Those of us who grew up loving baseball — going to games with Dad, learning to keep score, listening to the hometown broadcasts on the local AM radio stations — know these things to be true: Hot dogs, especially with mustard, taste better at the ballpark. The universal designated hitter is a ridiculous idea. (Sorry, MLB, it’s not going to be the boon to offense you think it’s going to be.) And 1992’s “A League of Their Own” is unquestionably one of the best baseball movies of all time. Even if you’ve never seen it (and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?), you know its most famous line, delivered by Tom Hanks as washed-up former pro ballplayer who thinks he’s now slumming it by managing a team of girls in short skirts: “There’s no crying in baseball!”
So the team behind the new “A League of Their Own” series — which debuts on Prime Video at the height of baseball season, as two dozen or so teams try to grab a piece of the playoff action — are walking on hallowed ground. Messing with the feel-good story of the World War II–era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that director Penny Marshall and players Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Madonna, and Rosie O’Donnell captured with such grit and heart would be foul play indeed.
For their eight-episode drama, creators Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”) and Abbi Jacobson (co-creator and star of the outrageous and outrageously funny, “Broad City”) don’t try to re-create Marshall’s movie or resurrect its Rockford Peaches. Instead, this “League” starts with an entirely new lineup, anchored by Carson (Jacobson), who’s unhappy with her husband and can’t seem to pinpoint why; BFFs Jo (Melanie Field), the most-feared hitter in the league, and Greta (D’Arcy Carden of “The Good Place”), whose glamour-girl looks belie an impressive swing and defensive agility; Lupe (Roberta Colindrez) and her “hermano” Jess (Kelly McCormack), who lives to defy the Peaches’ no-pants-in-public rule; and Shirley (Kate Berlant), whose pigtails perhaps explain why she’s so sheltered and believes that homosexuality spreads from one woman to another like influenza.
There were no gay characters in the movie, but there were, of course, gay AAGPBL players; in fact, 95-year-old Maybelle Blair publicly came out for the first time at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of this series. This “League” does a terrific job addressing both the camaraderie among the women — especially the often rocky, but beautifully believable relationship that develops between Carson and Greta — and the terrible reasons they need to hide their sexuality (e.g., an ugly, livelihood-threatening raid on a bar whose proprietor is a fellow Friend of Dorothy, played by guest star O’Donnell).
Nor were there any real Black characters in the movie, save for one woman who throws back an errant ball and nearly burns a hole in the pitcher’s glove. Jacobson, Graham, and their writers used that as a jumping-off point and created Maxine, aka Max, Chapman (the dynamite Chanté Adams), purportedly an amalgamation of three real-life trail-blazing Negro League players, Mamie Johnson, Toni Stone, and Connie Morgan. Max can’t be a Peach — apparently she’s not “all-American” enough — but baseball is in her blood. She wants to play so badly that she dons a newsboy cap to get a night-shift welding job at the local screw factory just to try out for that team. Max’s life beyond the diamond, especially as she tries, in vain, to follow the prescribed boyfriend-to-husband plan, could actually be a series in itself. Plus, the transitions from the Peaches’ runs, hits, swings, and slides to Max’s quips and jibes with her comic book–loving best friend Clance (Gbemisola Ikumelo) aren’t always the smoothest.
In case you’re wondering, yes, “There’s no crying in baseball” does appear in the series. And no, it isn’t growled by Nick Offerman as Coach Casey “Dove” Porter. Offerman does drop a few bons mots before he disappears (the role is much smaller than you’d expect), including this zinger: “The world is dark, but we are here to entertain these people and bring them baseball, 8 to 10 inches of calf, and all the other things that say to me America.” When you put it that way, it’s hard not to root-root-root for this League of Their Own.
“A League of Their Own” is now streaming on Prime Video.
