A League of Their Own: Deep Thoughts About Bittersweet Feminism, the Threat of Girl Athletes, and What's Wrong With Dottie and Kit's Rivalry Artwork

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

80s and 90s movies and early 2000s tv may be called stupid shit by some, but you know it matters. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, sister podcasters who love well-crafted fiction and one another. In this comedy podcast, we look at the classic movies of our Gen X childhood and adolescence, analyzing film tropes to uncover the cultural commentary on romance, money, religion, mental health, and more. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, comedy to drama to horror, we use feminism, our super smart brains, and each other to uncover the lessons lurking behind the nostalgia of pop culture. Come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

A League of Their Own: Deep Thoughts About Bittersweet Feminism, the Threat of Girl Athletes, and What's Wrong With Dottie and Kit's Rivalry

March 24, 2026 • Sister podcasters raised by 80s and 90s movies: Tracie Guy-Decker, lover of animation, Muppets, comedy, and feminism & Emily Guy Birken, storytelling nerd, mental health advocate, and pop culture aficionado • Episode 129

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There's no crying in baseball!

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie returns to the 1992 Penny Marshall comedy A League of Their Own. Both Guy sisters loved the unabashed feminism and women-centered storytelling of this film when it debuted, and much of movie holds up to their Gen X nostalgia. Marshall lets the audience see how being part of a team creates a sense of belonging and self-worth, how women must excel as an athlete and a lady to be taken seriously, and how putting any kind of qualifier before the word "athlete" becomes a threat to the status quo.

But the feminism isn't entirely joyful, in part because this isn't just 90s era pop culture, but historical fiction based on a real baseball league. And unfortunately, the real-world misogyny Marshall illuminates via feel-good feminism hasn't gone away. It's alive and well and continues to devalue women's abilities, skills, and contributions even in 2026.

Don't worry! There's no need to run to catch this podcast. Just put on your headphones and listen in!

Cold Open Overperforming Femininity

SPEAKER_01 0:00

They end up needing to perform both the coded masculine athleticism very, very well, but also the coded, whatever their other thing is, like in this case, women, their femininity, they are forced to overperform their femininity in order to stay in the role of athlete. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just up culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

Pop Culture Is Still Culture

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I'm Tracy Guy Decker, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit. Because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1992 film A League of Their Own with my sister, Emily Guy Birkin, and with you. Let's dive in. I know you've seen this movie. We may have seen it together the first thing we did. We talked about it multiple times. So, but tell me, what's in your head? Like, what's the furniture in your mind about League of Their Own? There's no crying in baseball. Yep, for me, that's number one as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I remember this film pretty well. I remember Gina Davis in it being amazing.

Lines We Remember And Why

SPEAKER_00 1:20

I remember Madonna. You know, what if my my tunic comes undone and my bosoms fly out? Because Madonna is actually a pretty good actress, but she's still kind of playing Madonna.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Less so in this film, I feel like, in than I mean, we recently talked about one of her films with Dick Tracy. And I think the writing and the directing are better on this one, and so is Madonna's performance, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah. I remember there's a sister relationship between Gina Davis's character and her younger sister, played by Laurie Petty, that resonated with me because of us. I remember really not liking aspects of you just reminded me, I could not have told you her ki her the character's name, but um one player who was considered unattractive, her and her name was Marla. There was one point where they had to take like I I can't remember what they call it, but like lady lessons, lessons on how to be a lady, finishing school, finishing school, and they were asking, like, okay, what do you recommend for each of these people? And when they got to Marla, the recommendations, lots of night games. It was like, ew. But then the thing that I have carried with me for years about this movie, and I don't know if you remember this moment, was it was years after it had had been in the theater, it was on TV and happened to be on. And at the end of the film, when all there is a museum about the league, and yeah, it's in the Hall of Fame, the buttons. The Hall of Hall of Fame. They have a new exhibit. Yes. And all the women come back. And Lori Pett, uh what are the characters' names? I'm not gonna remember. I don't know. Kit is the younger sister, Lori Petty, and Dottie is the older sister, paid by Gina Davis. So Dottie and Kit meet each other at this exhibit, and it's clear they haven't seen each other in years. And you and I both were like, what? And our parents were like, what's so surprising? And you and I both were like, but they're sisters. And that has stuck with me, the fact that you and I are both like, how do you go years without seeing your sister? So there are other things, but that those are the biggies that are in my head. So tell me, what why are we talking about it today? What's at stake?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah, the reason I think it came to my attention again now is because actually Netflix has a new, uh not that new 2022, but they did like a

