Fascinating Behind-The-Scenes Details About A League Of Their Own

“All I did all summer was play baseball,” Tom Hanks told The Bill Simmons Podcast in 2021. “I had all my kids with me, I had all my family with me, it was a [hot] summer in the Midwest. We lived in a house in the middle of cornfields. We went to Burger King at night and Dairy Queen in the afternoon. It was a great summer and my entire family still speaks about it.”

Lori Petty played Kit Keller in A League of Their Own — and people let her know it to this day. “There’s like two or three things that people yell out of cars from that movie,” Petty told The Ringer in 2017. “They’ll yell, ‘Lay off the high ones!,’ and I’ll have to say, ‘I like the high ones!,’ and they scream their heads off.”

The internet’s full of debates about whether or not Dottie Hinson — played by Geena Davis — deliberately let her kid sister, Kit, win the game at the end of the movie. Yet the filmmakers think Dottie would never, ever do such a thing. Co-writer Kelly Candaele told The Ringer, “You ask yourself, ‘Would I betray my teammates like that, in a World Series game, so my bratty sister could win?’ I mean, it makes no sense.”

If you couldn’t play baseball, then you weren’t going to be able to play a part in this movie. Tracy Reiner — aka Betty “Spaghetti” — told espnW in 2017, “There were about 2,000 girls auditioning at USC with Rod Dedeaux and his coaches and trainers were going to evaluate the girls to see if you were trainable.” Luckily, Reiner already had some experience in the field.

When the movie came out, Hanks had nothing but nice things to say about his female co-stars. “Rosie O’Donnell is just a great baseball player. So is Freddie Simpson. And so was Robin Knight. Those are three very, very great baseball players,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 1992. “Lori Petty is a monster up on the mound. She’ll take your head off.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone but Geena Davis as Dottie Hinson — but she was far from the filmmakers’ first choice. Sean Young was one name that’d made it to the top of the casting list. And director Penny Marshall had originally wanted Demi Moore. Yet Moore fell pregnant at the point that casting started in earnest and the role was actually given to someone else before Davis stepped up to the plate…

Yep, Debra Winger was set to portray Dottie until shooting was almost ready to start. Marshall recalled in her memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, that Winger actually walked out when she discovered that Madonna had also been cast in the film. The star apparently felt this made the project “an Elvis movie” and wanted no further part in it.

Rosie O’Donnell very nearly didn’t play Doris because she was in a sitcom at the time of filming. Casting director Ellen Lewis told The Ringer that Marshall had to call in a favor at Fox to allow O’Donnell to rejig her schedule. The actor had both A League of Their Own and the comedy series Stand by Your Man come out in 1992.

The baseball tryouts the actors went through weren’t just for show. “We were trying to get actresses who actually played baseball, so that narrowed down the field right away,” producer Robert Greenhut told espnW. But it also meant that the casting process required more time than usual. “We all quickly learned how hard it is to throw from first base to third to get somebody out,” Greenhut explained. “It looks so easy when you see it on television.”

Davis didn’t get as much time at bat as her fellow actors — thanks to her late casting. But she took to the game like a fish to water and was soon impressing the coaches. “I had always avoided playing sports,” the star told espnW. “I assumed I was uncoordinated. I was always so tall and awkward. That changed my life, learning how to play a sport.”

The biggest star in the cast was, of course, Madonna. But of all the problems having a major music icon on your team might throw up, the cast was initially stumped by a very unusual one. “We were like, ‘What are we even supposed to call her? You can’t call her Madonna! That’s like calling her the Empire State Building!’” Petty told The Ringer. Marshall decided instead to call O’Donnell and Madonna “Ro and Mo.”

Jimmy Dugan — the role played by Tom Hanks — was supposed to be past his prime. That meant the actor had to put on a bit of weight for the part. “I ate a lot of barbecue pork ribs and we made our trips to the Dairy Queen,” Hanks told ET. “You can do a lot by eating what’s called ‘traditional, American cuisine.’”

The filmmakers needed plenty of real extras to fill out the stadiums for their fictional baseball games. But being a background artist in a big movie can mean spending lots of time doing very little. For A League of Their Own, though, Rosie O’Donnell would sometimes entertain the crowds with renditions of popular Madonna songs — much to the music star’s chagrin!

