You Can’t Be Serious(99)

During this period, NBC began the marketing rollout for its Thursday-night lineup. This was the world’s introduction to our show. The first interviews and write-ups about our existence started to run. We participated in long promo and press days with NBC’s personable marketing and publicity team. There were profiles in earned media like the New York Times and entertainment magazines, and appearances on Seth Meyers and Lilly Singh.

I am not an expert in the rapidly changing business of television, but I do know the fate of any broadcast show depends on its live ratings. And whether people watch is a complex mix of everything from time slot to audience saturation to marketing (you can’t watch a show you don’t know exists). So when I thought I was seeing far less paid media—billboards and commercials—for Sunnyside compared to the other shows in the Thursday Night Comedy Block, I shrugged it off and chalked it up to me being paranoid and overly proud and just looking for something to freak out about.



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Besides, I had something else to freak out about. Let’s talk about the Mets game. The initial phone call from my publicist went something like this: “Hey Kal, there’s an opportunity for you to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field to promote Sunnyside. Do you want to do it? It’ll be fun!” I immediately thought about two things: 1) piling into a rented school bus and going to Mets games with my dad and Cub Scout troop at the old Shea Stadium (Hell yeah, I’d love to throw out the first pitch. Nine-year-old me would love this!) and 2) getting picked last in gym class throughout middle school (Ha! You still can’t throw a baseball, dummy! Do not say yes to throwing out a first pitch in front of thousands of people at a baseball game, it’ll be embarrassing. You won’t make it over the plate, and then people will not want to watch your show. Twelve-year-old you would not be excited, he’d be horrified, because he knows what gym class is like, except this could be much worse because your awful throw will make it onto SportsCenter and go viral. Remember Carly Rae Jepsen’s terrible throw? 50 Cent’s botched toss? That was more than five years ago and those two still get railed for having the worst first pitches ever. The ridicule from this will never go away. Definitely say no!).

“Yes, definitely,” I said to the publicist, “I would love that!”

I realize most people can’t do what I did next, but it was critical that I not screw up this first pitch, so I texted a Major League Baseball player for advice. Chasen Shreve pitches for the Pittsburgh Pirates and had become a buddy through a promotional shoot I had done when he was with the Yankees a couple of years prior.



Was that a “you can’t throw a baseball, I would have picked you last in gym class” no-way hahahaha or was it a “that’s so cool worlds colliding” no-way hahahaha?



Practice, yes of course! It’s the athlete’s word for “rehearsal.” I had Romen quickly scour the internet for pitching coaches in Los Angeles and we landed on a place called Baseball Central in Culver City. I had three weeks to learn how to throw.

My coach turned out to be a tall, handsome baseball player named Zach who had recently graduated from Hawai‘i Pacific University.

“So, you’re throwing out a first pitch,” he said to break the ice. “When’s the last time you played baseball?”

“I guess I probably last threw a baseball in… 1992?”

“I was born in ’93.”

“Great!”

Our first session was predictably messy. We started off with some warm-ups that mostly seemed to consist of throwing balls of various sizes against a net, then some groin stretching, and a lot of moving my arms in different ways while turning my body in directions it doesn’t naturally move. “I don’t think I have whatever muscles you’re saying I should engage in order to turn this way,” I told Coach Zach.

“You’ll get there,” he encouraged, “it’ll just take a while.”

“I have like three weeks.”

“Oh. I can’t teach you to pitch in three weeks.”

What a thing for a coach to say! In booking these sessions, perhaps Romen neglected to state the obvious.

“So, here’s the deal, Zach. I’m here because I need to look like I can throw a perfect pitch, once. I don’t actually need to be able to build the muscles that will let me play baseball for a lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, that would be really nice. I’d end up looking like you and getting lots of cool Marvel movie jobs, but really I just have to walk on that field like a boss, confidently nod to the catcher, do that cool thing where you stand on one leg like a flamingo, and then send that beautiful ball into the catcher’s mitt.”

“Good job knowing ‘mitt.’?”

“Thanks.”

“The flamingo thing is called a wind-up.”

“Right.”

Coach Zach understood what I was getting at. “We’re just going to start throwing, then, but don’t worry about the wind-up. I want to make sure you’re getting these five-and-a-half-ounce balls sixty feet, six inches over the plate!” He first led me through some sort of strenuous leg exercise that made me angry at myself because it was hard. “It’s a first pitch,” I mumbled to him, “not a first kick.” In pitching, he explained, the power comes from your legs. That’s what gets the ball over home plate. “Your legs drive the velocity of the ball. I’m warming you up, let’s go.”