Yoda Reviews Baseball Movies

Madonna sure was a hottie in her day, and Rosie O'Donnells accent was so campy Smokey The Bear made sure she put her fire out.

I get you. I agree. I think it's mostly just that a lot of it's bad. I think it can work if you try to find a new angle, some comparison to life, or even just come up with an unusual turn of phrase. But when people just reference the romantic ideal of baseball without adding anything new to it, there's no point. Yes yes, we all know it's tied up in nostalgia and America's past, both good and bad, et cetera. Tell me something new if you wanna bust out the thesaurus.

The curse of empathy is immediately, without deciding to, imagining what it would be like to be any one of those women, clenching up in terror as Jimmy approached and then trying not to break down in relief the moment he passed you. It would seem incredibly manipulative, except things like that actually happened, so it's fair game.

One really nice touch is the little scuffle Jimmy has with the man delivering it. It's such a great "show, don't tell" moment in that it perfectly conveys the bond he has with the team now, where he understands he's now in a position (and in fact has an obligation) to make sure the news is delivered by someone they know and care about.

Oh yeah, Marla's great. My God, the expressions. That owl face she makes when she's revealed from underneath the cap. Gets me every time.

I didn't mention her in part because I'm explicitly trying to avoid the Review Checklist thing, in part to make sure I keep these coming out and in part because I'm determined to have fun with them, so if something isn't folding naturally into what I most want to say, I'm not going too far out of my way to include it. But if this were a review proper, Marla would definitely have come up.

As a lot of you have probably noticed, I like when films address normal, pragmatic human concerns head-on, rather than handwave them away. I like when 42 shows us Rickey and his assistants weighing the pros and cons of the various Negro League players, and I like that A League of Their Own talks openly about the need to sell the league through femininity (and how this explicitly becomes a sort of plot point later with Dottie and her famous split).

And man, the moment with her Dad, where he says it's his fault because her mother wasn't around, always stirs something. In part because of the thing I mentioned before, where everyone's overqualified: even in that tiny role, they get a great little character actor like Eddie Jones, and it makes all the difference.

Yeah, that makes me cringe so hard my head ends up in my ribcage.

And it's frustrating that this is still sort of the case. Like, I had always thought that when women gymnasts were doing their dance moves in their floor routines, it was just sort of a way to take a little breather between tumbling moves and maybe reposition themselves on the floor. Turns out it's a requirement(?!). And just generally, even now, listening to the Olympic commentary there's a lot more remarks directed toward the physical appearance of the women athletes like "She's such a pretty young lady" or "She's got such a nice smile" that I'm just not hearing at the same rate toward the men.

There was the Norwegian team a few years back that was fined for not showing up to play handball in bikini bottoms.



I do think that there's a lot of body image pressure an all athletes, not just women, but the degree to which it's verbalized to women and girls that being pretty is an important part of the game is just depressing because it's not just about having an athletic body (which is a pressure universally applied), but about needing to dress and style a certain way.

In terms of the film, I think that it's interesting to watch the way that the women themselves (Dottie in particular) realize that they are playing a game of public opinion and marketing, especially at first when people don't know what they are supposed to be enjoying about the game. What starts out being sold as a novelty---a la the puppy superbowl---ends up turning into an athletic endeavor, and you see how they have to play both sides of that equation.

I think that what's pretty amazing about the Marla character is that even if she was raised by a mother . . . she might have still been an awkward, not-so-feminine woman. And her father realizes that they live in a society where not-feminine women are not valued. She's a great character because she gets a chance to shine at something she is good at, and also because she finds someone who does treasure her for who she is.

And agreed on the casting: every actor absolutely nails their characters, even the bit parts.

I also think that the film repeatedly walks right up to the line of being saccharine or too much of a tear-jerker, but instead it lands on the right side of being sweet. The final sequence in the museum is amazing. It's another scene where no matter how many times I see it, certain lines still feel like they are taking me by surprise.

Great review, Yoda.

Now I feel like taking a break from musicals and rewatching this. It's been quite a few years since I last saw it and it's one of those movies that I kind of forget about and ignore for awhile, but then when I come back to it it's always a really great experience.

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Yoda, I haven't seen very many baseball movies (this is not a sport that I follow. I know, I'm sorry. Glad you love it!), so I'm not following this thread, but I'm also interested in your review of this, so when you get to reviewing this movie, can you tag me in the post, so I will know to come back to the thread? Thank you!

For this cinemaniac and baseball fan, Eastwood's acting foray into the Baseball Scout/Agent subgenre is less successful than both the Disney sports flick Million Dollar Arm (2014) starring Jon Hamm and The Scout (1994) directed by Michael Ritchie (The Bad News Bears, Fletch) and starring Albert Brooks. Though none of the three are anywhere near top-tier movies.

But to each their own.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

For what it's worth, I think this is shifting. Not vanishing; people are always going to be interested in sex and people will always want to look at women, particularly the supernaturally fit ones who play professional sports. But the more specific phenomenon we're talking about, where it's an inevitable part of the marketing, feels like a foot-in-the-door thing rather than a permanent state of affairs. The last few years, from the women's soccer team to the rise of Caitlin Clark, seems to represent a genuine uptick in interest in women's sports qua sports. 10 years ago I knew almost nobody (and no men) who watched these things for their own sake, and now I know a handful. I went to a women's football game last year (I had a friend on the team) and really enjoyed it.

