All right, because my last piece launched a discussion, we should do a quick dive into the question:
Did Dottie drop the ball on purpose at the end of A League of Their Own?
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Answer: No.
Lori Petty played Kit, the little sister who smashed into Dottie at home plate (after it took Rosie O’Donnell like 30 minutes to make the cutoff throw). So obviously she would know.
Lori Petty says no.
“I knew you were going to ask me that,” Petty told The Ringer. She did know. She gets asked all the time. She once Tweeted that the person who worked customs in L.A. asked her if Dottie dropped the ball on purpose. She told that person no. This has been her consistent and vehement view.
“They’re insane,” Petty said of anybody who thinks that Dottie would have dropped the ball intentionally. “I kicked her ass!”
* * *
Answer: Yes.
Helen Callaghan played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and her son Kelly Candaele made a documentary that focused on Helen and her sister Margaret. The documentary inspired A League of Their Own, and Callaghan was the inspiration for Dottie. So obviously Kelly and Helen would know.
Callaghan said yes.
“I took her to see [Penny] Marshall’s film when it came out in the summer of 1992, not long before she died of cancer,” Candaele wrote in the Los Angeles Times this week. “She loved it and felt that Penny had ‘got it right.’ But she added that she would never drop a ball on purpose — not for anyone — as Dottie does in the movie’s big-game climatic scene. It would have been a betrayal of her teammates.”
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Answer: Who knows?
Geena Davis played Dottie. Geena Davis has been asked this question hundreds of times. Her answer is direct and consistent and to the point.
“I’ll say two things about that,” she told ESPNW. “No. 1: I know the answer. Because it was me, of course, I know the answer. And No. 2: No, I’m not going to answer that question. I never have, and I never will.”
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Answer: Yes (subconsciously)
Bitty Schram played Evelyn, the right fielder who overthrows the cutoff woman and had to endure the furious dressing down by Jimmy Dugan, culminating with the “There’s no crying in baseball!”
Bitty Schram says yes, sort of.
“If I had to pick,” she said to ESPNW, “I would say subconsciously yes, because she knew how much more it meant to Kit, and she was too good of a player. From what I remember subconsciously, yes.”
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Answer: No (and this shouldn’t even be a topic of discussion)
Jennifer Iacopelli is an author of young adult books. She writes — as she explains on her Website — about kickass girls, and she’s a huge baseball fan (well, a Yankees fan). We had a fun Twitter exchange where she made it quite clear how she feels about this topic.
“I was all set to love this article and then OF COURSE he believes that Dottie dropped the ball on purpose,” she wrote. “I DON’T CARE HOW SWEET YOU THINK IT IS. IF DOTTIE DROPPED THE BALL ON PURPOSE IT RUINS THE ENTIRE MOVIE. IT BETRAYS HERSELF, HER SISTER AND BASEBALL ALL AT ONCE. STOP IT.”
If ANYONE can appreciate a good uppercase letter screed, it’s me. Jennifer’s note made me think that maybe I hadn’t gotten my point exactly right — I did write that I think Dottie dropped the ball on purpose, but I don’t know that, don’t feel that strongly about it, and what I love is the QUESTION, not the answer. So I added a paragraph to clarify that part.
Jennifer wasn’t buying.
“But see here’s the thing,” she wrote, “that it’s debated is the frustrating thing. The ease at which we acknowledge it’s a possibility that I don’t think would exist if it was a movie about men playing baseball. … We so easily reconcile the idea that Dottie would cheat and throw a game to make her sister happy when the cardinal sin of baseball is throwing games and tarnishing the integrity of the game? Just … no.”
Is that true? It’s a fascinating point. Is this whole question really built around the way we look at men and women? I can’t help but think back to Dave Barry’s hilarious bit about this talented woman player on his softball team. “She’s been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don’t trust her,” he wrote. “They know that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she would probably elect to save the infant’s life, without even considering whether there were men on base.”
Would I feel the ball was dropped on purpose if this was a movie about two brothers instead of sisters?
I’m pretty sure I would. But I don’t know for certain.
“There’s a question I think about a lot,” I wrote to Jennifer. “Did the pitcher groove a pitch to an aging Cal Ripken in the All-Star Game so he could have a final grand moment on the stage? I think yes, and I think it was great because it was bigger than the game.”
