Dottie hinson a league of their own

Home / Athletes & Sports Figures / Dottie hinson a league of their own

Actually, the real Rockford Peaches had the very worst record in the league during both the first half and the second half of the season, so as you can probably guess they didn’t make it to the championship.

Instead the Racine Belles beat the Kenosha Comets in three straight games to win the best-of-five championship series.

And the pitchers didn’t throw overhand like we saw in the movie. The Milwaukee Chicks! As she tells her ill-tempered manager Jimmy Dugan, “It is only a game, Jimmy, and I don’t need this. If a player’s hair was not at shoulder length - or not in bobs - she would be fined. But Hanks wasn’t actually relieving himself.

Instead, Marshall used a hose and bucket off-camera to create the sound effects, proving that comedy sometimes lies in the simplest tricks.

It Almost Became a Very Different Movie

Before Penny Marshall took the helm, “A League of Their Own” was a 20th Century Fox project.

David Anspaugh, known for “Hoosiers,” was originally attached as director, but creative tensions with studio head Joe Roth led to the project being shelved.

Marshall later revived it at Columbia Pictures, and her vision brought the film to life.

Real League, Real Drama

The AAGPBL was a living piece of history.

And this also meant tearing up their legs was common because despite what we saw Madonna’s character do in the movie the real women in the league never slid head first. She’s still worth mentioning, though, because she was the catcher on the Rockford Peaches, like Dottie Hinson.

Although she also played for more than one year.

It can get so confusing with so many people named Dottie, but Dottie Green was Dottie Kamenshek’s teammate and while she shared some things in common with Dottie Hinson, she wasn’t the best player in the league like her teammate, Dottie Kamenshek.

dottie hinson a league of their own

Of course, 1954 would end up being the final year of the AAGPBL, but hopefully you can start to get a sense for how the league started very similar to softball and started to shift more toward baseball.

Oh, and there’s a brief moment when John Lovitz’s character, Ernie Capadino, is recruiting Geena Davis’ character and he mentions the salaries for the girls playing ball is $75 a week.

Although Ernie is also a fictional character—the filmmakers actually created that character specifically with John Lovitz in mind—the salary is pretty close.

Or maybe you’ve been to Wrigley Field—the home of the baseball team Philip Wrigley owned, the recent World Champion Chicago Cubs.

Of course, in the movie we see it as Harvey Field but it does have the ivy on the outfield walls just like the real Wrigley Field does.

What the movie doesn’t mention, though, is that there was another man who was behind the forming of the AAGPBL.

In the movie Walter is referred to as the chocolate king, or a candy bar mogul.

As I mentioned briefly earlier, the real person who the fictional Walter Harvey is based on was none other than Philip K. Wrigley. For example, after five years of play, in 1948 the league switched from being all underhand to allowing overhand pitches from a distance of 50 feet, or a little over 15 meters.

A few years later, in 1954, the ball itself changed from a 12 inch softball to a 9 inch baseball as well as stretching out the base paths to 85 feet apart, or almost 26 meters.

As she watches, the movie shifts to the flash back by way of news footage.

In this footage, the basis for the movie is set up.

World War II is in full swing, and many of the professional baseball players have been called on to help with the war effort. That was another name that might sound familiar if you’re a fan of Major League Baseball: Branch Rickey.

Branch Rickey was the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and he was the man who pushed to have Jackie Robinson break the color barrier in the Major Leagues.

That was in 1930.

Up until Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire snapped it in 1998, Hack also held the record for most HRs in the National League (NL) with 56. Dottie enjoys her new career as a catcher, but she realizes that it’s only a temporary distraction until her husband returns from Europe. The Belles did win in 1943.

But it’s not even close to the lengths the real players went.

Image via Columbia Pictures

One player - Pepper Paire Davis - once punched an umpire in the face, knocking him flat on his back, for calling her out at second! That’s because he was in the dugout and, well, he was a “he”.

I’m speaking, of course, of Tom Hanks’ character, Jimmy Dugan.

If she wore slacks or shorts out in public, she would be fined. If that last name sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve probably had Wrigley chewing gum. But in the first season in 1943 it was renamed to the All-American Girls Baseball League.