Katie Nolan is standing in a narrow cage at Chelsea Piers, holding an aluminum bat. Her long hair is tucked into a ratty helmet, and shes wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt. A pitching machine is set at 40 miles per hour, and softballs are whizzing by inches from her nose. Im trying to cheer her on above the whir of the machine, but as it turns out, Nolan doesnt need encouragement. The Fox Sports 1 host played softball as a kid, and she makes solid contact with practically every pitch. This is so fun, she exclaims. Its totally reawakening my love of softball. Im supposed to hit, too, but Ive worn open-toe shoes, and a Chelsea Piers employee is hesitant about letting me enter the batting cage.

Nolan has taken a break from shooting her weekly sports-comedy show, Garbage Time, to swing a bat with me. Its a big day in the sports-media world: A few hours earlier, ESPN announced it would not renew the contract of columnist and Grantland founder Bill Simmons. The news is a shock to Nolan, who knows Simmons well, and when we got here a moment ago, she fired off a text to make sure he was okay. He does such a good job of curating smart-ass voices, Nolan says. She smiles. And I dont just say that because he tried to hire me.

Four years ago, Nolan was a 23-year-old Hofstra grad, bartending at night and living in her grandmothers condo in Massachusetts; now she is a writer and producer, and the host, of Garbage Time, a show roughly in the Jon Stewart format that airs Sunday nights on Fox Sports 1. Its not a show full of stats, though she knows her stuff. Instead, its about jokes and tone and, most of all, irreverence. The moment that may have established her was an episode in April, when she did a whole segment about a web post titled How to Land a Husband at the Masters, which had appeared on Fox Sports own site. She tore it apart with lines like It is very easy to try to type cosmopolitan.com and accidentally type foxsports.com, if you just got your nails done.

Off the air, Nolan curses a lot and laughs loudly. On Twitter, where shes the least filtered, she calls out trolls and speaks her mind. More important, she is not afraid to be the bitch on a rampage, as she puts it, in order to make Garbage Time better. I already do a lot of stuff that I dont think the male-dominated sports world is really a huge fan of, and I try to sneak it in, she says. Its sort of like when youre arguing with an idiot not to call men idiots and you have to make them think something was their idea? I do a lot of that. Even, sometimes, with her bosses: It can either be the show they want or the show you want, and you have to fight, Nolan says. And its a lot of fighting.

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