Looks like more television production is about to start heading to San Diego this fall. This week FOX Television picked up the series Pitch which filmed its pilot episode in America’s Finest City at Petco Park and other iconic locations around the city.
Pitch is expected to continue to use San Diego as a major location for shooting, making use of Petco Park when the San Diego Padres aren’t swinging. The pilot shot in San Diego is just one of eleven in California this year thanks in part to the new $330 million-a-year California tax credit.
The show’s partnership with Major League Baseball is a first for and allows it to use MLB names, uniforms, and logos. In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Dan Fogelman, the writer and executive producer of “Pitch,” talked about the amazing partnership between the show and MLB and the possibilities that could occur since the 2016 All-Star game is taking place in San Diego.
We have all the guys at Fox Sports — and there are so many of them [involved]. MLB reads our scripts and they’ve been really great. C.J. [Nitkowski] reads the script. We have 17 guys on set during the pilot and one during production gave an ad-lib to an umpire coming out to the mound who wanted to change the verbiage.
Fox has the All-Star game this season and it’s taking place in San Diego so it’s kind of kismet. Obviously that feels like a great place to see a lot of people like that — if we’re able to pull it off.
Pitch, from 20th Century Fox, follows a young female pitcher, played by Kylie Bunbury, as the first woman to play in the major leagues, playing for the San Diego Padres. The show follows the struggles that come with breaking gender barriers in an all-male sports. It will also expolre the relationships that develop betweek her and her teammates, one member in particular, Mike Lawson, played by Saved By the Bell alumn Mark Paul Gosselaar. Lawson is the Padres catcher, and a ladies man on and off the field, not quite sure what to do with the spark that begins to develop between him and Bunberry’s character.