Cincinnati is Midwest America, and what is big here is baseball. I do not remember ever seeing a series on baseball. So I thought about an angle using the triple-A team for the Cincinnati Reds. It could be a situation comedy with serious cultural issues to deal with, such as health care, education, housing and other very controversial political topics. Most guys in triple-A baseball never make it to “the bigs” or “the show”, but most of them are also happy to be able to make a living playing baseball. Many of them have families and they are away from home low. It’s an all-American kind of topic. What is difficult is that they really cannot play much past the age of forty, so they have to prepare to change their work. They either become coaches for their team or other local teams, local schools or they have to find something else to do. Some go back to school before they get too old.
The comedy can deal with things they do, stuff that gets the single guys in trouble and family complications. We can see it from either the point of view of one or more of the players or from the point of view of the manager, or maybe a little of both. One character could be a guy who has gone back to school part-time and how he manages to study. Even the managers of these teams are middle class. They will never get rich either unless they win the lottery. They all work hard to have a winning season.
The sets could be just a few: the locker room, home of one married player, a local pub that serves food, the manager’s house, the team bus and the ballpark. None of these is expensive to create, and only the ballpark requires actual space.
The characters could include the manager, the pitching coach, the hitting coach, a scout or two, the bus driver, the pub owner-operator, a former team member who is not a sportscaster, the waitress, the cook (the pub owner’s wife), the team members and some family members of all of these. The regulars would be a few of the players who live close together and a group of the single players who live near each other. The other players could be played by extras and some crowds at the ballpark would use extras.
The storylines would include problems with equipment, financing, helping the guy who has a chance to go to the big time, family management, promoting the team locally, maybe some problems for the guy who is studying, hiding injuries, planning for next season, planning for retirement from baseball, problems players are having, travel problems, staying sane on long bus rides (the student would have an advantage), getting the attention of scouts, strategy and other very ordinary, but funny, daily family problems. One player should have a pregnant wife. Another one might be getting married.
This would draw a big audience as long as the situations and jokes are funny. Many people love baseball and genre humor would really please them. Others like comedy and it does not matter if the main character is a doctor, a psychiatrist, a talk show host or a pitcher. What matters is good middle-class humor. After all, the upper class really is not the target audience, even if they watch television. The target audience is middle-class working people, many of whom dreamed of playing sports or becoming stars. The rest of the audience are young people in high school or college with dreams and older people who remember the heyday of baseball when a family could afford to go to a big-league game. Triple-A leagues are getting more attendance since a day at the big league stadium for a family of four is more than $150 now.
It should have a pilot of 90 minutes which starts with a guy coming back down from the big leagues because he could not take the pressure, another guy working like mad to stay in shape because he has a chance, and one guy leaving the team for a different kind of work as a sportscaster. This means that the new guy will be promoted from AA and this means fun and games to initiate the newbie. It might be good to end the pilot with the guy who failed to make it back for a second chance. During the season he might some around now and then to practice with the guys. He thinks it does them good to see how he is doing. It actually does him good to know there is a place to go if he decides he cannot make it in the Reds organization.