Why Revisit It Now

SPEAKER_01 4:05

limited series where they rebooted it and then it they address some of what's missing in this. There's a very brief. I haven't seen it. I haven't, so I will not be talking about the Netflix reboot. Yeah. But it also addresses the there's one moment in the movie in the Penny Marshall film where a black woman is watching and picks up a foul ball and tosses it and like she throws it over the cutoff man, so to speak, all the way to like the next player who then like takes her gloves off and shakes her hand because it was thrown so hard. And so there's this like very brief nod to the fact that all baseball, including this women's league in the 40s, was segregated. And I understand that the reboot addresses that like more head on. So anyway, I think that maybe that was like why it was like more in my attention. But I just I loved this movie so much. I thought it was hilarious, and I loved all of the different women. I loved, as you say, the sister relationship. Although there are things about the dynamic that feel trite and simplified in terms of their rivalry that I don't think is necessary. But anyway, that's an aside. Those are sort of the things that are at stake for me, and why now I think is that the Netflix series was like must have come across my feet or something. I was like, oh yeah, I love that movie. So so that's why League of Their Own, and that's why now. So let me give you a couple of postcards from The Destination and then just sketch a couple of the buckets of things I want to talk about. I'm I don't know if I'm even gonna do a synopsis in the traditional sense, because yeah, I just don't, I don't think I'm up to the task, frankly. But I want to talk about this film and like in many ways it's feminist, and it is like it's a Sisophean task to like truly be feminist because there's so there's just so money pressure is pushing back because it was so subversive. The movie makes plain that these women athletes, girls

Feminism With A Melancholy Undercurrent

SPEAKER_01 6:12

as they were called, were a threat to the culture.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

What was so subversive, the film or being an athlete?

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Being a woman athlete. Okay. Like broke the gender binary somehow in the 40s. And like the movie has this voiceover from an opinion piece of like a very conservative-looking woman talking about how this women baseball player, girl, baseball players are like destroying the fabric of the culture, of the country, and like what are our boys gonna do when they come home? The existence of female athletes, like when you put that adjective in front of the word athlete, was a threat. And so the feminism of the film is has like such a heavy lift. So I want to talk about, I want to unpack that a little bit more. I want to talk about too, it was like the because of that, there's this melancholy that I feel runs through the whole film, despite the fact that it's actually a very funny film. I also want to talk about the ways in which this film models for us how belonging changes a person's outlook. Like a lot of we see a lot of these characters like gain greater confidence because of their belonging with their teammates and with the league, which is really beautiful. I also do want to talk about Marla, who you mentioned and her treatment. She is sort of a one sour spot in this film a little bit. And it's not entirely sour, but it just rankles a little bit. And I'd like to talk about why. Since I want to talk about sort of female athletes as being kind of threatening, I think we do need to talk about masculinity as well when we talk about femininity and the ways in which this film explicitly talks about how women are disposable. I love them, but I don't need them, Mr. Harvey says. He's Mr. Wrigley. Maybe we'll get a little to the sibling rivalry and sister relationship. Maybe we may run out of time. But there's always the shit we forgot to say.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

So before we jump in, I do want to just say something that I learned when I say recently, that could have been in the last 10 years, but sports bras weren't invented until the early 70s, which our grandmother used to say she was allergic to exercise. Maybe that's why. Yeah, in the early 70s, she would have been in her 50s. And I'm like, yeah, you're allergic to exercise. Damn, that's uncomfortable. And so thinking about like the being an athletic woman in the 40s, I can't even imagine if you're a well-endowed woman who wants to play sports, yeah, that's going to be subversive. Like just the amount of effort you'd have to take to be comfortable. And if you're the sort of person who feels the need to move your body. Anyway, I that was just something that blew my mind when I learned it. And it also was just like, oh, I understand my grandmother much better now. But anyway, pray, continue.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

All right. So the movie opens with an elderly woman who I swear I thought was Gina Davis in aged makeup, but it wasn't. Like the whoever did the casting, like Kolha Kavod, amazing job. Seriously, I thought it was Gina Davis in aged makeup. It's a different woman. Anyway, so her daughter is making her go to this thing. We don't know what it is. We find out it is the opening of this new exhibit about the All-American Girls Baseball League from the 1940s. The elderly Gina Davis, who is not Gina Davis, is Dottie Hinson. She sort of fades out, and we quickly see go into 1943 in Oregon. And the most of the movie,