“That pitch was definitely grooved,” she wrote back, “but also … it was the All-Star Game and not Game 7 of the World Series.”
“True,” I said, “but the pitcher was also not Ripken’s older brother with so many deep and swirling connections.”
And then she wrote the clincher.
“That makes it even MORE likely that the pitch was grooved,” she said. “If, especially as adults, I ever let my little sister win at something that important, she would despise me for it and rightly so.”
And that’s when I had to concede the obvious point. We’re looking at it in different ways.
“I think we’re now getting at it,” I said. “You’re viewing it as the big sister. And I’m viewing it as the sappy Dad who would always hope that my oldest daughter would, in the end, take care of my youngest. So you’re probably right.”
* * *
Answer: It depends on how you define “more.”
There’s a telling line in the movie, one that happens when Dottie and Kit meet after the collision.
Kit: “Dottie, look, I’m sorry I knocked you over.”
Dottie: “No you’re not.”
Kit: “You blocked the entire plate! How do you expect …”
Dottie: “You did what you had to do. You just beat me. You wanted it more than me.”
What did Dottie mean by that? You wanted it more? Did she mean that figuratively, in the clichéd, broadcastery, sportswritery, “Notre Dame just wanted it more,” sort of way? Or did she mean it LITERALLY, as in, “Yes, in the end, you were willing to smash full blast into your older sister without any consideration for your or my well-being, and I simply wasn’t willing to send my younger sister into a lifelong haze of regret and pain? YOU wanted it more.”
As far as I know, Penny Marshall, the film’s director, has never said what she meant. As far as I know, the writers, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, have never said what she meant.
The wonderful part of fiction is that, well, it’s fiction. There’s no truth here. Even if Geena Davis ever DID tell us what happened (and here’s hoping she never does), that wouldn’t make it so. Geena Davis is not Dottie Hinson, and Dottie Hinson is not Geena Davis, and the movie I see is a little bit different from the movie you see is a little bit different from the movie Marshall directed is a little bit different from the movie Ganz and Mandel wrote.
You can see Dottie Hinson as the ultimate competitor who would NEVER drop the ball, not under any circumstances. There’s evidence of that in the movie. Remember, she wouldn’t even let her sister beat her in a simple walk home. Remember, she had just told her pitcher to throw the ball high because Kit couldn’t lay off the high ones.
You can also see Dottie Hinson as someone who thinks other things are more important than baseball. Remember, she had just quit, despite Tom Hanks’ “Hard is what makes it great” speech. She left the team for six games; it was surprising that she even came back. Also she asked to be traded because of her sister, and for the rest of her life she kept telling everyone close to her that it all “wasn’t that important to me.”
We don’t know.
We’ll never know.
And we’ll keep arguing about it anyway, because it’s fun to argue about and because we just know that it’s better this way.
I really don’t understand why this is a debate. There’s ample proof of what happened. The answer, of course, is No, Dottie didn’t drop the ball on purpose. Kit, by force of will and stronger desire to leave their small town millworker life behind, knocked her sister flat and made her drop the ball. Dottie, conflicted over the return of her wounded husband and desire to start a family with him, not to mention the rift baseball had caused between her and her sister, simply didn’t have the same urgent need that Kit had to use baseball as a means of changing her life. She was, simply, beaten by her more motivated sister. Both of the participants have said that’s what happened. Lori Petty, as you noted, vehemently insists “I kicked her ass”. And Geena Davis, speaking as Dottie in the movie, said it simply as well: “You wanted it more.” I don’t see how any scenario where she drops the ball on purpose makes more sense than what the participants are openly telling us.
You are so right. She didn’t drop the ball on purpose. That would be contrary to her character in the movie. She might ultimately be happy for her sister, but no way did she drop it on purpose. The suggestion is ridiculous. Do you think Robbie Alomar ever let a ball hit by Sandy Jr. go by him, just so his brother could have success? Not a chance.
Evidence she did drop the ball on purpose: The wait between when she’s knocked out and the time the ball leaves her hand.
-The scene with her grandsons at the beginning of the movie.
-Kit thinks so, even for a second.
Evidence she doesn’t:
-Kit, who can’t hit high fastballs the whole movie, does. She wanted it more, like Dottie said, and that made her a better player.