Megan Cavanagh had the role of Marla Hooch and told espnW that shooting the movie “was an amazing experience.” She did reveal, though, a rather odd event involving Madonna. “I remember one night, Madonna had a birthday party that we all attended at her house,” the actor said. “She made Rice Krispies treats for herself.” Somehow, it’s just not what we thought Madonna would eat…

You know the bruise we’re talking about — if you’ve seen the movie, it’s hard to miss it. But we didn’t realize it was a real-life one. Renee Coleman — the actor who portrayed Alice Gaspers — picked it up while sliding into base for a shot. “That was real. That was not one pinch of makeup,” Tracy Reiner confirmed to espnW. “She had that bruise for, like, ten years.”

One of the best moments for actor Tracy Reiner was getting to play baseball at Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs. And as if that weren’t enough, the night was no doubt made more memorable because of some very special guests. “We even had some of the actual [All-American Girls Professional Baseball League] players join us,” she told espnW.

Is there anything worse for an actor than getting injured right before you’re due to shoot a movie? “I broke my nose during practice leading up to filming,” Anne Ramsay revealed to espnW. “It was the first day that we switched from modern-day mitts to authentic, vintage mitts from the ’40s.” Thankfully, it wasn’t the end of the game for Ramsay, who still went on to play Helen Haley in A League of Their Own. But we bet it hurt!

Lori Petty brought Kit to vivid life in A League of Their Own — but the part might’ve gone to another actor had it not been for a wince-inducing injury. Yes, Moira Kelly was apparently set to take on the role before she got hurt rehearsing a different 1992 sports movie, The Cutting Edge. We say “got hurt,” but as Kelly’s co-star, D.B. Sweeney, told EW in 2014, “[Kelly] landed funny on a jump and she broke her leg.” Ouch!

“No one knew what to expect from the world’s most recognizable, popular cultural icon,” Hanks explained to ET in 1992. He also admitted, “She had a distinct personality and that’s kind of interesting to get used to after a while.” In the end, though, it was all good in the dugout. “I did end up liking her. I thought she was neat. I thought she was cool,” the actor said.

It isn’t uncommon for movies like A League of The Own to feature a romantic subplot between the two main stars. And this film might’ve been no different had it not been for some unfavorable test screenings. It seems that one version of the film had Hanks’ and Davis’ characters making out — but the audience felt it wasn’t true to Dottie’s personality.

People love Jon Lovitz in A League of Their Own, with some of his lines going down in sports movie history. Yet Marshall actually cut out a monologue the actor had given in one scene, arguing that he was already “in the film just enough.” Lovitz apparently wasn’t best pleased, feeling that the speech could’ve earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Tom Hanks was comfortable being one of the few men involved with the film — but that didn’t stop the cast from teasing another male co-star, Jon Lovitz. “They’re like, ‘Jon, don’t you know that when you get a bunch of women together, over time they start menstruating together?’” the actor told The Ringer. “And I’m like, ‘Why would I know that?!’”

A League of Their Own ends with a poignant sequence featuring the characters years after their baseball-playing prime. “One of the biggest challenges of the film was casting the older women,” casting director Ellen Lewis told The Ringer. “Some of the people involved in the movie wanted to do old-age makeup and I was really against that. I thought it was a big mistake… I really like a truthfulness in the casting.”

We know and love Tom Hanks for both his on- and off-screen personas. There’s a reason why the man’s known as America’s Dad! But part of the appeal of the Jim Dugan character for Hanks was that he didn’t have to be a “charm monster.” “I got to be everything they never, ever let me do without it having to be the main thrust of the movie,” the actor told ET.

Geena Davis has stated that Hanks wasn’t anything like his character in real life. “Tom would take it upon himself to entertain the crowd,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020. “He’d put baseball hats on bats and did a little puppet show from behind the dugout, for example, or he’d lead everyone in a cheer: ‘Give me an E!’”

The cast had an unusual ritual when it came time to do their makeup. “We’d play the Jesus Christ Superstar album,” Davis recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. “Our long-haired makeup guy played Jesus; Tom played Caiaphas. The ADs would schedule Tom’s time in the trailer to coincide with singing his role.” Well, whatever gets you through, we suppose!

