Reviews Across America: ‘A League of Their Own’ is Unlike Original Film; Amazon Series Opens Up World of Original Movie; Worth Watching

Penny Marshall’s 1992 “A League of Their Own” movie introduced the world to a group of women who fought their way onto a baseball field, but it only featured women who were straight, white, presentable. The new series, which premiered Friday on Prime Video, does much more. “Our intention here is to tell the stories that the film overlooked and did not focus on and really open up the lens to a generation of women who played baseball and who played it so f—ing well,” co-creator Abbi Jacobson, the 38-year-old actress who also stars as Rockford Peaches catcher Carson Shaw, told the Daily News. “Th…Read More

D’Arcy Carden promises the ‘League of Their Own’ series really is ‘so gay’ — One Original Player Just Came Out at 95 A few Weeks Ago

At the end of the season, the ballplayers of the original “A League of Their Own” movie happily went home to their husbands. In the new show, there’s no need to pretend. The Prime Video series, which premiered Friday, is under no illusion that the women making up the Rockford Peaches and the rest of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League are all straight. In the decades since the league, created as a fill-in during World War II, folded in 1954, several of its real-life stars have come out as gay, including 95-year-old Maybelle Blair earlier this year. Penny Marshall’s 1992 film da…Read More

The cast of the new ‘A League of Their Own’ doesn’t care if you don’t think women should play baseball

It’s fine not to like the new “A League of Their Own” series, says the cast. But only if it’s for the right reasons. The cast of the Prime Video show, which premiered Friday, knows how many people already have nasty ideas about the women baseball players who made up the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II. It comes with the territory: women in a role typically held by men. The actors just want you to actually watch their series first. “Probably the only people who are going to stay mad are the people who would write online about an all-female ‘Ghostbusters’ and …

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The New “A League of Their Own” Is Nothing Like the Original — Which Is Why It’s the Rare Reboot Worth Watching

By Bonnie Stiernberg For just about as long as it has existed, America has claimed to love underdogs. That, presumably, largely has to do with the scrappy band of revolutionaries who sailed across an ocean and then took on an empire in order to found this country. We’re conditioned to root for the Davids over the Goliaths; that Jay Gatsby-style rags-to-riches trajectory is so inherent to our national identity that we’ve dubbed it the American Dream. But for all that posturing, America has never really concerned itself with the true underdogs — the ones who for many years couldn’t vote or open …Read More

How does the new ‘A League of Their Own’ show stack up against the movie?

I, like many women of my generation, absolutely LOVED the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” Because of that, I got goose bumps the first time I saw the trailer for the new “A League of Their Own” TV series, which premieres Friday on Amazon’s Prime Video. The previews of the eight-episode reboot have fans like me excited to get another glimpse of the world of women’s baseball in the ’40s. But that doesn’t mean we’re not apprehensive, nervous about what we’ll see and how it compares to the nostalgia felt about that film. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator and star Abbi Jac… Read More

With Amazon’s ‘A League of Their Own’ reboot looming, meet a woman who long ago played on one of the girls teams

SEATTLE — When Jeneane Lesko was drafted as a pitcher by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s Grand Rapids Chicks before the 1953 season, she had never played in a single baseball game. Now 87 and a resident of Snohomish, Lesko (who played under her maiden name, DesCombes) was a fixture at the baseball field while growing up in rural Lakeview, Ohio. She would watch the boys play and practice with them whenever she could. So when the local baseball coach saw a newspaper ad for AAGPBL tryouts, he encouraged her to go. Lesko’s response: “What would I play?” Even though the league… Read More

Amazon’s new ‘League of Their Own’ tells more female baseball stories

scratched the surface. Underneath, there were stories about the players’ personal lives and the challenges they faced in a less-than-friendly sports world. Working off that 1940s history, creators Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham found material that could fill multiple seasons of television. One scene in Penny Marshall’s 1992 film, for example, prompted a secondary plot in their new Amazon Studios series. A foul ball is picked up by a Black player and tossed back to Geena Davis. “That’s supposed … Read More

Rockford Peaches — 30 years after ‘A League of Their Own’ — live on in a new series: ‘We didn’t know we were part of something bigger’

CHICAGO — For many of the women and girls playing baseball this summer, the Rockford Peaches — a team that hasn’t played in more than 60 years — remain a source of inspiration. One of the original four teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), the Peaches won the most championships in league history. Even though the team dissolved in 1954, the organization lives again through the efforts of baseball historian Kat Williams and the International Women’s Baseball Center along with the City of Rockford — and of course the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” The film ha…Read More