made this an expected cancelation.
Aftermath
ABC ditched the comedy hour the following season, opting to move Coach back to the signature Tuesday lineup. A Whole New Ballgame has been largely forgotten about, and is not available on any streaming service. A couple episodes, alongside some promos, have survived on YouTube.