I HOPE Kit wins legitimately. I hate the idea that I’m watching a movie that thinks Kit would like being a charity case and find it sweet. That she never succeeds. That she’ll always be the loser she’d depicted at in the beginning of the movie. But really? I don’t know.
I love this movie and the debate. Dottie was being recruited and wouldn’t go without her sister. Therefore, I lean towards the ‘sister’ version. Thank you Joe, KC misses you.
Definitely didn’t drop it. She has the pitcher throw high fastballs because Dottie can’t lay off them. That isn’t consistent with someone dropping the ball on purpose at the end. Movie isn’t close to as good otherwise.
Agree 100%. “Can’t hit ’em, can’t lay off ’em”.
I agree with this guy:
(Hope a copy & paste is acceptable)
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?
If you think about it from the practical standpoint – could she have dropped it on purpose? It was a bang-bang play, Kit ran through a stop sign at third base and no one expected her to go home. Dottie had a couple of seconds at most to think about what was happening, all while she was watching for the ball, keeping her eye on Kit, making the catch, bracing for impact… Was it even possible in that split second for her to go through the mental process of deciding to drop the ball? Seems unlikely to me. It seems like instinct and muscle memory would take over and she wouldn’t be capable of making a conscious decision in that short time frame, with everything else going on, to go against all her training and competitive spirit in order to make her sister happy.
I have a friend that was a high level volleyball referee and I asked him once if he ever struggled staying impartial if he was reffing a game where he didn’t personally like one of the teams. He said that he thought it would be far too obvious because the calls happen in split seconds – in or out – and the delay it would take his brain to process the thoughts about his preferred outcome on a particular play would be unnatural and noticeable. I think that’s how it would have been for Dottie and Kit, too. It happened too fast for her to think it through and make the decision to drop the ball, without it looking intentional.
Yes, she dropped it on purpose. But I love the debate, because both sides have legitimate arguments. On a side note, I watched it with my teenage daughters, both competitive softball players, and they also believe Dottie dropped it on purpose. Either way, it makes for a great ending.
Of course she dropped in on purpose. The movie drives home again and again that Dottie was the ultimate athlete. She didn’t lose that athletic edge. She wasn’t finally beat in athletic competition by Kit because Kit had more heart.
Dottie left because she was over it. She had the fame. She had reached the athletic peak and it wasn’t what all she wanted out of life. She came back out of a sense of obligation. And in that moment of the collision, Dottie knew that Kit, on a personal level, both wanted and needed the victory more than Dottie did. She knew that Kit would be devastated by being out there and losing yet again to the sister that could do no wrong.
And so Dottie turned that moment into a win-win act of plausibly deniable grace. She gained cover to exit the game by ceding the spotlight while simultaneously thrusting an otherwise deserving (and desperately hoping) Kit into it. And it was precisely her ability to have the capacity to make that choice that makes the move quintessentially a Dottie move. As was the theme throughout, Dottie had control.
The conclusion was not a triumph of Kit over Dottie. It was Dottie finding the moment to let everybody win.
The look of fear on Dottie’s face as she sees Kit racing home is what tells me that her explanation of wanting it less is accurate, and that she did not drop it on purpose. But I do love the debate
This “wanting it less” and “wanting it more” is psychobabble bullshit.
It’s a work of fiction. You will find that lots of works of fiction include things that are not based on reality.
You might as well say that the Force is mystical bullshit; why are Obi-Wan and Luke so concerned about it? It’s not bullshit to them.
I don’t have strong feelings about this for two reasons. First, I didn’t love the movie as much as a lot of people did. And second, it’s a movie and not real life, so we’re all free to interpret ambiguity any way we see fit.
But I will say this: had it occurred to me at the end of the only time I watched the movie (in a theater in 1992) that the writers had wanted me to think that Dottie dropped the ball intentionally, I would have felt cheated. It would have, in the course of 30 seconds, undermined entirely the Dottie character we had been taught to admire for two hours. To drop the ball intentionally would have been to betray Kit (making the greatest accomplishment of her young life an act of unwanted charity); Dugan (whose decision to dry out was made out of loyalty to the women he coached); and herself (“the hard is what makes it good,” was as much a summary of her life’s philosophy as Dugan’s).
