Random Behind-The-Scenes Stories From ‘A League of Their Own,’ Most Rewatchable Sports Movi (17 items)

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  (#5) Tom Hanks

  • Actor

  In 2012, Penny Marshall told an audience at the Hudson Union Society that Tom Hanks asked to play the part of Jimmy Dugan, the heavy-drinking former MLB star turned reluctant manager of the Rockford Peaches. At the time, Hanks was coming off of two flop films, The 'Burbs and Joe Versus the Volcano.

  Dugan was originally supposed to be a man in his 50s, but Hanks reportedly talked Marshall into making the character younger. The director was worried that a younger Dugan would be too appealing to the audience, so as a compromise Hanks packed on about 30 pounds to make the character more slovenly. "I had to get fat. I had to gain some weight," the actor told Entertainment Tonight in 1992. "I had BBQ pork ribs and enjoyed the desserts of America."
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  (#14) Yes, The Gigantic 'Strawberry' Bruise On Alice's Thigh Was Real

  Baseball is a dangerous game. Balls are thrown or hit at high speed, player collisions aren't uncommon, and sliding on dirt can be very hard on the body. In order to look like real players, the cast trained strenuously for as many as eight hours a day, six days a week, over a period of several months. So it isn't surprising that the cast of A League of Their Own had their own version of a disabled list.

  In one scene in the film, someone in the crowd yells out for outfielder Alice Gaspers (played by Renée Coleman) to slide into third base. She does and ends up with a huge bruise on her thigh. Well, that bruise was not the result of Coleman spending hours in makeup: "That was real. That was not one pinch of makeup. She had that bruise for, like, 10 years," Tracy Reiner recalled to ESPNW in 2017.

  That was just one of the real-life injuries that cast members suffered. About two weeks before filming was set to start, Anne Ramsay was injured when a ball hit her in the face. "It was the first day that we switched from modern-day mitts to authentic, vintage mitts from the '40s," she told ESPNW. "The mitts were restored a little bit, but they were the original deals. We were in Chicago, the coach throws me the ball... and maybe the fourth time he threw it, it just slips and hits me. It breaks my nose."

  Ramsay recalled that Marshall told her that if her nose didn't look great after it was reset, the director would just write the injury into the script! Luckily, she didn't have to do this, as the nose healed fine.

  Marshall herself recalled to Newsday that Lori Petty filmed scenes while wearing a cast and that Rosie O'Donnell played with broken fingers.
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  (#7) Demi Moore And Debra Winger Were Both In The Running To Play Dottie

  A League of Their Own could have ended up with a much different cast. When the film was still in development at Fox, Jim Belushi was in line to play the part of Jimmy Dugan. In her memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, Marshall claims the film's original director, David Anspaugh, wanted Sean Young to play Dottie. Marshall's first choice to play Dottie was Demi Moore, but she dropped out of consideration due to her pregnancy.

  With Moore unavailable, Columbia Pictures was eager for Debra Winger and Madonna to play the roles of Dottie and Kit, respectively. In her memoir, Marshall claims that Winger dropped out of the film because she didn't want to work with the famous singer. Moira Kelly actually got cast as Kit, but had to drop out after she was injured while filming The Cutting Edge.

  Anne Ramsay, who ended up playing the role of Rockford first baseman Helen Haley, originally auditioned for the film when Anspaugh was still attached to direct. As Ramsay told ESPNW in 2017, she auditioned again years later, after Marshall had been reunited with the project: 

  I did well in my audition with Penny, but she could not place me. And she just couldn't figure out how to fit me in for one of the roles that were already in the scripts. And I mean, she had me come in at least five times. One time she goes, "Wash off all of your makeup." I walk to the bathroom in the middle of the audition. She was trying to see me differently, fit me somewhere. I could tell she liked me but couldn't figure it out! Then I get a call from the casting department saying that Penny loved me but couldn't figure out where to put me. Then the casting agent says, "Penny is going to write a role so that you can be in the film."