Plot Postcards And Key Scenes

SPEAKER_01 10:10

like seven-eighths of the movie, is this in the past. So Gina Davis plays Dottie Hinson, and she's working on a dairy, her family dairy in Oregon. Her younger sister, Kit, is played by Lori Peller. They're both working in the dairy. Lori Petty. What did I say? Peller. Oh, Keller is the character's last name. Lori Petty plays Kit Keller. Thank you. And so that's Dottie's maiden name because. Presumably. Presumably, yeah. Mm-hmm. So these two girls, actually, Dottie gets recruited for this new all-girls league. We see them playing baseball, and Dottie's a catcher. Kit is a pitcher. And we see like Kit strikes out. Dottie's giving her advice. They sort of argue with one another. John Lovitz plays a scout for this new league. And he tries to recruit Dottie. And she's like, uh, I don't know. I mean, I'm married. I don't really want to do that. Kit really wants to go. She really wants to play ball. They're talking about the league is going to pay $75 a week. They only make $30 a week at the dairy. So Kit really wants to go. And they say they're not going to. But then there's this fun scene where he's on the scout is on the train and it's pulling away from the station. And the two women like run after it and like toss their suitcases on and like jump on the train. They make one stop in another, I don't, maybe Seattle, I don't remember where, to look at another girl. It's Marla. She is an amazing hitter, like really incredible hitter. She's can hit any pitch and she's sending them there. It's raining, so it's inside and she's breaking windows and it's really great. And then they get a look at her and she's not so good looking. In part because her shoulders are hunched and her hair's all like just straight and she's like very timid, which is I think part of what makes her not attractive. Because that actress is she's fine looking. She's not Gina Davis, but who is? Yeah. So the John Lovitz is like, yeah, we'll let you know. And he's leaving. When the two sisters realize that what's happening, they put their stuff down. They're like, she's good. She needs to have a chance to try out. So we get this speech from the dad who's like, it's just her and me. Her mom died, and I raised her like a boy. It's my fault. Don't punish her for that. So anyway, he decides the scout uh lets her try out. So we get to Chicago, and there's like hundreds of women, or a hundred at least, dozens and dozens of women who are on this baseball field. This movie does montage really, really well. So we see them try out, they're all really good. We have this, we meet Madonna May is her character's name, and her best friend Doris, played by Rosie O'Donnell, and they're like real tough, like kind of New York-y kind of sense. And they're, they kind of antagonize Kit and Dottie such that like Rosie O'Donnell like throws a ball at them, and Dottie like catches it barehanded, and they're all really impressed. And Madonna has said, most of y'all are gonna go home. And after Dottie catches it, Madonna's like, well, most of them are gonna go home. So we see this great montage of them doing all these exercises together and playing baseball. And then the teams are announced with like sheets of paper, and both of the sisters are on the same team. The Rockford Peaches. There's a brief interlude with a girl who looks confused, and the coach is like, Is your name on the thing or not? And another woman comes up and is like, Can you read, honey? And she finds her name and she can't read. So that's why she was confused. So she's also in. Then they introduce the uniform, which is this dumb mini skirt. And the women are like, You can't play baseball now. What are you talking about? Like, that's not. And then we meet Mr. Lowenstein, who works for Mr. Harvey. So Harvey is like Wrigley, he sells chocolate bars, but it's meant to be like Wrigley because it's Harvey Field with the Ivy. And so Harvey's one of the owners. Lowenstein is actually like managing the league. And he says to all of the women who have now been put on teams, this is what this is a uniform you wear with us. That's it. Because every woman on this, or I think he probably says girl in this league is a lady. And they have the finishing school lessons that you remember, and they have like beauty consultations. That's what you remember with the what do you recommend night games? Because each girl is like, get a haircut or give her some lipstick or you know, work on her posture. Like, yeah, exactly. Make her have two eyebrows instead of just one. Like that sort of like quick judgment beauty stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah. This league is because all the men are fighting the war, so there's no baseball.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yes, thank you. So we start the movie. Well, we start the memory bit. Part of it is overlain with newsreels of news talking about how some of the biggest stars in baseball are enlisting. It's during World War II. And so And Dottie's husband is well, we learn that later. But yes, he is overseas. He's fighting overseas. So the team gels. We meet Jimmy Dugan, Tom Hanks. Mr. Harvey gives him the gig. He was a great baseball player, but he was a drunk. And he blew out his knee. But Mr. Harvey tells us, I mean, tells Jimmy, but tells us, yeah, but you blew out your knee falling out of a hotel window. It wasn't playing baseball. The guy's kind of like a hot mess. A hot mess. So Harvey gives Dugan the job. And Tom Hanks's Dugan like doesn't want it. Like Harvey makes it clear, like you just, every game you go out, you wave your little hat, you make the fans happy, and you get your paycheck. Okay. And like Dugan even says, why don't I just get an organ grinder and do a little dance for them? And Harvey's like, if your knee can take it, yes, do it. Like, so it's very clear that this transaction is just about having Dugan's name associated with it. That's how he takes it. So with the girls, the first game, they're in the locker room and they haven't even met him yet and they're freaking out because he's not there and the game's about to start. And then he shows up, and as you remember, and they don't have a lineup. They don't have a lineup. They have nothing. Right. They have nothing. They don't have a lineup. And he's not there. And he shows up and he's clearly drunk and he makes a beeline for the bathroom and starts peeing into a urinal in the locker room. And it's like, and the girls are all like looking at each other and kind of giggling. And it's he's peeing for a very long time. Like so long that like Madonna gets a watch and starts, May is the character's name and starts timing him. And he just he's just a dick. Like one of the girls has his baseball card that belongs to her husband that he she wants to get him to sign. And he rips it up. He doesn't say anything to anyone. So they make their own lineup. So Dottie, Gina Davis's character, effectively becomes the manager. He sleeps through most of the games. And we again montages. Well, eventually one day he sort of wakes up. She's Gina Davis is giving signs to the batter. It happens to be Marla, who is their strongest hitter. Gina Davis, Dottie is giving Marla the sign to bunt. And he's like, why would you bunt on our best hitter? And so now it's a very funny scene that I was stuck in my head with Tom Hanks and Gina Davis standing next to each other, both giving signs to the batter, and the batter like stepping in and out of the box, like not sure what to do. From that moment, Dugan starts actually paying attention. He starts actually managing, but he's managing the way he was managed. So then we get this the scene where Evelyn missed the cutoff man and he berates her until she cries. And he's like, Are you crying? And she's like, No, but she's obviously crying. That there's no crying in baseball scene. The umpire, the fur the home plate umpire comes over, is like, is there a problem, Mr. Dugan? And he says, you know, she's crying. Like, there's no crying in baseball. And the ump is like, Well, perhaps you berated her too vehemently.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I didn't remember that.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

