70 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching A League of Their Own
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I’m not much of a sports-movie person, but I make an exception for my quarterly rewatch of A League of Their Own, the 1992 Penny Marshall film starring Geena Davis and Lori Petty as small-town sisters who make it big in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (which, fun fact, actually existed!). Basically, this movie has everything you could possibly dream of: Feminism! Sisterhood! Baseball! Tom Hanks playing a bad boy! Madonna! Rosie O’Donnell! Cute uniforms with skirts that seem extremely impractical, but I want one anyway! Let’s dive in, shall we?
Let’s get this out of the way: Run me over, Geena Davis as Dottie.
I’m amazed at how much the woman they cast to play Elderly Geena Davis looks and sounds like Actual Geena Davis.
Wait...is that just Geena Davis in age makeup?
Okay, I IMDb-ed it. It’s a different actress.
Dottie’s daughter is forcing her to go see her old baseball friends at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (where I famously went on a school trip in fourth grade), even though she doesn’t want to.
Just like that, we’re in the WWII-era past, with an old-timey announcer explaining that all the male baseball players are off fighting in the war.
We meet a hot guy named Ira Lowenstein, whose task is to figure out how to keep baseball going during the war. Priorities, Ira!
Dottie’s younger sister, Kit (Lori Petty)—a.k.a. one of my many gay roots—loses a baseball game because she refuses to “lay off the high ones.” Dottie walks her home and tries to console her, but Kit is clearly riding an inferiority complex wave that cannot be stopped.
Jon Lovitz (LMAO) plays a baseball scout who comes to the girls’ family farm to try to sign Dottie, but she’s not down. Kit is, but Jon Lovitz doesn’t want her, because he’s a misogynist pig. Finally, he says Kit can come if Dottie comes.
Kit tries to talk Dottie into not being a huge loser and taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but she’s resistant because her husband is at war. All the more reason, girl! Distract yourself!
Finally, the girls get on the train bound for Baseball-Town, U.S.A.
The gang stops in Colorado and meets Marla Hooch, who is made out to be the least attractive human woman in existence, when...she looks normal? That couldn’t have been fun for the actress playing her. I hate Hollywood. Anyway, she’s a good hitter.
Luckily, Kit and Dottie are also pissed off about this treatment of Marla and convince Jon Lovitz to take her on.
OMG, Madonna-and-Rosie time! They play two Brooklyn badasses who are clearly not to be messed with, and honestly, I would watch a whole movie just about them.
Damn, young Madonna looked exactly like her daughter, Lola.
Some radio lady calls the idea of girls playing baseball “disgusting” and refers to it as “sexual confusion.” Whatever, these girls are too busy girlboss-ing to care!
God, I love a sports montage (in women-centric movies only.)
Dottie and Kit make it through tryouts, finding themselves on a team called the Rockford Peaches. :)
Hey, it’s Anne Ramsey playing a kindly baseball player who helps a girl who can’t read find her name on the team list!
The girls freak out about how girly the team uniforms are. Ugh, the male gaze. “There’s no pockets for my cigarettes,” says Madonna. Iconic.
The girls aren’t allowed to smoke, drink, or date, and they have to attend charm school. Madonna tries to leave. I feel her.
Everyone gets their looks audited by a mean lady, which just gives the movie another excuse to be mean to Marla. Poor Marla!
Oh, hell yeah, Tom Hanks time. He gets handed a position as manager of the Rockford Peaches, but he’s pissed about it, because boys rule and girls drool. Also, he’s a reformed alcoholic who quit drinking because “I just can’t afford it.”
OMG, Tom is so ridiculously young and adorable in this movie, even when he’s being a dick.
Speaking of Tom being a dick, that’s exactly what he starts off being. The team is clearly terrified. Also, he pees in front of them, which would not hold up in 2021.
Tom is clearly a washout, so Dottie steps up to coach the team. Queen!
Ellen Sue, one of the Peaches, hurls a ball at some sexist pigs who are heckling the team. Also a queen!
The peanut vendor in this movie is making me want to go to a Dodgers game and eat peanuts. And drink a beer. And buy an insanely expensive Dodger Dog.
Another old-timey newsreel gives us the tea on the girls’ league, boiling it all down to, “These girls play baseball, but don’t worry, they’re still homemakers!”
Kit is described as “as single as they come,” which...oof, same.
One of the girls brings her awful son with her to games, and he immediately starts terrorizing everyone. Also, his name is...Stillwell?
Okay, the fun times start here: All the cool girls make a plan to sneak out to a roadhouse and par-tay. Love this for them. Even Dottie goes, because as Rosie tells her, “You ain’t on the farm anymore.”
Damn, they straight-up poison their chaperone in order to do the aforementioned par-taying. Savage.
