Last week, Amazon greenlit a series adaptation of the 1992 film A League of Their Own. The 1992 movie, which was directed by Penny Marshall, is a fictionalized story based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which was active from 1943 to 1954. The upcoming series will star Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, and will follow the Rockford Peaches during their inaugural season of the AAGPBL.
Like the movie, the series will be about a group of female baseball players in the 1940s who were given the opportunity to play baseball professionally. So far, the casting for the series includes Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson (also the co-creator and executive producer), The Good Place’s D’Arcy Garden, as well as Chante Adams, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Kelly McCormack, Roberta Colindrez, and Priscilla Delgado.
The real-life AAGPBL was created during World War II over fears that Major League Baseball would fold after many of its players left to fight. Tasked with the need to continue professional baseball, executives decided to create a league made up of all women. The players were scouted from amateur softball and baseball leagues around the country to create a handful of teams. While the players needed to be skilled, the league was largely marketed on the appearance and femininity of its players, with a mandatory dress code and etiquette classes. The AAGPBL was eventually terminated in the early 1950s and its players largely forgotten.
A League of Their Own is often lauded as one of the best baseball movies as well as one of the best female empowerment films of all time. The television adaptation has the ability to build on the film’s success as well as correct some of its shortcomings.
Television has become a much more sophisticated medium, and the show might address heavier and more serious issues surrounding these women who were in a unique position in American history. The show has also promised to delve deeper into themes of race and sexuality, since the 1992 film didn’t address the possiblity of queer relationships among the women. In addition, since the AAGPBL was informally segregated, the film also excluded women of color, which is briefly acknowledged in the original film.
