Is “A League of Their Own” Based on a True Story?
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Thirty years after A League of Their Own first swung into theaters (sorry, requisite baseball pun), a new Prime Video series of the same name is paying homage to the iconic film.
The series, which premieres on August 12, is also centered on a women's baseball team in 1943, with a widened “lens to tell the story of an entire generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball,” per the streamer’s official synopsis. The original movie is such a beloved classic that series star and co-creator Abbi Jacobson even approached Penny Marshall and Geena Davis for their “blessing,” as she worked on the reboot, she told People. As you watch the show, you may be wondering: Is A League of Their Own based on a true story? Let's get to it.
The True Story Behind A League of Their Own
Yes, the movie is, indeed, based on a true story—a pretty personal one, at that! Kelly Candaele, who shares a story credit on the original film, recently explained the inspiration behind A League of Their Own to MLB.com. His mother, Helen Candaele, and her sister, Margaret, were actually the first sisters to compete in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—the real professional league, founded in 1943, that appears in both the film and TV versions of A League of Their Own.
Helen’s son, Kelly, partnered with Kim Wilson to film a documentary about the historic league and the women who played in it—titled, you guessed it, A League of Their Own. The doc, which used real footage from the women’s league, eventually caught director Marshall’s attention.
The final product is more of a comedy and a “big Hollywood production” than Candaele had in mind at first, he told MLB.com—but he’s not complaining. In fact, Candaele praised the decision to showcase the spirit of the league, even if the entire story isn’t necessarily a beat-for-beat retelling of his mom’s experience.
“These women were characters, personalities, bigger than Madonna and Geena Davis and Rosie O'Donnell, though Rosie O'Donnell is a pretty big personality,” he said. “They were gregarious and loved the game, and were thoughtful and knew about baseball, loved talking about it. So that was the greatest thing about it, just finding all these women together, 100 women who played baseball, and just were great athletes. And loved to tell their story.”
But what about the new series? Though it shares its name and “joyful spirit” with the original film, per Prime Video, it also goes beyond the original scribe’s personal history and pulls from other players at the time—especially those who didn’t get the spotlight the first time around.
“A lot of our pitch stemmed from research and discovering Mamie Johnson, Toni Stone, and Connie Morgan, who were women who played in the Negro Leagues,” Jacobson recently told The Cut. “I often think people are going to see this poster and be like, They’re making a woke version. And it’s like, ‘No, we pitched what it was actually like.’”
Jacobson expanded on the research process in an interview with The Playlist, noting that she explored the Chicago Defender archives to ensure as “authentic” an approach as possible. “The Defender was such a huge news source for the Black community, and was such an important part of delivering information to Black America, that it felt like it had to be in the show, even if we just mention it,” she explained.
LGBTQ+ representation was another important consideration for Jacobson—and while, like in the film, the new characters don’t always translate directly to real people, they are based on the lives of women in the era. “We really focused on some of the stories that were untold.… We found a lot of different personal stories from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and we also equated the experiences on the show to a lot of experiences around the country that we found.”
In addition to Jacobson, A League Of Their Own also stars Chanté Adams, D'Arcy Carden, and Roberta Colindrez. The show will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Saturday, August 12.
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