We learn that Madonna and Rosie met at Rosie’s dad’s dance hall, where Madonna was a dancer and Rosie was a bouncer. Again, where’s their spinoff?
All I want is to party with Madonna in this movie, although I doubt I could keep up.
Everybody gets their mack on, including Kit (!) and Marla (!!). Finally! A sweet boy watches her sing onstage and is clearly head-over-heels in love.
The girls follow up their big night out with confession, like good Catholics. Madonna gets the priest all hot and bothered, because she’s Madonna.
I’m just going to add this piece of trivia in verbatim, because I cannot improve on it:
“According to a handwritten letter she wrote to photographer Steven Meisel, Madonna was miserable during production. ‘I cannot suffer any more than I have in the past month, learning how to play baseball with a bunch of girls (yuk) in Chicago (double yuk). I have a tan, I’m dirty all day, and I hardly ever wear make up. Penny Marshall, Lavern [sic], Geena Davis is a Barbie Doll, and when God decided where the beautiful men were going to live in the world, he did not choose Chicago. I have made a few friends but they are athletes, not actresses. They have nothing on the house of extravaganza. I wish I could come to N.Y.’”
Tom finally gets in the game and starts coaching, but unfortunately, Dottie’s already doing it, so they just end up confusing all the girls. At least he’s trying?
LOL, Madonna is teaching the girl who can’t read to read...erotica. At least she’s trying?
Okay, this part is sad as hell; Rosie explains that she hates her boyfriend, but she thinks he’s the best she can do. Lesbianism awaits, buddy!
Iconic scene time: One of the girls starts crying, and Tom utters the immortal line, “There’s no crying in baseball!”
Tom tells the umpire he “looks like a penis with that little hat on.” LMAO.
Ira explains that the league’s games aren’t bringing enough money in, so they might shut the whole thing down. Everybody’s sad.
The girls step it up and start getting all kinds of press in a very inspiring musical montage.
Aw, Marla’s sweetie from the bar sends her a letter!
Double aw, Rosie has some totally besotted nerd fans!
The massive bruise on one girl’s thigh has haunted me since I first saw this movie at a too-young age, and is probably the reason I don’t play sports.
Dottie and Tom bond about her husband being off at war, and we learn that Tom couldn’t join up because he has no cartilage in his knee. He’s bitter about it, but he’s starting to cool down.
No offense to Dottie’s war-hero husband, but I kind of ship her and Tom.
Ira learns the girls won’t be able to play next year when the male players return from war, and he’s sad about it, because it turns out he’s kind of a good guy after all...ish.
“I love these girls. I don’t need them, but I love them,” says Ira’s creepy jerk boss.
Kit and Dottie are fighting because Dottie pulled Kit out of the pitcher role, and Kit idiotically picks a physical fight with Rosie that turns into her being carried like a sack of potatoes and placed in an ice-cold shower. Yikes.
Emotional climax time! “I know you’re right and I’m wrong...I just get so mad! Why do you gotta be so good?” Kit asks Dottie angrily, and I fully tear up.
Dottie plans to leave, but Ira offers to trade her to another team instead. Sadly, though, Kit’s the one who gets traded, and she leaves pissed.
Wait, no, maybe this is the emotional climax: A player nicknamed “Betty Spaghetti” learns her husband died in combat, and once again, I am weeping.
Dottie’s husband comes home to get her, and wow, he is hot. Luke Wilson vibes.
Wait, is that Luke Wilson?
Nope, it’s Bill Pullman. Let’s carry on.
Dottie leaves with her husband, but she’s clearly conflicted, and Tom Hanks doesn’t seem happy to see her go.
Oh, damn, Kit is the hit of the Racine Belles, the team she’s been traded to! Go off, Kit.
Should I try to get my friends to cooperate with a Georgia Peaches group costume next Halloween?
Dottie comes back for one last game and faces off against Kit, and...lets her win? Maybe? It’s unclear, but I think it was the right move.
I must say, I like the Belles’ yellow uniforms.
Yay, the league is saved! Dottie and Kit patch things up, sort of, but things still seem weird.
We’re back in the present day, and we learn that the girls have become doctors and mothers and all sorts of other awesome things.
I don’t know if baseball keeps you young or what, but all the “girls” look amazing for their respective ages. One of them married a plastic surgeon, so there’s that.
Annoying-ass Stillwell is now a sweet-seeming adult, there to represent his mother, who died, as did Tom. Ahhhh, my emotions!
It’s made clear that Dottie and Kit don’t talk much, but they reunite as all the girls sing their team motto. Are my tear ducts going to get infected?
Ugh, I can’t wait for the reboot!
Originally Appeared on Vogue
