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 seventh edition focuses on CBS’s Clubhouse, a baseball drama that was pulled from the fall 2004 schedule after airing just five episodes.
Background
With legal drama The Guardian canceled after three seasons in spring 2004, a spot opened up on CBS’s Tuesday schedule. The Guardian was tasked with airing between new JAG spinoff Navy: NCIS, and the fifth season of fellow legal drama Judging Amy. While NCIS and Judging Amy were renewed, neither did particularly well, tying for 17th out of 27 programs on CBS in the 2003-04 TV season (The Guardian came in 20th). Instead of making any fundamental changes to their struggling Tuesday nights, CBS opted to keep NCIS and Judging Amy in their respective time slots, premiering new baseball drama Clubhouse at 9 pm. Airing in between a military drama and a legal drama, Clubhouse was the first ever creation from Daniel Cerone to be ordered to series. Despite the odd scheduling, the series was highly anticipated by CBS and received ample marketing. It had Mel Gibson, Aaron Spelling, and E. Duke Vincent attached as executive producers. In the lead actor role was a teenage Jeremy Sumpter, best known for his lead role in 2003’s financial failure Peter Pan movie.
Synopsis
Clubhouse focuses on Pete Young, a teenager who secretly gets a job as a batboy for the MLB team the New York Empires. He has to balance his new job and the moral challenges that come with it with everything else in his life. These people includes his overbearing mother, his rebellious older sister, his best friend, and the nun who serves as principal at the Catholic school both he and his sister attend. In the pilot, Pete finds himself attempting to take the fall for what would be a steroid scandal for a star player, something that would get him sent to prison. In another episode, when another player gets accused of using a corked bat, Pete sneaks around to switch out the bats before the bat used could be fully inspected. In yet another episode, he and the fellow new batboy get hazed by veteran batboys from both their own team and Boston’s team. This all comes as he tries to balance his slipping grades at school, at one point paying someone to write a paper for him.
The basis for Clubhouse came from Matthew McGough’s real life experiences as a former batboy for the New York Yankees in 1992 and 1993. The problem is, Clubhouse was set in 2004. McGough’s tenure as a batboy took place in what was considered the ‘pre-steroid era’, whereas by 2004, the MLB was at the tail end of it. Confirmed corked bats were a rarity, though the infamous Sammy Sosa case came just a season prior to the show’s premiere. Now, I’m not trying to doubt McGough’s experiences in the least, but Pete Young’s role in Clubhouse played out in a much more exaggerated manner than one would typically expect from a batboy. Arguably, the series would have been better suited as a comedy than a drama.
Ratings & Cancellation
Clubhouse premiered in a special time slot on Sunday, September 26, 2004. It could only muster a 6.0 Household rating in between 60 Minutes’ 7.5 and CBS Sunday Movie’s 9.6, finishing in a distant second place in its time slot. Two nights later was the time slot premiere, where it rose to a 7.0 Household rating and gained over a million viewers. While this made the special Sunday premiere look like a mistake, it was still no victory; Clubhouse finished behind both NCIS and Judging Amy, though it did nearly win its time slot. NCIS was looking much stronger than it had in its inaugural season (albeit still not the gigantic hit it eventually grew to be), and Clubhouse just couldn’t keep up.
Clubhouse’s scheduling only got worse from there. Just one week after its time slot premiere, it was preempted for the 2004 Vice Presidential debate. It returned the week after, only to go head-to-head with Game 1 of the ALCS between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Needless to say, ratings plummeted upon the return. NCIS and Judging Amy held up just fine, but Clubhouse sunk to a 5.9 Household rating.
The following week, there were once again two baseball programs airing opposite each other on Tuesday nights. Viewers could watch the drama featuring outrageous plot lines like an injured All-Star pitcher taking the mound with blood filling up his sock, an All-Star batter knocking a ball out of a pitcher’s glove while running the bases, and the mayor of New York City calling in NYPD officers to attend to the field in full riot gear, as New York continues to vie for a spot in the World Series after losing two extra innings games in a row. Or, they could watch Clubhouse on CBS and see if Pete can convince guest star Larry King’s team owner to not trade the player he is closest to. Viewers chose the ALCS, and Clubhouse sunk even lower to an astoundingly low 4.9 Household rating, losing nearly half of its lead-in.
Had Clubhouse stayed on the Tuesday schedule past that disastrous airing, it would have had to air directly against Game 1 of the World Series, and then be preempted by coverage of the 2004 presidential election. Seeing the writing on the wall, CBS moved Clubhouse to Saturdays at 8 pm, scheduling the next episode for November 6 after the World Series and election were over. While typically a burn-off time slot, there was still a glimmer of hope for the baseball drama as it received an order for two additional scripts on November 1. However, notching just a 3.0 Household rating in its first Saturday airing, Clubhouse was subsequently pulled from the schedule.
The remaining six unaired episodes were eventually aired over the following summer on Mark Cuban’s relatively new cable network HDNet, now known as AXS TV. Clubhouse finished its five-episode run on CBS airing on three different nights, and having never aired more than two weeks in a row. It averaged a 2.1 Adults 18-49 rating for the season, tying for 23rd place on CBS out of 30 programs.
Clubhouse wasn’t a terribly-reviewed show, which is better than most shows that get pulled after five episodes can say. It holds a 7.2 rating on IMDb, and received a net positive review on The Washington Post the day before it premiered. But beyond not being able to compete with the real deal, Clubhouse had three fundamental issues. First, a baseball scripted series had never worked on broadcast television, both as a comedy or a drama. Second, as mentioned, Clubhouse takes McGough’s experiences in New York from the early 90s, but the series is set in the modern day (2004). Notwithstanding some of the song choices in the pilot, Clubhouse feels better suited for the 90s than to be set in a post-9/11 New York. Third, there’s really no obvious time slot where a baseball drama like Clubhouse would have worked. NCIS and Judging Amy held up just fine (for their standards) against the ALCS; a show that can’t do the same may just be destined to fail. Best to do so behind a still-growing NCIS and what turned out to be the final season of Judging Amy instead of risk hurting Survivor or CSI.
Aftermath
Clubhouse has largely been forgotten since its cancelation. It is not available to stream on any of the streamers, nor can the series be purchased and downloaded. The full series is available to stream on Internet Archive, where it has over 76,000 views.
Matthew McGough published a book based on his experiences in 2007. Daniel Cerone would go on to create the Canadian drama Motive, which also aired on ABC for four summer seasons, as well as the short-lived NBC drama Constantine. He would also become a showrunner on series like Dexter, The Blacklist, and The Mentalist. Jeremy Sumpter has spent the past 20 years mostly in film, but did have a recurring role on fellow sports drama Friday Night Lights.
Clubhouse was the first baseball drama to air on broadcast television in over 20 years, since NBC’s Bay City Blues. It would be another 12 years before anyone tried again, with FOX’s Pitch.