And the ump turns around, like it's like a pleasant enough exchange, but the ump turns around and Dugan says, Did anybody ever tell you you look like a penis in a little cap? And so the ump ejects him, and the team applauds that he's been ejected because he's just he like slept through their games for most of the season, and now he's like yelling at them. So then we see sort of a redemption arc of him, in part through his like conversations with Dottie. There's a scene where May poisons their, they have like a chaperone, like like a den mother kind of a thing who travels with them, and she poisons her, puts something in her dinner so she's like throwing up so the girls can sneak out and go to this little, like a speakeasy where they go dancing, and which has this amazing scene of Madonna swing dancing. It's really fun. It's really fun. In that scene, Marla ends up a little drunk and on the stage singing to a boy who she's got the hots for, Nelson, who she ends up marrying. And it's a little, I mean, it's embarrassing. Like Dottie come, Dottie had not gone with them to the speakeasy, but finds out that Mr. Lowenstein is coming and they need, they can't get caught doing this. So he shotty comes to the speakeasy to like tell the girls, come on, go home. And she's like, What did you do to her? What did you do to Marla? And Madonna says, nothing. We just gave her a dress and a lot of liquor. The movie continues, a lot more playing montages, a lot more like softening on Jimmy, and he's actually like helping them win and they're winning and they're doing great. Kit and Dottie have a couple of moments of rivalry and friction, so much so that at one point Kit says, When you're here, it's like I'm not here. And Dottie's really upset by this. Like she really cares about her sister. And so she says to Lowenstein, I'm she decides to quit to let her sister have baseball because she's married, she's gonna go back to the dairy. Lowenstein, meanwhile, the war effort is going well overseas. And so Harvey's like, I don't need this anymore because men's baseball is still around. Lowenstein is trying to fight to keep the league. So when Dottie says she's gonna quit, he's freaking out a little bit because she's the most popular player. And she says, Well, I can't, like Kit and I can't be together, trade me or something. Just make a decision quickly because I'm leaving tomorrow. Well, Lowenstein trades Kit, and that causes a big falling out between them. And it sets up the sort of climax of the movie where the world series of this league is between the Peaches, where Dottie still is the catcher, and the racing, I can't remember the name of the team, but a different team where Kit has been traded. And so, meanwhile, Bob, Dottie's husband, has come home from war. He got injured. He's gonna be fine, but he's been discharged because of his injury. So she's gonna quit and go home. And there's this scene where Jimmy Dugan, the manager, Tom Hanks' character, is like, you can't just quit baseball. Like, you love baseball. You can't just quit baseball. And she's like, Well, watch me. But then she shows up for the final game of the World Series because they were driving back to Oregon from the East Coast. And you know, they got as far as I don't remember what town, and she turned around because she really wanted to play. So the final game, it's tied three and three. The final, the seventh game of the series, it's the bottom of the knife. Kit is the base runner, and Dottie is the catcher. Kit knocks Dottie over and Dottie drops the ball. And now we have seen Dottie hold on to the ball before in that exact circumstance, like more than once. So there's always a question of whether she actually did it on purpose or not to give her sister the win. And then Kit is the star of the, you know, she's the MVP because she like brought in the win, like they the racing team wins the game. The fans in the stands are shouting, Kit, Kit, Kit, and we see a little smile on Gina Davis's face. So then we cut back to present day 1992 and the or whatever it is in the baseball hall of fame. And we see Dottie, now older Dottie, like remeeting all of these, the women that were on the team. We find that some of them died and like whatever. And they're still like kicking ass. We see a lot of footage of them playing baseball as their older selves. And we also see a little bit in the actual exhibit where we see pictures from the movie we've just seen as historical photos. And then that re reunion scene that you remember of Dottie who is by herself and Kit who has like a whole passel of her family, like her kids and grandkids with her, and the sisters like hug and with just genuine affection. There's a bunch of other stuff that I forgot. It doesn't really matter. We'll get into it. That's the like the basic course of the movie. Like they started a league because men were at war. The women were really good. And at first people like mocked them, but then they really got into it. And then the men were going to come home, so they were going to cancel the league, but they managed to save it. And there's lots of love. That's sort of the basic gist of it. The thing that doesn't get told is the league only lasted till 1954. What does get said explicitly, like Lowenstein's like really upset when Harvey says he's going to cancel the league because he doesn't need them anymore because we have men's baseball. And Lowenstein's like, I guess that's what's going to happen in the factories too. Sorry, Rosie, turn in your rivets, go back to the kitchen. And Harvey's like, well, what are we going to do? Is send the men coming back from war back to the kitchen? Like it

