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 sixth edition focuses on ABC’s Back In The Game, a baseball sitcom which produced 13 episodes for the 2013-14 TV season. Just six of those episodes aired prior to the announcement of its cancelation, and it was pulled from the schedule following the tenth airing.
Background
ABC had spent the four seasons leading up to their 2013-14 TV season slowly but surely starting to rebuild their once-barren comedy department. By the end of the 2012-13 TV season, ABC had a gigantic hit in Modern Family airing Wednesdays at 9 pm, and a smaller-scale success in fellow family comedy The Middle at 8 pm. Most other ratings successes in ABC’s comedy department at that point proved to be short-lived, with shows like Cougar Town, Don’t Trust The B In Apartment 23, and Happy Endings propped up by Modern Family on Wednesdays one season only to flop on Tuesdays the next.
ABC arguably did not have the depth in their comedy department to stick with their eight-comedy lineup in fall 2013, yet they did just that. Back In The Game was one of four new comedies to premiere on the network’s fall 2013 schedule, and one of eight new scripted shows overall. Back In The Game landed the Wednesdays at 8:30 pm time slot, with returning family comedy The Neighbors moving to Fridays and new family comedies The Goldbergs and Trophy Wife paired up on Tuesdays. There were a lot of questionable scheduling decisions on ABC’s fall 2013 schedule, and this was certainly one of them.
Synopsis
While Back In The Game was not a family comedy in the same way as Modern Family, The Middle, The Neighbors, The Goldbergs, or Trophy Wife, there was still a family dynamic present. The sitcom follows a newly divorced single mother, Maggie Lawson’s Terry Gannon, Jr. who moves back in with her estranged father, James Caan’s “Cannon” Gannon. Terry is a former collegiate All Star softball player who has since distanced herself from the sport after a lost scholarship, a child, and a failed marriage. Cannon is former minor league baseball manager, currently notorious for being culturally stuck in the past and for his love of beer. Terry’s son, Danny, tries and fails to make the local Little League team to impress his school crush, lacking his mother’s skill and knowledge of the sport. After convincing from Cannon and funding from a wealthy parent, Terry takes on the role of coach for a new baseball team consisting of Danny and all the other misfit kids who didn’t make any of the existing Little League teams. Terry soon finds she needs the help of her father to coach the new team of misfits, bringing him on as an assistant coach. Terry and Cannon make an enemy out of league manager Dick, and Danny makes an enemy out of his son.
In what plays out on the baseball diamond as a modern-day retelling of the Bad News Bears, Cannon quickly takes over as the de facto manager of the team. Under his unique leadership style reminiscent of the Bears’ Buttermaker, the kids learn the fundamentals of baseball while also gaining respect for Cannon. Unlike Buttermaker, Cannon exists in 2013 and finds himself getting into trouble with his daughter and the league for some of his language and behavior — even if it’s the only thing the kids respond to.
Ratings & Cancellation
Back In The Game premiered with promise, scoring a 2.2 rating Live + Same Day in the Adults 18-49 demo after The Middle’s 2.5. Ratings declined from there though, sitting in the high 1s for episodes 2 through 7 and the mid 1s for episodes 8 through 10. While it held fairly well from The Middle for its first three episodes, it proved to be a poor fit for its time slot on the fourth episode. This time, it had a 3.1 rating from Toy Story of Terror for a lead-in, and only rose a single tenth from the previous week to a 1.9 rating. This at least proved its audience to be independent of that of its lead-in.
ABC may have taken notice to Back In The Game’s initial lead-in independence, as they ordered two additional scripts in between the airing of the fourth and fifth episodes. Yet, Back In The Game went from this somewhat-encouraging news to effectively canceled within just over a week. 10 days after it was announced ABC had ordered the scripts, they had announced they were capping the season at 13 episodes, while ordering more episodes of the other three new fall comedies. The third season of Suburgatory, which was being held for midseason, would replace Back In The Game, while new series Mixology would later replace Super Fun Night at 9:30.
A little over a month later, Back In The Game was pulled from the schedule after airing its tenth episode. The airing notched a 1.5 rating out of The Middle’s 2.0. Comparatively, fellow new sitcom Super Fun Night notched a 1.8 out of Modern Family’s 3.5; The Goldbergs a 1.6 rating out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s 2.1; and Trophy Wife a 1.2 rating out of The Goldbergs. Back In The Game was by far the most-viewed series in Live + Same Day that week of the four. Overall for the season, Back In The Game ranked 16th on ABC in Live + 7 with a 2.565 rating; Super Fun Night ranked 12th, The Middle 13th, The Goldbergs 14th, Suburgatory 21st, and Trophy Wife 25th out of 37 original programs.
Back In The Game was no Modern Family or even The Middle, but also is not the type of show that typically gets pulled. Its early demise arguably comes down to favoritism, lack of scheduling space, and simply being a poor fit for ABC’s increasing shift to their brand of family comedies. ABC really wanted to find an in-house produced comedy to be their next hit, and Back In The Game was owned by a then-unowned 20th Century Fox Television. This type of ownership favoritism gave Trophy Wife and The Neighbors full seasons despite abysmally low ratings. The network also needed a time slot for Suburgatory, and clearly saw potential in The Goldbergs as it better fit their growing family comedy brand. Back In The Game was the odd show out, and got punished for it. In retrospect, ABC probably would have been better off not even ordering it to series, and airing The Goldbergs in the Wednesdays at 8:30 time slot from the get go. Back In The Game really did no worse than previous time slot occupant The Neighbors, which as an owned family comedy was renewed for a second season.
ABC opted not to burn off the final three episodes of Back In The Game on their linear schedule. Instead, they were released on ABC’s website in February. ABC’s summer Saturday schedule was already packed with the second season of Bet on Your Baby, the first and only season of Sing Your Face Off, a burnoff of The Assets, and co-produced six-season summer series Rookie Blue.
Aftermath
Back In The Game is no longer available to stream on a streaming service, but can be purchased through Apple TV, Fandago, or Amazon. The pilot has survived online, as well as the eleventh episode. Episodes four and eight are also available for free if you speak Dutch.
The creators and leads of Back In The Game have run into some pretty bad luck both with this show and after it ended. Maggie Lawson was married to her on-screen nemesis, Ben Koldyke, for 18 months before filing for divorce. Creators Mark and Robb Cullen went on to create NBC’s short-lived summer sitcom Mr. Robinson, another series that did just-OK but could have lasted a bit longer than it did. Like ABC and The Goldbergs, NBC chose their more well-received but similarly-rated The Carmichael Show over it. Back In The Game would become James Caan’s final starring role in a TV series, but worked on movies and TV films up until his passing in 2022. Griffin Gluck, who played Danny, took on main roles in short-lived series Red Band Society, American Vandal, Locke & Key, and Cruel Summer, many of which were considered to either not live up to their expectations or be canceled too soon. Ben Koldyke became a series regular on the aforementioned Mr. Robinson.