Ten reasons why A League of Their Own makes me so, so happy every single time I see it.
1. The relationship between the sisters.
My favorite movies don’t just grow old with me. They evolve. They come to mean something new. The first time — probably the first dozen times — that I saw A League of Their Own, it was before we had two daughters. The sweet and fractious and intense relationship between Kit and Dottie was always wonderful, but later, watching our girls fight and joke and be jealous and proud of each other in (somewhat) equal measure, well, it changed the entire movie.
Point being that I’m more likely to cry watching A League of Their Own NOW than I was the first dozen times I saw it.
2. The African-American woman throwing the ball scene.
I cannot think of a single moment in any sports movie that I loved more. That’s because there were two ways that A League of Their Own could have handled it:
A. It could have simply ignored the fact that African-American women were not allowed to play in the All-American League.
B. It could have put together an overwrought and preachy scene that would have been right but would have had no impact.
Instead, director Penny Marshall simply shows an African-American woman, dressed well, throwing the ball over the head of the catcher and all the way back to the pitcher. And then she nods. That’s all. She knows. The white players know. The audience knows. It’s all there, so perfect, a whole story — a whole HISTORY — in five seconds.
There’s something else about A League of Their Own … a couple of times Marshall uses the device of showing the person catching the ball sort of shaking their glove hand because the throw was so hard. It’s a really fun little gimmick that only a real baseball fan would know to do.
3. The “Hard is what makes it great” speech.
I saw someone make this point on Twitter, and it’s true: The “There’s no crying in baseball” scene is very funny, and at the very core of the movie’s plot. But the “Hard is what makes it great” exchange between Tom Hanks and Geena Davis is what I think about all the time, in so many scenarios. It’s what LIFE, in so many ways, is about.
It is, and I say this with love for Field of Dreams roughly 10 billion times better than the James Earl Jones, “They will come” speech.
Hanks: “Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up. You can’t deny that.”
Davis: “It just got too hard.”
Hanks: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. That hard is what makes it great.”
I get chills just thinking about it. If I could get THIS through to my daughters, my job as a father would be complete.
4. Everything about the Jon Lovitz scout.
I’ve just decided this after a lifetime of thinking about it: The Jon Lovitz scout is the best minor character in any sports movie. You could argue for the Robert Wuhl character in Bull Durham. You could argue for any one of the Chelcie Ross characters (the jerk townie in Hoosiers, Dan Devine in Rudy, Harris in Major League, the coach in Heaven Can Wait).
But Lovitz is simply perfect. I don’t think any character in any sports movie — perhaps any movie, period — has ever had as high a punchline-to-minutes-on-screen ratio.
“I don’t want you! I want her! The one who HIT the ball!”
“Get these wild animals away from me. Haven’t you ever heard of a leash?”
“You know General Omar Bradley? There’s too strong a resemblance.”
“You know, if I had your job, I’d kill myself.”
“Hey cowgirls, see the grass? Don’t eat it.”
And, of course, the all-time classic: “See, how it works is, the train moves, not the station.”
He’s perfect — unrelentingly mean, cynical, no heart of gold but maybe the tiniest ounce of gold somewhere in there. I sometimes think I’d like to see a whole Ernie Capadino movie (that was the Lovitz character’s name, though no one remembers it). And then I think: No. A few minutes of Ernie was exactly right.*
*A great point from Brilliant Reader Vince … I actually left out perhaps the best Lovitz line of all:
Ernie: “Mmm-hmm. They’ll pay you 75 dollars a week.”
Kit: “We only make 30 at the dairy.”
Ernie: “Well then, this would be more, wouldn’t it?”
5. The final scene with the real baseball players.
I mean, you put the real players from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League on the field at Cooperstown with Madonna’s This Used to Be My Playground playing — and as the Ghost of Christmas Past says (in Scrooged): Niagara Falls.
6. The “Did she drop the ball on purpose?” question.
Mike Schur and I have been asking sports movie questions on our podcast, and this is probably my favorite one: Did Dottie purposely drop the ball when Kit ran into her at the end of the championship game? On the one hand, Dottie was ultra-competitive, and it doesn’t seem like she would ever do that. On the other, there was this beautiful bond between the two of them that lasted throughout the movie, and it’s clear that Dottie so desperately wanted Kit to be happy.