The Ending And The Erasure

SPEAKER_01 24:25

acknowledges this tension, but doesn't actually like not that it could solve it because it's historical, but it doesn't even offer I don't know. I found it unsatisfying to sort of talk about it, but not like give us anything. Like, yeah, basically they're expected to go back into the kitchen. And I found that especially because of all of the benefits that we see for these women. I mean, some of them are kind of gross, like Marlis the first to get married, like she just needed a dress and some liquor, and now she's like, A-okay. Like that's a little bit gross. But there are other things, like Rosie O'there's this one scene on the bus with Rosie O'Donnell's character, Doris, where I don't remember who what other player she's talking to, but they're looking at a picture of Doris's boyfriend. The other person, I think maybe it's Kit. And she's like, Is it picture a little out of focus? And Doris is like, nah, that's just how he looks. And Kit's like, well, looks aren't everything. And Doris is like, yeah, what matters is that he's stupid and he treats me bad. And Kit's like, well, then why are you with him? And Doris is like, well, I mean, he's the only guy who ever like liked me because I was always so weird because I was like good at baseball and stuff. But then she like looks around at the bus and she's like, but look, there's a lot of us and like we're great. I don't need this. And she like rips up his picture and says, bye-bye, Charlie, and like puts it out the bus window. So we see it pretty explicitly, the way that baseball, that this experience for these women has changed the course of their lives in positive ways. And we're allowed to have a kind of a happy ending. But what we aren't told at all is like it was temporary.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I'd love to bring in something that's kind of topical. I don't know if this is anything that you've been paying any attention to. And just listeners, we were recording this on February 27th. So I don't know if you saw the men's Olympic hockey team.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yes, I did. The women's team apparently were invited as an afterthought to the White House and declined and went to Vegas with Flava Flav instead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Well, and we're also invited by uh Stanley Tucci to the case. Stanley Tucci. Yeah. Uh-huh. So, but specifically, what I

Modern Echoes In Women's Sports

SPEAKER_00 26:45

want to talk about is how in the phone call in the locker room, when our current president called the team and called the men's team or the women's team?

SPEAKER_01 26:59

The phone call.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Oh no. Oh, this is the part that I that is important and relates to the Wrigley character. Harvey, you said Harvey is saying what the president said to the men's hockey team was, oh, I suppose I have to call and invite the women's team too, huh? As a joke. And all of the men's team laughed because, like, we don't really need them. What are we going to send the men home to cook and clean while the women keep the jobs in the factory? Right. To your point about how, like, how this is so beneficial to women, the captain of the women's team that they were doing some sort of press conference, and they asked her about this situation. And one of the things she said was, I'm here answering questions about someone else's behavior, and that is not my responsibility. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I feel like that is the kind of confidence you get by being an athlete and being the captain of a Olympic, a gold-winning Olympic team.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Right, right. I think what this topical thing points to is that from the very beginning of this film, from the very beginning of like Jimmy Dugan, Tom Hanks' characters' interaction with them, he keeps talking about girls and ball players as a mutually exclusive list, right? It's a binary. There are girls and there are ball players. You all are not ballplayers. And by the end of the film, by the end of his experience with them, like he knows they are ball players. He speaks to Dottie as a fellow ball player who whom he respects. And in fact, we learned that Harvey offered him a job coaching AA men's, and he declined to continue coaching the women's team. So the film shows us that binary breaking down. But what this topical moment reminds us is that that redemption arc may have happened for this character, but it didn't happen for our country. Not for happened for our actual

Girls Versus Ballplayers Binary

SPEAKER_01 29:05

culture, not at writ large. That's, I think, what I was reacting to when my postcard about feminism is that, and even in my like dissatisfaction with naming the problem, is that it just feels Sisophean, is the word that I used earlier. And that is in fact how it feels, even within this movie, that does, in many ways, a great job. I mean, like Alison Bechtel has nothing to complain about in this movie, right? Like and yet, like the deck is stacked so deep against these characters that it's, I mean, it's just like like woven into the fabric of society. I did read, I skimmed one actually academic paper that talked about when you have a qualifier in front of the word athlete, whether it's female or gay, homosexual, like any version of that, that it sudden that that person suddenly becomes a threat because they are counter to sort of what athleticism means to this culture. And I think that's right. And I think that's too probably why the 92 film, all the women were straight. Oh, yeah. As far as we knew, because like making them female and gay was just too much for 1992, even though it is likely that at least some of the women in that league in the 40s and 50s were lesbians.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Yeah. The fact that that they are a threat explains why Harvey was like, I don't need them anymore. When you would think a capitalist would be like, double the money.