I simply took Dottie at her word: “You wanted it more.” Meaning that for Dottie, holding onto the ball meant winning a championship and validating herself as a ballplayer. For Kit, dislodging the ball meant validating her individual identity and worth as something other than Dottie’s little sister. No contest.
The way the scene plays out with the ball trickling from her hand well after the brunt of the impact is absorbed is what makes it seem intentional for me. That said, I believe this was done entirely for the visual effect and I think the intent of the movie was that it was not intentional.
To me, Dottie got complacent and thought she knew her sister’s weaknesses and let her concentration lapse. She was visibly shocked when Kit hit the high one. She was again visibly shocked when Kit rounded toward home and Dottie looked tentative when realizing that she was about to get run over. Dottie is bigger and stronger than Kit and yet still gets run over. If she’s intent on letting Kit have the moment, then why not fumble the catch or miss the tag or any number of other options? Why let your sister physically dominate you like that? No sibling is doing that.
Where does Callaghan say “yes,” here or in the linked LA Times article? Or is it somewhere else?
“I simply wasn’t willing to send my younger sister into a lifelong haze of regret and pain? ”
That’s not the situation. If she’s out, they just move on to extras.
Which one is Dottie and which one is Kate?
Dottie is the redhead and “Kate” as you say is actually called Kit, Dottie’s younger, shorter sister.
I don’t know he rules of baseball so well, but what I don’t understand is how Kit is not out when Dottie clearly catches the ball way before Kit reaches the base. I’m British and in all of our sort of similar games, if the ball is caught before the batter reaches the base, they are out. Can anyone clear this up for me?
Yes. If there is no open base behind you, you can be “forced out” by a fielder holding the ball and tagging the base you must run to. For instance, if you are on first base and the batter hits a ground ball, you must run to second because the batter must run to first. You can be put out by someone tagging secobd base while holding the ball before you reach it.
If, though, you were on second base when the same ball was struck, you would not have to run to third base because the batter does not have to run to second. In that instance, if you elect to run to third then it is necessay to tag you with the ball (or ball in the glove)to put you out.
Thanks for the reply, Rory. I have followed your explanation so far and it makes sense, but if the ball is in the glove before the batter/runner arrives at the base then surely they are out, no?
From what I see in the film Dottie has the ball in the glove i.e has tagged Kit before Kit arrives at the base. According to your explanation that would make Kit out, right? So why isn’t she? Dottie catches the ball then Kit runs into her and she drops it, but the ball was in the glove before Kit’s arrival at the base.
The only thing I can think of is that on 4th base you have to physically tag the batter/runner with the ball for them to be out,instead of just having the ball in the glove, which isn’t done in the case of Kit and Dottie.
This is one of my favourite films and it’s something that’s bugged me for years.
Sorry for the delay. No, home base is not the important factor. What’s important is that, until she is tagged, Kit has the option to turn around and go back to third base , so that the next batter can try to drive her in.
It’s a strange thing I never thought of before: you can always put the runner out by tagging him/her. You only have the option to put a runner out by tagging the base in the special case when the runner does not have the option of running back to the previous base. And yet that special case is by far the more common way of putting someone out.
It is indeed an interesting question but there is a definitive answer, even if it isn’t the one people seem to want. She drops the ball on purpose. There is a scene earlier in the movie where Dottie is knocked over on an identical play, and she holds on to the ball. Why is that scene there if not to show that on that play, Dottie holds on to the ball? We may not like it, but the movie is unambiguous: she drops it on purpose.
The thing that matters is that Coach Dugan doesn’t ask Dottie how on earth she dropped the ball. None of her teammates asks either. So we are led to believe that they all still love and respect her regardless of the outcome. We’re the ones who think it’s a huge controversy, and they are the ones playing for the title (there’s some irony there). So either (i) they accept that Dottie tried her best, she’s a great player, she got it knocked out of her hand on a bang-bang play, it happens, or (ii) they come to terms with the fact that Dottie, the consummate pro and vet, gave it away to her kid sister. That’s a beautiful story, and Dugan is the lens we (as men) or the team (as women) should view it through. Maybe it’s a womenfolk thing that giving in is not a sign of weakness or treachery.