Part of this is just the amassing of an historical record. This is a really underrated part of the appeal of sports in general: hanging around long enough to establish history and precedent so when someone breaks a record, it actually means something, in the way it obviously can't if you're the "top scorer of all time" in a league that's only a few years old. It's also (check out this perfect segue back on topic) a big part of baseball's appeal, because it's been going for over a century and a lot of its numbers are surprisingly comparable across eras. It would not surprise me if things like the WNBA were always going to need a couple of decades to lay that historical foundation before giving off that same sense of import.

Yeah, I like that it plays into what we know about Dottie: her cool, indifferent pragmatism to everything, both the game on a granular level and the game as a whole. She doesn't mind giving them a show because she's sure of who she is and doesn't feel she's compromising anything by playing into it. It's just a calculation, like what pitch to call behind the plate. She's just calling another play. Apart from just being interesting as a plot point, and being true-to-life, it dovetails really nicely with the character.

I think the film also gives the viewer a little jab in the ribs when you see her just after her wedding. It's a nice little reminder that, outside of the extremes of beauty, a lot of perception about appearance is about superficial presentation, signaling, the amount of effort you put in that day. Stuff that could change in an instant, and therefore don't reflect anything real.

Low key the most interesting thing about her marriage, though, is that there's no handwringing at all about leaving the team. Baseball is just easy for her, a given, the same way it is for Dottie, so just like Dottie she can take it or leave it. "What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly." She's never felt pretty, never felt valued for herself, so when she does it's an easy decision to give herself over to that.

Yeah, this is dead-on. And I wonder how much Tom Hanks, specifically, is responsible, since the other film that immediately comes to mind that fits this description is Forrest Gump, which is my go to example film for "this could have spilled over into maudlin dreck SO easily and I don't know why it didn't."

I strongly suspect it's mostly down to Penny Marshall, though. She is, forgive the gendered term, very workmanlike. But I think she has a superpower for casting the right people and extracting the best performances from them. It's not a very noticeable skill, in fact it's a kind of selfless skill because when you do it well the praise goes to the actors and writers. But I think it's ultimately why this movie works.

I also think being really consistently funny helps. Schmaltz lands different when you can follow it with a good joke, as an emotional release valve.

Oh, fully agreed! I think that looking at (and, sure, enjoying in a hubba-hubba way as long as you're talking about adults) the bodies of really fit, accomplished people is one of the appeals of professional sports. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is the incredible range of body types and what it means to be "fit" or "athletic" in different sports. This is also not something that is gendered. And I also don't think that there's any shame in being attracted to fit/strong/whatever people.

But it's been really nice to see some of the uniforms in sports actually shifting to what functionally makes more sense. Many props to people like Serena Williams and those handball players for pushing things forward.

This is why I think that Kit continuing to play is so key. It's really nice to see Marla get married, but it's also nice to have a character whose happy ending isn't about a relationship. (And having Dottie be someone who is already marries frees her up to have her plot arc center entirely on her relationship with her sister. A much lesser movie would have her getting together with Hanks or, heaven forbid, competing with her sister for the love of some guy).

I mean . . . sort of. For someone like Marla or Dottie, this would be their one and only chance to play sports professionally. And that's not to say it's right or wrong for them to walk away, but it's painful to think that such talented people were given such a brief window to exercise that talent in real competition. Marla is definitely thinking long-term, but it's sad that she has to make that compromise.

I honestly think that it works so well because it does not center romance, but instead is focused on the complex dynamics between the women, and the relationship they develop with their manager. This film was such a rarity: it was a movie about adults, but appropriate for kids/middle schoolers, and it had the thrills of sports. The casting, like we've discussed, is perfection. I think that it also has a really interesting waterfall effect, where the character development comes in waves instead of them all having a big moment at the end of the film.

I remember when they came out with ESPN's Body Issue, I thought "this is just another lame appeal to sex." Basically ESPN trying to do it's own Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. If people want that, fine, but it's kind of shameless. But to their credit, they seem to have actually stuck to the stated goal, and some of the photos are genuinely beautiful. I'm not surprised that the human body can be a work of art (though I also think people who say that in defense of nudity are usually just there for the nudity, like an inverted fig leaf), but I sure am surprised they've followed through this long.

The idea of her having a romantic subplot with Dugan is hurting my brain. That would be unbearably dumb. It's to the film's credit and intelligence that this hadn't even occurred to me, jokingly or otherwise.

I'm guessing your reticence here is because you're uncomfortable with the idea that marriage is her ultimate goal, at the expense of some other type of personal fulfillment, since that's a trope of sorts.

I might share your reticence if that's all we got, if all the girls took off the moment someone would have them. But that's not what happens: we get, effectively, one of each. We get players like Kit, where it's all about the game. We get players like Marla who's happy to walk away for love. And we get ambivalence from Dottie, who's already found love but still vasillates between giving immediate priority to her relationship as opposed to baseball. And she has the strongest reason of all to leave: he's back from war, having survived a major injury! And she still choose baseball.