unknown 30:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Which is exactly what Lowenstein says. Loinstein says, You told me to make it make money, it's making money. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Yeah. And so, like, there is no reason why he couldn't have both. Right. Right. Like, honestly, there that that that it is mind-boggling that a money-grubbing capitalist wouldn't want to have a women's league and a men's league that are not competing with each other because they are not. You could sell double the tickets, you could sell double the concessions, you could sell double the merchandise. Right. And he is convinced, at least temporarily.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

So, but I think that the thing, too, that then the logical corollary for the next segue in this conversation is then to talk about what masculinity means within this culture, within this worldview that finds a female athlete to be a threat. And I think we see that in Dugan a bit. So he is he's a drunk. He's not fighting in the war. And we have a conversation about that. He and Dottie talk about it on one of the many bus rides that we see, where he's not fighting in the war because his knee is bone on bone. There's no cartilage in his knee, he says. And then he says, But you don't really need your knee to shoot Nazis, do you? You just need this. And he like wiggles his trigger finger. He says, I can do this. There's definitely a sense that he feels emasculated by not fighting in the war effort, which one I think is meant to believe that's at least part of why he continues drinking. He also finds it deeply emasculating to have been assigned this or to have been given this job. I mean, I say assigned as if he had no choice. He has, he could have said no, but he needed the money. So, but he feels emasculated in this gig of managing a women's team of girls who are not ball players, remember. And he gets there. But from the beginning, the assumption is that if these women can be ball players and he's a ball player, like what does that mean? What does that mean about who he is? Like that is clearly like what is going on in the background around his masculinity. The movie shows us that in order to make this okay, a couple of things happen. One is that the women have to prove themselves. So from their very first game, there's a heckler who is like standing on the dugout and he's like, look at me, I'm and he's like doing this really obnoxious, like mocking, and it's loud and obnoxious. And one of the women throws a ball at him and like clocks him and knocks him down, and like the whole everybody laughs at him. And her teammates kind of look at her and she's like, What? It slipped.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Oops, I'm just a girl. Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

So the other moment of sort of proving is like John Lovitz's scout does not want kit, and he's shaking her hand like good luck, and he like puts his other hand on her bicep and like he starts like feeling her muscle up and down, which is a weird

Proving Strength Performing Femininity

SPEAKER_01 33:55

sort of twist on unwanted contact. And he's like, Oh, you can try out. Like when he feels how strong she is. So I put both of those in the same category of these women needing to like prove themselves in the masculine way. Like prove themselves that they are up to snuff in the things that traditionally fall on the masculine column, i.e., the sports and the strength. There are also ways that the movie makes plain that they are forced to perform femininity. So that like the skirts. The skirts and also the finishing. And we get so they do all the finishing school stuff. But what comes out of that is this, like these news stories about like how, you know, Betty is a great center fielder, but she also makes a great cup of coffee. And then we see like this staged thing where she's like pouring coffee from this beautiful carafe thing for men on the field. And then like there's one point where there's not a lot of crowd, and Loenstein tells the girls there's a reporter and a photographer from Time magazine in the stands. And could they give it a little extra? Because we he's trying to like drum up more interest in the league. And so at one point, Dottie has like there's a pop-up foul that she's the catcher remember. So she's gonna get under it easily. Like we hear the announcer in the stadium saying that. So we know that even if we're not baseball people, she catches a glimpse of the bored reporter and photographer. So she does a split while she catches it, which ends up on the cover of Time magazine. So these women, because they are a threat, are forced to prove themselves in the masculine category of strengths and ashleticism, but also perform femininity like hyper femininity or novel femininity in like the coffee pouring or the splits. Which I think is an accurate representation of what happens when someone who has that qualifier in front of the word, female or gay or whatever it is, black, that is not what the broader culture is expecting, have to perform in both categories, like more than and credential themselves more than. I think it's accurate. That doesn't make it less depressing.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

For me to like really wrap my minds around it.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

And that's part of what is why Marla's kind of a sour spot in the movie, because she can't just be an athlete. She and she's going to struggle with performing femininity as the character is written and as the actress portrays her, which is just like that's infuriating when she is a gifted baseball player. Right. Whereas like in a men's league, a male athlete who was similarly gifted would have been like first draft pick.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Similarly gifted and similarly like socially inept, like socially awkward. Exactly. Wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Same player change gender. Yeah, wouldn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. That's infuriating and like and hasn't changed. Right. I'm just thinking of the fact that you and I recently took a meeting with someone who called us girls.

unknown 37:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

In his defense, the signature on my email does say podcaster at Guy Girls Media with Emily Guybergen. So perhaps he was thinking of that. Perhaps. Probably not though.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Yeah. Yeah. So I I the feeling the need to perform

Marla And The Double Standard

SPEAKER_00 38:11

femininity, especially as an athlete. It's part of what I feel like the friction between Dottie and Kit is about, in some ways. Or at least that's how I remember reading it. In that it felt like Kit in a lot of ways felt like she was always running behind her big sister. Yes, definitely. And not just about baseball, about everything. Yes. Including the fact that her big sister was Gina Davis and Gina Davis is Gina Davis. Now that's not to say that Lori Petty isn't absolutely gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

