A League of Their Own (1992) * * *

Directed by:  Penny Marshall

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall, Rosie O' Donnell, Madonna, Jon Lovitz, Megan Cavanaugh, Bill Pullman

A League of Their Own is a mostly fun, sometimes sentimental movie based on a real women's professional baseball league which formed during World War II while many major leaguers were fighting overseas.     To the surprise of many, the league lasted for a few years even after the guys returned home and resumed their baseball careers.    I'm sure the film's characters are either based on composites of real people or fictionalized all together, but for the most part it works because we care about the people and we even care about the baseball too.

The beginning of the film shows the league being formed by a Chicago candy magnate (Marshall), who along with a few other owners forms the league for female ballplayers.    A wisecracking scout (Lovitz) discovers two potential league players in Oregon sisters Dottie (Davis) and Kit (Petty), both of whom play well although Dottie outshines Kit in the eyes of many including the scout.    Kit's smoldering resentment of Dottie is a recurring theme.     Alcoholic former home run king Jimmy Dugan (Hanks) is hired to manage one of the teams, but spends the bulk of the initial games passed out or hung over.    He resents that his job is managing a women's baseball team.    ("I don't have ball players, I've got girls,")

Dugan's Rockford Peaches team consists of Dottie, Kit, and others played by actresses such as Rosie O' Donnell and Madonna.    Madonna gets third billing, but has relatively little dialogue and doesn't sing at all (except for a song on the soundtrack).   At the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony years later, it seems the only photos ever taken of any ball players all played for Rockford and none of the other teams.    The newsreel footage of the league also has this myopia, as the stories focus only on Rockford.    The other teams only exist to field players Rockford must compete against; otherwise their existence would be daily baseball practice.

Jimmy eventually gets serious about managing his ball club, while Dottie acts as if baseball is just a way of passing the time until her husband comes home from the war.    We know better that she loves the game despite her protests to the contrary.    One particularly well-done scene involves one of the players receiving word of her husband's death right before a big game, which injects a dose of reality.     A League of Their Own ends, as all sports movies do, with The Big Game and the game is fairly exciting with some nice touches, including a chance for Kit to finally outshine her big sister for once.   

The ending is touching, with some players still alive while we learn some of the others passed on.    The song which becomes sort of the anthem for the league is sung three times in the movie.    Once was enough.    Because the movie is fictional anyway, it would have been nice to have some closure with the Jimmy/Dottie friendship years later.    But, it doesn't happen, although it would have been fun to see Jimmy again years after he quit drinking and learned to respect the women as great ballplayers.