A League of Their Own

For this year’s “Independence Day Movie Reviews,” I decided to review one of my favorite sports movies, “A League of Their Own,” released in 1992.

Roger Ebert started of his review by saying, “Until seeing Penny Marshall's "A League of Their Own," I had no idea that an organization named the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League ever flourished in this country, even though I was 12 when it closed up shop, and therefore of an age to collect Bob Feller and Robin Roberts baseball cards and listen to the Cardinals on the radio.” The league was founded in 1943, when it shortly looked like that men’s baseball would be a loss of the war, and once the soldiers returned home it’s a question the league survived until 1954. Then it was committed to forgetfulness. History is written by the winners.

At the time, it looked like the women’s league might mean the financial rescue of the major league baseball franchises and their owners. The movie tells of a Chicago candy-bar magnate in place of the Wrigleys and shows his agents looking around the countryside for women who could play ball. In a country are of Oregon, the scout (Jon Lovitz) finds two sisters, Dottie and Kit (Geena Davis and Lori Petty), one who can catch and hit, the other who can throw but is weak against high, fast balls. He brings them back to Chicago for tryouts with a lot of other candidates, including would-be team members played by Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell and Megan Cavanaugh.

A coach is needed for the team, which is based in Rockford. The owner (Garry Marshall) hires Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), a onetime home-run player whose alcoholism ruined his career and left him without predictions. For the first few weeks of the season, Dugan can hardly focus on the field, but then he starts to take an interest in his team. By the end of the season, Rockford is in the world Series against Racine (not some great success, since there are only four teams in the league).

“A League of Their Own” follows many of the famous formulas of sports movies, and has a nice variety of stock characters (the plain girl who gains confidence, the hasty girl with the heart of gold, the jealous sisters), but it has another level that’s a lot more interesting.

After years of committing the image of the quiet little woman who sat at home caring for her significant other, American society suddenly found that it needed women who were capable to do hard, professional work during World War II. Rosie the Riveter became a national symbol, Hollywood threw out the romance scripts and started making movies about strong, independent women, and it was seen that women could actually surpass at professional sports.

The movie remembers this time from the present. It starts with Dottie Hinson, now older, taking a trip to Cooperstown for reunions honoring the women’s league. What we see about Dottie is that she never took women’s baseball very seriously. She was the best player of her time, however, in her thoughts, her was simply on hold until her husband, played by Bill Pullman, came back from the war.

Dugan, the coach, tells her she shines when she plays baseball – that something comes over her. However, she doesn’t seem to notice.

This uncertainty about a woman’s role is probably in the movie because it was directed by a woman, Penny Marshall. A man might have thought that these women knew how all-important baseball was.

Marshall shows her women characters in a fight between new images and old values, and so her movie is about change – about how it felt as a woman suddenly to have new duties and freedom.

Ebert is right when he said, “The movie has a real bittersweet charm. The baseball sequences, we've seen before. What's fresh are the personalities of the players, the gradual unfolding of their coach and the way this early chapter of women's liberation fit into the hidebound traditions of professional baseball. By the end, when the women get together again for their reunion, it's touching, the way they have to admit that, whaddaya know, they really were pioneers.”

Once again, if you haven’t seen this movie, why did you read this review? You need to see this, especially if you’re a baseball fan, sports movie fan, or just a movie fan in general. Everyone should see this movie because it is one of the best and is based on a real team. This film even has the famous line, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Check it out and have an enjoyable time watching this.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review. Stay tuned on Friday for the continuation of “Westerns Month.”