No, but like Petty is cute. At least in the way that she's dressed and whatever and makeup and hair in this film. Like Kit is cute. And Dottie is knockout drop dead gorgeous. Kit is cute.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

And so like I know part of where that friction between the sisters is, the sense that, like in every arena, like performative feminist feminism, um feminine performative femininity, baseball, dating because Dottie has Bob while she's married. All of these things, it feels like Dottie is ahead. Yeah.

unknown 39:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Which is why Kit says, when you're here, it's like I'm not here. Exactly. And so that performative femininity is not an arena most women, I don't think, want to play in. I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't say most.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

I think some women dig it. I mean, girly girls are like it. That's that's true.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

That's true. It's the required aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

I think when one does

Sister Rivalry That Feels Flattened

SPEAKER_01 39:55

it because one enjoys it, that's fine. True. It's when it's required in order to do something else that's completely unrelated, that is not fine. Right. Like even Tyra Banks, I would expect, would resent like needing to be Tyra Banks in order to go to the gym.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

These women resented having to wear a skirt to play baseball. Right. Yeah. Even like Betty, who was very much a girly girl.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Many of the girls were very much girly girls. Yeah. But like I mean, there's a reason we see at one point one of them slides feet first at one point. And then later we see her lying out on the bench with like a cold pack on her thigh and a bruise, you know, bigger than your head from where she slid bare flesh against the dirt.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Exactly. So yeah, I I think that this is not a critique of the film, right? Like I'm not mad at Penny Marshall or at any of the writers. Like I'm mad at the United States of America and our culture in 1990, in 1943, and in 1992, and in 2026. Like I'm mad at our culture that we're still so ingrained in this unexamined sense of what is normal. I'm putting quotes around that word and making it male and white and straight so that people who don't fit one or more of those categories have all this extra work to do in order to just play baseball or promote a podcast or you know, like be celebrated. Or be celebrated for winning a fucking gold medal.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

So, you know, I think that's an important thing to note. Like, this film is about this project, this podcast is about a film, but I'm not actually like critiquing the film. I think the film portrays accurately what I'm critiquing in our culture. It's worth noting that Jimmy Dugan is a strong representative of what's wrong with the culture. And through proximity, he sees his way past it. I think that's also an accurate portrayal of how this works. Right. Like proximity is the number one factor in overcoming biases, right? So I think that's also an accurate portrayal. So I would like to talk briefly in the main episode, and then there's some stuff I'll bring up in the shit we forgot to say about the sister dynamic. Since you talked about that as one of the things that, you know, that was important to you. I think from the beginning, we see there is a rivalry between them. Like, Kit, while they're still in the dairy, Kit's like, you can't even let me walk ahead of you. And Dottie's like, Yes, I can, but she clearly can't because they're walking and like Dottie keeps going faster. And so they're like racing each other, like flat out running. Yeah. And Dottie wins. So because she's Gina Davis's legs. Right. That's actually exactly like that's exactly what Kit says. She says it's not fair, your legs are longer. But we also do see like Dottie cares about Kit and Kit's well-being. Like both are true, which I think is real. And I also think there's a degree to which like the rivalry feels like trite to me, the sibling rivalry, especially in the athletics. And I'm not an expert in sibling rivalry. I only know my own experience, but I cannot imagine like being in like any kind of situation, even where there was competition between us, where I didn't have just like joy and pride in your accomplishments. Right. Like I mean, even if there's a moment of Like, oh, I wish I had that too. It wouldn't be to like take you down, or even to like prove my anything. And I want to believe, I believe, that there are more sisters like us than like that. But I think Hollywood likes that story of that rivalry. And so sometimes it gets overlain even where it doesn't belong. And I think that these two sisters is two fictional sisters based on real life people, I don't think it needed it. Like, or at least not to the degree that it was given. I mean, like, there's something nice as a viewer in not knowing for sure if Dottie let the ball go or if she genuinely had it knocked out of her hand. There is something nice in that. But I think there are other moments of where Dottie takes the bait, so to speak, that I don't think were necessary. That I think we could have seen a little bit more just, I don't know, sibling revelry, as you and I like to say. And I would love to see Hollywood do that a little more. Like, let there be like there, this is a loving relationship, but it's got this thorn in it, such that they haven't seen each other in years and they're delighted to see one another. But I think that Hollywood could do a better job of giving us some models of what it looks like to like, of course, I mean, you've known me longer than anyone in the world. And so, of course, there are ways that you can push my buttons that no one else could. And also, you've known me longer than anyone in the world. And so we love each other more than the other people in our life. Like, I just, I don't know. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this, but I do have a little bit of a bone to pick that I think it's a little the rivalry itself is a little exaggerated, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

The only thing I'll push back against that is that so in 1943, they're in their like early 20s. Is that how old they're supposed to be? I think Dottie's meant to be maybe like mid-20s and like early 20s. So they would have been born in like the teens. Yeah. So just the difference in parenting between then and when you and I were born, I think makes a huge difference in how siblings would relate to each other, how rivalries would Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Maybe. But I think that you're like giving like a very situational like reason for these particular characters. And I'm saying It's Hollywood as a whole. Like the trope of the like sisterly like rivalry.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

