How can you not be romantic about baseball? The Chicago Cubs are taking that idea literally with Nine Innings to Love, a 17-part scripted vertical romantic comedy filmed at Wrigley Field and released through the team’s official TikTok account.
Created by Cubs Productions, the team’s in-house creative arm, the series follows Ava, an aspiring romance writer in a slump, and David, her sweet but romance-shy seatmate in the Budweiser Bleachers. Over the course of one Cubs game, Ava sets out to help David find a summer fling before the final out — only to discover the story she’s been looking for may be sitting right next to her.
The entire series premiered September 4 and was built specifically for short-form vertical viewing, blending baseball, BookTok culture and classic rom-com beats into something designed to reach Gen Z and millennial audiences who may not already be following the team.
“Nine Innings to Love celebrates the magic of a summertime Cubs game through a bite-sized, episodic format,” Cubs executive vice president of marketing and communications Jen Martindale said when the project was announced. She described the concept as a combination of baseball, BookTok fandom and “the vibes of a classic rom-com” that could only happen in the Wrigley Field bleachers.
That setting is more than convenient production design.
The Cubs say the series was inspired by the very real phenomenon of fans meeting — and sometimes falling in love — in the bleachers. That mythology has been part of Wrigley culture for years. In 2015, the team even asked fans to share stories about meeting spouses and partners in the bleachers, noting that Cubs owner Tom Ricketts had done the same.
And the bleachers themselves are uniquely suited to the premise.
Unlike much of Wrigley Field, the Budweiser Bleachers are general admission, meaning fans don’t know exactly who will wind up beside them until they sit down. The Cubs have long promoted the section as one of the ballpark’s most social environments, a place where strangers regularly meet, mingle and become part of the experience.
That unpredictability became the creative engine.
Directed by Adam Sobel, Nine Innings to Love stars Veronica Garrubbo as Ava and Sid Kutikkad as David. The supporting cast includes Angelina Dávila, Kevin Kantor, Shelby Brown and Cole Steeves. Cubs Productions developed the project with Coyote Sun Productions.
The structure borrows heavily from familiar romantic-comedy language — the meet-cute, the makeover, the awkward coaching, the ex, the realization that the obvious match may have been there all along — but compresses those beats into a mobile-first format where every episode has to earn the next swipe.
That makes Nine Innings to Love interesting beyond the Cubs. Watch Episode One below:
Sports teams have spent years building social channels around highlights, player personalities, behind-the-scenes footage and fan culture. The Cubs are taking a different swing: using the team, stadium and mythology of Wrigley Field as the raw material for an original scripted story.
In other words, the Cubs aren’t simply promoting a baseball game.
They’re producing entertainment. That distinction matters at a moment when vertical microdramas are growing quickly and brands are increasingly experimenting with serialized storytelling designed specifically for phones. Instead of buying its way into somebody else’s show, the Cubs already own the setting, the audience and the distribution channel.
Wrigley Field becomes the backlot.
The bleachers become the meet-cute.
And the Cubs become the studio.
The concept also plays naturally into the mythology surrounding the Friendly Confines.
Wrigley Field has always sold something larger than nine innings of baseball. It sells summer afternoons, ivy-covered walls, neighborhood bars, friendships, family traditions and the possibility that something memorable might happen before the last out.
That is exactly the kind of emotional territory romantic comedies live in.
Nine Innings to Love simply turns it into a plot.
For the Cubs, the potential payoff is reaching viewers who might never stop scrolling for a pitching highlight but will stop for a love story.
And if those viewers eventually become Cubs fans?
Even better.
After all, baseball has always been about hope.
Sometimes it’s hope for a ninth-inning rally.
Sometimes it’s hope that the person sitting next to you in the bleachers might be worth sticking around for.