I have come to believe that she DID drop it on purpose, but only because the movie begins with Dottie telling her older grandson to take it easy on her younger grandson (foreshadowing!).
BUT let me reiterate the point here, because it might be easy to miss — I don’t think what I believe matters. I’m roughly 50.003% convinced that she dropped the ball on purpose, and that .003% can move at any time. I love that the QUESTION is out there, forever, and people can feel strongly both ways, and in the end, whatever you think speaks to something larger about how you see things.
7. The Squiggy broadcasting.
David Lander, who played Squiggy on Laverne & Shirley, is also a baseball scout who has worked for the Angels and Mariners. He played the broadcaster, and he offered the classic line: “If you’re nearby, and you must be since this isn’t a powerful radio station, come on down to the ballpark. And bring the kiddies.”
8. The whole exchange between Tom Hanks and Garry Marshall.
When Walter Harvey (Marshall) offers Jimmy Dugan (Hanks) the managing job in the league:
Harvey: “Jimmy, I’m thinking of giving you another managing job.”
Dugan: “Oh, well, Mr. Harvey, I guarantee I’ll do a better job than last time.”
Harvey: “You kind of let me down on that San Antonio job.”
Dugan: “Yeah, I had no right to sell off the team’s equipment like that. Won’t happen again.”
Harvey: “Let me be blunt. Are you still a fall-down drunk?”
Dugan: “Well, that is blunt. No sir, I’ve quit drinking.”
Harvey: “You’ve seen the error of your ways?”
Dugan: “No, I just can’t afford it.”
Harvey: “Your drinking is funny? You’re a young man, Jimmy. You could still be playing. If you just would’ve laid off the booze.”
Dugan: “Well, that’s not exactly how it happened. I hurt my knee.”
Harvey: “You fell out of a hotel, that’s how you hurt it!”
Dugan: “Well, there was a fire.”
Harvey: “Which you started. Which I had to pay for.”
Dugan: “I was gonna write you a thank you card, but I wasn’t allowed anything sharp to write with.”
I mean that exchange, every word of it, is priceless, like a perfect old Vaudeville routine, and it was delivered perfectly.
Bonus: When Dugan coughs up a huge wad of chewing tobacco and spits it on Ira Lowenstein’s shoe.
Lowenstein: “If we paid you more, could you be just a little more disgusting?”
Dugan: “Well, I could certainly use the money.”
9. The shortstop throwing the ball at the guy on the dugout.
Just a subtle moment, but hilarious every time — the guy starts strutting on the dugout, attempting in the lamest way to mock the women warming up, and the shortstop — the incomparable Freddie Simpson, who had played semi-pro softball — nailed the guy with a throw. I don’t know, it’s simple, but it gets me every time.
10. Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell
Years ago, I interviewed Rod Dedeaux, the legendary old coach at Southern California, who served as the baseball advisor for the movie. And I remember he went on and on about how good a baseball player Madonna was. He just kept talking about how athletic she was and how she just had an incredible feel for the game.
I love that.
And Rosie O’Donnell was just plain great.
“Boys always made me feel like I was wrong, you know, like I was some sort of weird girl, or strange girl, or not even a girl, just because I could play. And I believed them, too. But not anymore, you know? I mean, lookit. There are a lot of us.”
That “lookit” — which is actually “look” in the script — might be my favorite word in the whole movie.
A final note: Jon Weisman makes the excellent point that this post is incomplete without mentioning that the movie was written by Lowell Ganz and Babloo Mandel, the pair who wrote Laverne & Shirley and several other movies including Splash and City Slicker.
Did Dottie Hinson purposely drop the ball as Kit jump-slid into home plate during Game 7 of the Women’s World Series so her kid sister could finally have the glory?
