Last night, I saw that A League of Their Own was on Netflix. I tried to get my sister to watch it with me, but she just told me that she liked the high ones and called me a nag. (It makes sense if you’ve seen the movie.) So I rewatched it by myself and cried all over again.
In case you’re one of the two people who haven’t heard of this movie, A League of Their Own takes place during World War II. With professional baseball players either enlisting or getting drafted, people worry there might not be another season of baseball until the war ends. Candy-bar manufacturer Walter Harvey (played by director Penny Marshall’s brother, Garry) creates the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, with the requirement that the players not only know how to handle a bat but also look good in the impractical short skirts he expects them to wear while sliding into home. The movie follows the first season of the Rockford Peaches. Geena Davis plays Dottie, the catcher whose husband is serving overseas. Lori Petty plays Kit, the pitcher who struggles to hit high fastballs and who is also Dottie’s sister. Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna play two players from New York. Tom Hanks is Jimmy, the alcoholic former player turned manager who says, “There’s no crying in baseball!”
It may be heresy to admit it, but A League of Their Own is not my favorite baseball movie. (That would be Major League.) Most of the actresses, especially Geena Davis, are convincing as baseball players, and I love that the movie shone a light on the real-life AAGPBL. (Sixty former AAGPBL players appear in the movie.) But as a baseball fan, it’s always bothered me that the movie doesn’t really examine any of their games in depth. We know that Dottie is a good catcher, that Kit is a good pitcher, that Madonna can catch a baseball in her hat, and that Evelyn (Bitty Schram) cries when she gets yelled at, but we don’t learn much about the other players on the team and what they’re good at. The Peaches win games, but I would have liked to see more of how they won.
I still love A League of Their Own, though. The bonding between the players gets to me. They’re all from different parts of the country. Some of them are married and some of them are definitely single. But from the minute they’re selected to play in the AAGPBL, they form a family of their own. When one of them reveals that she’s never learned how to read, the players teach her. When Evelyn needs to bring her bratty problem child on the road, the team looks after him. When Jimmy makes Evelyn cry, the team rallies around Evelyn. Everyone remembers Jimmy saying there’s no crying in baseball, but they forget he got kicked out of the game afterward. (Jimmy eventually becomes a better coach.) When one player gets the telegram that her husband has been killed in the war, everyone cries. In the film’s epilogue, Evelyn’s son says that she was never happier than when she was playing for the Peaches, and I can understand why. The heart of the film is the relationship between Dottie and Kit. Even though you can guess from the start that Kit and Dottie are eventually going to end up on different teams and face each other in the big game, it’s still an emotional moment when they find themselves on opposite sides of the plate.
A League of Their Own is on Netflix, so watch it if you haven’t seen it before. Or, if you’re like me, rewatch it and try not to cry all over again when the former players reunite at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hurry up, though. It’s leaving on September 30th.
Through the Shattered Lens 