Rarely do my interests in movies and reality television collide, but they did with the 2015 film Pitching Love and Catching Faith. Starring Vanderpump Rules cast member LaLa Kent, the movie follows two community college athletes who navigate a courtship shaped by religiously motivated chastity. The film, produced by Star Mountain Pictures and written and directed by Randy and Rebecca Sternberg, has divided viewers: it holds low ratings on retail and film databases and has attracted attention largely for its moral message and unconventional execution.
Pitching Love and Catching Faith began life under the title Romance in the Outfield. Its promotional copy frames a familiar romantic premise: Heather, an accomplished and competitive softball player, and Tyler, a talented baseball player who refrains from kissing, engage in a dance of attraction, miscommunication and competing priorities. The film promises a light-hearted chase of cat-and-mouse ploys that lead to unexpected consequences for both characters.
“Heather an attractive, competitive, softball player, sweet and sassy—who is used to winning…but with guys she tends to strike out once they find out she’s not their type. He’s a competitive baseball player, charming, and saintly, who hasn’t kissed… So what happens when Heather tries to get his first kiss, and Tyler tries to win her heart to help launch his baseball career? It results in a head-on competition igniting a series of light-hearted ploys of cat-and-mouse chase that will keep interested to the end. To top it off falling in love wasn’t part of their plan…so now Tyler must choose between his dream, and Heather. And she must choose between love, and loneliness.”
The film is clearly built around a central tension—will they or won’t they kiss—but the execution makes that tension feel thin. Dialogue often explains motivations rather than dramatizing them, and the film relies on repetitive beats and awkward editing choices that undermine pacing and clarity. Where subtext should live, the screenplay instead opts for vague exposition: characters reference beliefs and moral constraints without the film ever fully committing to showing why those beliefs matter or how they affect choices in a believable way.
One persistent problem is the disconnect between the premise and the on-screen life of sport. The characters are athletes, yet the movie gives us only a handful of brief practice shots. Games and athletic competition are treated more as props than as narrative drivers. If baseball and softball are intended to be meaningful metaphors, the film seldom shows how the sport shapes relationships or choices; instead, sequences at fields and batting cages feel perfunctory.
Performances are uneven. LaLa Kent gives moments where her natural presence seems to surface, and she often reads as the most grounded figure on screen. Her character, Heather, is written as a successful softball player who paradoxically is treated as morally suspect for her flirtation and independence. Tyler, portrayed as a chaste, principled young man, comes across inconsistently. At times he behaves like a principled, reserved protagonist; at others he displays rude, performative masculinity that clashes with the film’s idealized, faith-centered intentions. The movie never fully explains Tyler’s position or the beliefs that guide him beyond a handful of references to family and religion, which leaves both characters’ arcs feeling underdeveloped.
Editing and sound design further complicate the viewing experience. The score frequently punctuates scenes in ways that feel tonally off, and the film’s transitions—jumps between locations and timeframes—are often confusing. Small continuity details, such as costume changes, repeated shots and inexplicable cutaways to empty locations, suggest production limitations and a lack of rigorous post-production oversight. These choices distract from the story rather than supporting it.
Structurally the film leans heavily on standard moral-recovery tropes: purity rings, religious commitment, and the idea that physical restraint equals virtue. When the screenplay does attempt conflict—exes, miscommunications, or a baseball scout’s interest—it rarely develops those threads to satisfying conclusions. The subplot that Tyler’s prospects as an athlete might depend on his public image with women is introduced but never coherently integrated into the characters’ emotional stakes. That absence weakens the promised “choice” between career and love, and the final resolution feels more like a shorthand moral tidy-up than a graceful payoff of narrative investment.
There are, however, moments of interesting instinct. The opening softball montage contains some effective, tightly framed shots that indicate a capacity for strong visual storytelling. LaLa Kent’s more authentic moments and a handful of well-paced close-ups hint at what a clearer script and more disciplined editing could have achieved. Unfortunately, those promising moments are too rare to rescue the film’s overall disjointed tone.
The film’s portrayal of gender and faith is worth noting because it defines much of the story’s conflict. Heather is often framed as the temptress while Tyler is framed as saintly, and the film rarely interrogates those roles. This binary reduces complex emotional choices to moralistic signposts: a purity ring can externalize restraint, and the female lead’s desires are frequently treated as evidence of weakness rather than agency. For viewers interested in how religious convictions play out in romantic drama, the film opens the topic but does not explore it with nuance.
Pitching Love and Catching Faith works best as an example of earnest independent filmmaking with a distinct worldview and limited resources. It is uneven, sometimes unintentionally comic, and often oblique about its own intentions. For viewers who enjoy faith-based romantic dramas, or who appreciate films that can be critiqued for their awkward choices and mismatched tone, it is a curious watch. For others seeking a polished sports romance or a precise examination of faith and relationships, the film’s thin character development and inconsistent execution will likely frustrate.
Ultimately, the movie is memorable less for triumphant storytelling than for its idiosyncrasies: uneven performances, a mismatch between premise and execution, and a moral framework that is asserted but not fully dramatized. It’s a film that sparks questions about how to portray religious conviction on screen and how to marry sports drama with intimate romantic stakes—questions that the Sternbergs raise but don’t entirely answer.
Tyler and Heather.
Also the catcher is cheesing, she needs to take this montage seriously!
Who are these people?
The film’s strengths are limited but noticeable: LaLa Kent’s natural presence, a handful of effective visual moments, and a clear thematic focus on faith and chastity. Its weaknesses—awkward editing, underwritten character motivations, uneven acting, and a tendency toward moral shorthand—mean that Pitching Love and Catching Faith will likely be more interesting to viewers who enjoy dissecting imperfect independent films than to those seeking a polished romantic sports drama.