I like that we get it all. And I particularly like that Marla doesn't seem to even think twice. I think it's true to a character that had never been appreciated that way, and speaks to the way we kind of take for granted the things that come more naturally to us, as well.

It's always hard to tell why something charming charms us, but I think what you're saying about it not centering romance is a pretty big factor, at least for me. It's just so, so hard for those kinds of subplots to do anything new or interesting. Hell, to avoid being so utterly predictable that I feel the impulse to check my phone while they're doing all the obligatory things they have to do with it. That's probably where my feeling that every scene matters, and has something fun for us, comes from. It never goes on autopilot, never does anything I can completely predict and find myself waiting for the end of. It doesn't, as they say, take any plays off.

I picked up a Body Issue one time at, like, an orthopedist's office I think. I actually thought it was really cool. It featured male and female athletes, and the range of body types on display was super neat. And I really appreciated that each image was captioned with an explanation of why this person's body reflected the sport they played in. Everything from noticing torso length on a swimmer, to talking about the strong glutes you need to be a professional catcher in baseball. We're also often fed "athletic" bodies that look the same, so I really liked seeing shot-putters or football players who distinctly were not thin and did not have six-packs. I briefly had a Sports Illustrated subscription, but I cancelled it after getting their swimsuit content. It was just all unabashed male gaze and I thought it was gross. It had literally nothing to do with sports at all.

Their relationship is classic "enemies to lovers" setup, and instead they are two adults of different genders who grow into a deep friendship. Imagine!

It's not about her wanting to be married. I think that wanting to be married is a fine goal for someone to have (sort of, it's a little dependent, but whatever). It's more that she's walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and no one---including the person who is supposed to love and support her the most--seems to be taking a moment to reflect on that. Now, I recognize that she's a supporting character, and the film can't take 10 minutes to unpack her decision. It's a happy ending to her character arc and I am happy for her. It's also true that she wouldn't have met him if she hadn't traveled with the team, so it's neat that her talents got her out into the world where she could find love.

Yeah, exactly this. The idea that physical perfection is relative to goal is extremely interesting.

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a defensive lineman years ago named Casey Hampton. Hampton was 6'1" and 325 lbs. The local color commentator famously said, in a line I will never forget, "he has arms like legs, and legs like people."

The more I think about this the more I realize most of my favorite films basically eschew romance entirely unless it's completely integral to the plot or drives a major narrative decision. Probably not a coincidence.

It almost feels like the old poster trope of "I laughed, I cried" convinced people at some point that every movie had to have a little bit of everything.

I think that's basically it, she's a secondary character and this is all we know about her. Since they can't possibly delve into that stuff, they do the next best thing, and show the spectrum of outcomes among several different characters. Pretty smart.

LOL.

Agreed. I think that, watching it now, what mostly stands out to me is that it's missing a few more characters who could exist outside of the traditional marriage structure (because even Kit comes to that reunion with a huge family) and/or some queer representation. But given the time that the film portrays (the 40s), and the time in which it was made (family film in the 90s), I get the omission. (We can just supplement with a viewing of A Secret Love, lol).

You two are making me feel like I need to go back and re-evaluate A League Of Their Own.

Your feelings are correct.

To be clear, I liked the movie, it just felt very safe and on the rails and Hollywood to me at the time.

There are many ways in which it is safe and on the rails and Hollywood.

And then there's the part where myself and dozens and dozens of girls I knew finally got to see a movie about women athletes and sibling dynamics in a way that I can literally not name another movie like it. (You might nod at Bend It Like Beckham, but that movie falls at the "falling for your sexy coach" hurdle).

I'm glad you got that out of it, but I think when people hear that they think "oh, so it's not good so much as it's valuable." People can decide for themselves how much they care about that, though it's a completely separate mode of evaluation from film criticism proper.

I'm not a girl, and am not giving it points for any perceived social good...and I like it a lot. It's just a good movie.

I concede it looks boilerplate, and maybe occasionally it is. That's actually one of the reasons I likened it to Ocean's Eleven. There's nothing really groundbreaking about that film, is there? But it's just done so well that it elevates the entire experience. A League of Their Own is like that. It's smart, efficient, funny, and dense, but all inside a movie that looks like it's going to be none of those things, and probably didn't even need to be. Sometimes talented people "play down" to the material, and sometimes they lift it up above their heads and twirl it around like a roadside sign spinner.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Fair. Yes, it is a really well acted, well written, very funny movie whose merits are not at all confined to centering on women athletes. At the same time, however, these protagonists are interesting partly because they were not characters we'd seen before, and because the exploration of sibling rivalry in the context of athletics was different and unique. This is both a strength of the film as a film AND something that made it particularly noteworthy (valuable) for me and my friends at the time it came out.

People should watch it because it's a solid comedy/drama, but the impression it made on a generation of young women is worthy of note. It is, by far, the most frequently discussed movie in my circle of lady-friends.