“I knew you were going to ask me that,” says Petty, because it’s what everyone always wants to know; the internet is filled with painstaking did-she-or-didn’t-she analyses that delve into Dottie’s mind-set; her level of fitness and rustiness following her decision to bail on the team with Dull Bob at the start of the playoffs, only to have a change of heart in Yellowstone; her “high fastballs: she can’t hit ’em, she can’t lay off ’em” advice to the pitcher, who needs only one more out for the championship; her ball protection (or lack thereof); and her maybe-foreshadowing comments at the start of the film to her grandsons (“Now remember, no matter what you brother does, he’s littler than you are. Give him a chance to shoot,” she says to the older one; to the younger, she hisses: “Kill him!”). “They’re insane,” Petty says of the forensic sleuths who talk endlessly about all of this. “I kicked her ass!” This was from an article about the movie from the Ringer. https://www.theringer.com/2017/6/30/16043550/a-league-of-their-own-25th-anniversary-geena-davis-penny-marshall-ce750e85bb3c
Joe,
You have hit every nail perfectly with this!!! I would only offer a couple of additional Golden lines:
When The scour is watching the girls run for the train and he leans over the woman in the chair:
WOMAN: “Sir, your knee!!!”
LOVITZ: “Like it????”
And Landers as the announcer after the final play:
“I have seen enough to know I have seen too much!!”
I agree with the evolutionary concept of great movies: their meaning changes and grows as we do. What hit me during my most recent viewing was the supreme buildup of tension during the championship. Music, wordlessness, small gestures, darting glances: even though I knew how it would end, it still drew me into its thrilling vise.
I hear some people, at times, lay claim that Tom Hanks is overrated. I personally really like him, and for reasons reflected in this movie. He has every necessary mannerism down pat in this movie. The face he makes coming out of the dugout for the first time as he is announced to the crowd. The face he makes when he wants Evelyn to work on her skills before next season. His celebration hitting Stillwell with the glove. His deadpan as he signs “good advice” on the baseball to the kids. His sensitive leadership when he ships the postman out of the locker room. I can go on…anyone reading this knows the movie up and down. I think I could probably list another 20 reasons I love the move…easily. Rest in peace Penny Marshall.
“Ten reasons ‘A League of Their Own’ makes me so, so happy…”
Apart from no sign of:
Don Paterno?
Jerry Sandusky?
Duh LEOs?
Duh Attorney General?
Them Pesky Reporters?
Wait what?
Also, the friendship between Dottie and Dugan is the core of the movie. A lesser film would have forced them into a relationship.
The script originally DID put them in a relationship. Thank GOD someone came to their senses.
Fantastic column! But you did leave out my favorite Jon Lovitz line (it’s all in the delivery):
Ernie: Mmm-hmm. They’ll pay you 75 dollars a week.
Kit Keller: We only make 30 at the dairy.
Ernie Capadino: Well then, this would be more, wouldn’t it?
That line also got a reference in the “The West Wing.” Toby goes to Hollywood to recruit C.J.Cregg to do publicity for the Bartlett campaign, to find she has just been fired from her Hollywood job. She confirms he is offering her a job, and asks how much it pays. He says some amount like $500.00/wk, and then asks what she was making at the job she just lost, and she says 550,000.00, He says “Well then, this would be less, wouldn’t it.”
Excellent article. I love A League of Their own. Cry at the end every time. Maybe #11 could be the little pain in the butt kid. He was hilarious even in scenes he wasn’t the main focus. Great, great movie!
I remember Rolling Stone said that Jon Lovitz should’ve won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for that movie, and they were right.
The scene that always get me is when the women find out which team they are on. One of the women can’t read, which was more of a thing than you think in the 1940’s. The panic in her eyes at not being able to see her own name is powerful.
I like to think there is a deleted scene, or an alternate one, where Shirley Baker still didn’t make the team.
What’s your name?
Shirley Baker.
[other player looks up and down the list]
Nope, sorry. You’re not on any of these. Good luck on your way home.
I was remembering that scene, too…..
Of COURSE Dottie didn’t drop that ball on purpose, Joe…you’re smarter than that! If she had, it screws up the whole plot line between the two sisters.
Instead of Kit proving (through her own mule-headed stubbornness) that she doesn’t always need to ride Dottie’s coattails, and sometimes she CAN hit those high, hard ones…it would just be another instance where Dottie (yet again) takes pity on her little sister and “lets” her win (Wink! Wink!).