The reason I bring that up is just that I'm thinking that people in the writer's room might have been thinking about their own mothers and aunts who would have been about that age. Yeah, maybe. But you might be right. And I I agree, like one of my favorite books that I read recently was Uprooted by Naomi Novik. And part of the reason why I loved it was that it had two young women best friends. It was a realistic relationship between them where there was some of that friction that you can have with a best friend as an older teen. That friction was just a tiny part of it. Most of it was just absolute love for each other and willingness to do anything for each other. And it was so rare. It's so rare to see that. Yeah. So I hear you. I definitely hear you. And then the fact that like you and I both were like, but they're sisters. Yeah. What the f the PTF, man? Yeah. Like years? No. Yeah. Yeah. Not realistic.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

I have a little bit more to say. So, listeners, if you like what we're doing here and if you want to make sure we can keep doing this content, we would love it if you would have head over to our Patreon and give us a couple bucks every month. And then you get to see the shit we forgot to say. So just a little plug before I wrap up. So, League of Their Own, the 92 film, not the new reboot on Netflix. This film, the first thing, the first place I started was damn, the casting was good. Like, really, really good. Not just the woman who plays older Dottie and the woman who plays older Kit, who seriously look like those two actresses in in age makeup, but also like Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell. So believable.

What We Loved Plus Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Like each of these, like the casting was really, really good. So that's sort of where I started. We spent a lot of time talking about this film, not critiquing the film, but the way the film sort of lays bare a truth about our culture, wherein, in particular in this film, we're talking about athletes. The word athlete is masculine, apparently. And so when we are talking about anything with a qualifier before that word, that person, in this case, we're talking about white women, but in any case, in any qualifier to that word, they end up needing to perform both the coded masculine athleticism very, very well, but also the coded, whatever their other thing is, like in this case, women, their femininity, they are forced to overperform their femininity in order to stay in the role of athlete, which is really effed up. And I, it's getting me agitated, honestly. Especially because this movie shows us how this, in this case, baseball, but whatever this thing is that lights a person up when they get to do it with other people for whom it also lights them up, it changes the course of their life. We see women in this film characters who were misfits at home and find belonging on this team. They find belonging on this team in ways that enhance their confidence. And one can only imagine their mental health and well-being for the rest of their lives. And so the fact that they have to like jump through these hoops in order to have it, it's just, it's an undercurrent of melancholy for me in this film, because what the film gives us a happy ending-ish, but what it doesn't tell us is that the league only lasted for, you know, another 10 years or so. And then it just, it just disbanded. Because there's stuff about femininity, there's also stuff about masculinity in this film, mainly through the person of Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks, who has the binary of girls and ball players, as if those two things are mutually exclusive when he starts the film, but by the end, he respects not just Dottie, but all of his players as ball players and becomes a better coach as well. We see him, the woman he made cry, we see him later tell Evelyn she's still missing the cutoff man and he wants her to work on that before next season. And he's like shaking with the effort to say it in that way. But he does, and she's doesn't cry. So let me see. I did I mentioned briefly, and you talked about a little bit too, the character of Marla, who is presented to us as not pretty from the beginning, and like what a double standard that is, since she's female and not male athlete, that a different if she had been more a man, she would have been her dad even says that he'd be in New York because she'd be on playing for the Yankees or something. And the way that the characters treat her is a problem. The way the film treats her also feels like a sour spot because once she finally like gets a little bit of femininity, then you know, she gets married and now she's a fulfilled human being. And and that feels kind of gross. That's what the film tells us it takes for her to be a fulfilled human being.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

My my mic was muted, so you couldn't hear my eye roll, but I think it was such a big one that it was audible.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

We talked a bit about women as being sort of disposable and like not actually important, which is all wrapped up in our critique of the culture, which is still the same because as you pointed out, we've just seen almost the exact same thing happen with the gold medal Olympic win, the Olympic gold medal winning ice hockey team from the United States who were invited to the White House as an afterthought because they happen to be women. So good for Clava Flav and Stanley Tucci for making up for that. Thank you to those, those two allies. Okay, and the last thing that we talked about, which I think is gonna remain an open question for me, is the rivalry between these two sisters. Like, how this is a challenge to Hollywood and to writers. Like, how do we portray the real friction that happens between sisters because they know each other so well without turning it into a flat sort of rivalry and chip on the shoulder? Because it's not flat. That's the thing that I'm that is bothering me. It was sort of flattened into a chip on his shoulder, and kit wasn't okay until Kit sort of literally beat Dottie in something. And that feels too flat. So what are you bringing me next week?

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Next week, I am bringing you my deep thoughts

Support The Show And Next Week

SPEAKER_00 53:31

on the Muppets Take Manhattan. I think it's my first time I get to do a Muppets. Oh, I can't wait. I am very excited.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompitech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?