A League of Their Own may be just a movie, but its influence is long and far-reaching. Jessica Mendoza, who won a gold medal in softball at the 2004 Olympics, is just one of many who’s thankful for the film. “If anyone asked me what was the most influential movie in my life, it’s [A League of Their Own],” she told espnW.

Lori Petty didn’t mince her words in 2021 when Vulture asked her about the period-appropriate baseball outfit she had to wear. “It was horrible,” the actor revealed. “It was so hot. Oh my God. The wig, the hat, the wool socks, and the creepy spiked shoes… it was terrible.” She even revealed that the shoes caused her to break her leg and have a cast on for “half the movie.”

Petty confirmed to Vulture that the cast did have a lot of fun making the movie — despite the injuries. “Six of us rented a house with a pool that cost us less than a hotel room,” she said. “Francis Ford Coppola sent us cases of his wine. It was just awesome. We were definitely a family having a gas.”

It wasn’t all fun and baseball games behind the scenes, though. During her 2021 interview with Vulture, Petty casually dropped in that the cast “all had to have bodyguards because some man got out of jail and said he was going to do something to Madonna.” The actor added that there were basically wanted posters warning people about this dangerous man. Yikes!

One of the many laugh-out-loud moments in the movie is when Jon Lovitz’s character yells at a cow, “Will you shut up?!” And it’ll come as little surprise to learn that this line wasn’t in the original script. On the day they filmed that scene, Lovitz was apparently thrown off by the cow constantly mooing. So after director Penny Marshall asked him to tell it to be quiet, he came up with this out-of-the-park line.

Look again at the famous scene in which Lori Petty’s Kit crashes into Geena Davis’ Dottie. Petty told Vulture that if you watch carefully you’ll catch a glimpse of some very modern undergarments. “Under the uniform’s satin shorts, I had on Calvin Klein boxer briefs because you don’t want to get dirt up in there,” the actor revealed.

In 1987 the public TV station KCET showcased a documentary called A League of Their Own, co-created by Kim Wilson and Kelly Candaele. The pair had been inspired by the latter’s mom, Helen Callaghan, who’d been a center fielder in the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. And it was when the doc later made its way to PBS that it caught the attention of movie director Penny Marshall.

There are plenty of aspects of A League of Their Own that are fictional; this is a movie, after all! But the Rockford Peaches were an actual team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. There were 15 teams that made up the league at the peak of its popularity, too. These included the Peoria Redwings, the Kalamazoo Lassies, and the Chicago Colleens.

Many details in the movie are historically accurate. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League began life as the All-American Girls Softball League during the early 1940s. It was the brainchild of Philip K. Wrigley, who was worried about the impact World War II would have on professional baseball. The women’s league only survived until 1954, though, because it became less popular after the war ended.

Geena Davis’ Dottie was inspired by the life of Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek. This ball player was the real-life Rockford Peaches’ first baseman and was quite the star in her day. Kamenshek once told the Marquette Magazine, “Eventually, we won [the fans] over. At first, they just came to see the skirts and then we showed them we could play.”

Wilson and Candaele’s original documentary came out in 1987 and the movie adaptation hit the big screen in 1992. There was a lot of hard work in between, too. “We used the documentary to write the story, then to sell the idea for a feature,” Wilson explained to espnW. “We were completely obsessed with this idea. It took close to five years… It didn’t happen in a week.”

While Penny Marshall was the woman responsible for bringing the story to Hollywood’s attention, she wasn’t always in line to direct the movie. The first director attached to the project was David Anspaugh, who’d previously had success with the basketball classic Hoosiers. Marshall had been busy directing Awakenings but she stepped up when Anspaugh eventually struck out.

Marshall admitted to a panel in 2005 that she “didn’t even know” that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had operated until she watched the documentary. The writers of the movie’s screenplay, Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, had also been unaware of it. “It was like this complete blank spot,” Ganz — a huge baseball fan — told espnW.

Amazon Prime released a new TV version of A League of Their Own in 2022. But two people who probably aren’t going to watch it are the original writers, Mandel and Ganz. “We take our characters to where we want them to stop,” Ganz explained to Rolling Stone in 2020. “So I’m not particularly excited about seeing another version or a continuation or anything like that.”