The IFC series Brockmire, for those unfamiliar with the baseball-centric sitcom, is a biting portrait of the titular Jim Brockmire, a former big league broadcaster whose on-air meltdown a decade earlier condemned him to a bleak occupational exile from which he has emerged to accept the PA-announcer gig for a minor league squad that features a wealthy but washed-up Japanese pitcher, a 400-pound pinch hitter nicknamed Fatty Boombalatty and a third baseman with 13 kids.
Got that? It’s simple, really. Brockmire, which stars Hank Azaria as the hard-drinking broadcaster, is an unyielding depiction of a complicated guy whose unlikely return to The Show must begin in a dying Pennsylvania town.
Call it the American Dream gone sideways, with baseball as its truth.
Source: John Paschal, The Hardball Times
The rest of the piece analyzes the first eight episodes that comprised the first season.