And isn’t it nice that the movie ends with Kit sort of “going her own way,” planning to get a job and stay around Racine during the off-season and NOT going back home to the farm? It sort of wraps up her story line very well, doesn’t it?
I just rewatched this week, what really first choked me up was Marla and her dad. He was so proud, so guilty. Their dynamic was such a minimal part of the movie, but it was warm and real. The characters all had depth, back stories: nothing felt stock.
YES. The dad’s plea about a raising Marla on his own … you can see a lifetime of pain across his face. Very powerful.
That whole scene is great, from the boys’ groans when Marla starts hitting lefty, to Dottie and Kit refusing to go on when they realize that Ernie is scouting based on looks as well as baseball talent.
The whole scene that preceded the line, “I loved you in The Wizard Of Oz.”
I loved all the things that you listed and what others wrote.
I also liked the beginning where Dottie is reluctant to go to the Hall of Fame and at the end when she meets up with Kit at the Hall of Fame.
Stack of pancakes slays me every time
My heart hurts during the locker room scene where Betty learned her husband has been killed in action
When Jimmy tears up the baseball card
When Marla got married
When Dottie’s husband shows up.
Great, great movie.
Are you sure “lookit” is not in the script? “Lookit” is in a bunch of scripts and is thrown in to dozens of your favorite movies as well as scores of plays. If you start looking for it you will hear it – a lot.
I first noticed it in a play I was in 35 years ago, I actually just said “look” in rehearsals and was corrected and instructed to use “lookit” as in the script.) and it has since become a thing I look for. I have asked writers why they used lookit instead of look. or how lookit started, and have never gotten a satisfactory answer. The internet tells me it was first used with a different meaning in print in 1925, and (though it doesn’t say it was the first movie use) cites Cary Grant using it in a film (The Philadelphia Story) in 1939.
Anyway, it became something I notice fairly constantly in film and in scripts. I have never heard anyone say it organically in conversation, but it is written and used in movies and plays. When I pointed it out to my Wife, she started noticing it, and it has become something we look for in a film. Once you start listening for it, you will be surprised at how often it comes up, even in movies you have seen multiple times and have never before noticed it was there.
When I was a kid, a neighbor kid said “lookit” all the time. We were in east TN, but he had recently moved from Toledo, Ohio.
“Lookit” is very common in Michigan. I did not grow up in Michigan, but have lived in the state longer than anywhere else. I hear “lookit” perhaps once a week in conversation. Makes sense that invitro heard it from a kid from Toledo. Didn’t Klinger use “lookit” in M*A*S*H?
Dottie played just one season, which is something a male director might not have come up with. In the 1940s, it was understood that a woman should sacrifice her nascent, successful career to support her husband.
When Lovitz goes to pat Petty on the arm and realizes she’s muscular, the cow moos and Lovitz yells at the cow to shut up. Perfect.
Also, Hanks delivers “she’s crying, sir” with the exact right amount of exasperation and bewilderment. He doesn’t have ball players, he’s got girls, and now one is crying, and there’s no crying baseball. What am I supposed to do here, Blue?
The Jon Lovitz character is the best. My wife and I have been quoting (and riffing) on See, it’s the train that moves, not the station, forever.
The all time best is Jimmy signing the ball for the kids.
‘“Avoid the clap — Jimmy Dugan’ Wow!”
“That’s good advice!”
After Dotti & Kit have a huge fight, one of the other players approaches and pleasantly asks, “Has anyone seen my new hat? ”
Dotti: “Oh, pi** on your hat”
…and the exchange with the umpire right after the ‘no crying in baseball’ scene:
Ump: Perhaps you chastised her too vehemently. A good rule of thumb: Treat each one of these ladies as if she were your own mother.
Jimmy (nodding): Anybody ever tell you you look like a pe*** with a little hat?
Ump: Alright Jimmy, you’re out of here!
Jimmy: No, you misunderstood me!
“This is our daughter, Dottie. This is our other daughter, Dottie’s sister.” LOL