A League Of Their Own at Memorial Union Terrace

Though the film may have caused the first stirrings of feminist ideology in a generation of impressionable athletes, its combination core as a pure baseball comedy is what has made it stick. A League Of Their Own tells the mostly-fictionalized account of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in its prime. As Major League Baseball players continue to get shipped overseas as soldiers for WWII, the businessmen of the American dynasty quickly notice the faltering profits. They eventually land on the novel idea of a professional women’s league to fill the time and their pockets. Director Penny Marshall and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel meet viewers with the familiarity of America’s Pastime to ease some into the fact that women can be ballplayers, actually. It also wouldn’t be the dramedy of resilience that it is without its acknowledgment of the barriers women faced in the 1940s, especially those who stepped outside the boundaries of the home when the war made it essential. —Alisyn Amant