Fascinating Behind-The-Scenes Details About A League Of Their Own
A League of Their Own is 30 years old — and it’s still a home run today. In fact, the movie remains the most successful baseball flick ever after earning an astonishing $107 million at the 1992 box office. But it’s the film’s staying power over the decades that makes it a true Hall of Famer. And these fascinating behind-the-scenes stories reveal that A League of Their Own was in a league of its own for its cast and crew, too. Batter up!
1. Tom Hanks’ favorite movie experience
“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.”
2. People still yell the classic lines at the cast
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.”
3. Did Dottie drop the ball on purpose?
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.”
4. There were baseball tryouts for the actors
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.