  While Lori Petty ended up winning the role of Kit, Schram was one of the other actors to audition for that part. "I sat there thinking, 'I'm not right for this,'" she told ESPNW. "But I read for it and wasn't very good. So they then say, 'Hey, we'll have you read for this other role.' And that was for Evelyn, the one that cried. Then I did it, and I knew I nailed it. In my heart and mind, I was like, 'I'm going to get this role.'" Schram was right; she was cast as right fielder Evelyn Gardner.

  Like Anne Ramsay, Megan Cavanagh originally auditioned for the film when Fox was still the studio involved and Anspaugh was set to direct. The actor, who ended up playing the role of second baseman Marla Hooch, described the unusual callback she was part of after Marshall returned to the project:

  They asked all the actresses to be prepared to read other roles; it was a group audition. At this time, Debra Winger was the part of Dottie - not Geena Davis. So it was Debra and Lori Petty. I got invited to this audition with women who had already been cast in the movie, so that was pretty exciting... As I was leaving the audition, Rosie O'Donnell [who was already cast for the role of Doris Murphy] followed me out and said, "Listen, you're the best Marla we've seen so far."

  O’Donnell herself read for multiple roles before being cast as third baseman Doris Murphy.
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  (#13) Penny Marshall

  There is a definite attraction between Dottie and Jimmy in A League of Their Own, although they never act on it. In 2017, Megan Cavanagh recalled that a scene in which the characters kiss got cut from the finished film because "it was very upsetting to the real women players, apparently. Davis's character was married, and it upset the [former AAGPBL] players that she would kiss another man while her husband was at war."

  Another scene that got deleted was one where Dottie revealed that she married her husband Bob the night he got drafted.
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  (#3) The Auditions Were Actual Baseball Tryouts And Many Prominent Actors Didn't Get Cast Because Of Their Inability To Be Believable As A Player

  In 2017, Robert Greenhut, who was one of the producers on A League of Their Own, told ESPNW that the film was difficult to cast because they were looking for actors who could play baseball. While it might look easy when watching a game on television, the producer admitted, "We all quickly learned how hard it is to throw from first base to third to get somebody out."

  Director Penny Marshall told MLB.com, "There was a big tryout where [the actors] were judged on running, catching, hitting. Throwing is always the hardest for girls because they throw differently. But I would not [audition]... actresses unless they could play ball or were trainable." Reminiscing about the film with Rosie O'Donnell on the latter's television talk show, the director said that there were several good actors who didn't get cast because they couldn't play. One, Marshall remembered, showed up to the tryout wearing ballet slippers.

  Marshall's daughter Tracy Reiner, who ended up being cast as outfielder Betty "Spaghetti" Horn, went to the open tryouts with one of her cousins, even though she had stitches in her mouth from recently getting her wisdom teeth removed. "There were about 2,000 girls auditioning at USC with [former USC baseball coach] Rod Dedeaux, and his coaches and trainers were going to evaluate the girls to see if you were trainable," Reiner recalled to ESPNW. Dedeaux was impressed with Reiner's arm, but she ended up spitting blood because she had popped the stitches in her mouth. When she returned home, she thought her mom would like that Reiner and her cousin had gone to the big casting call. Instead, Marshall's reaction was "[How'd] you two [end up] testing in the Top 20 girls?"

  Geena Davis's audition for the role of catcher Dottie Hinson took place in the director's backyard. "[Marshall] wanted to make sure I could throw a ball, so that happened," Davis told USA Today in 2017. "I threw the ball to her, competently got it to her, she caught it and said, 'OK.' That was the whole audition." However, the actor, who wasn't an athlete growing up, trained rigorously and ended up impressing the actual baseball coaches on the set with her play. "When the coaches would say, 'You have real untapped athletic ability,' it was like, 'Oh, my god, I am coordinated.'" Davis later took up archery and even competed in the US Olympic Trials in 1999.

  Lori Petty claimed that she auditioned eight times for the part of Dottie's younger sister, pitcher Kit Keller. "Every woman in Hollywood was reading for this movie," Petty told The Ringer in 2017. "It was a strong female movie, which, you know, we don’t have now, and we didn’t have in 1991 either. I mean, Marla Maples auditioned, for Christ’s sake. Everyone."

  Among the actors who did make it through the tryouts were Téa Leoni and Janet Jones, both of whom were cast in bit parts as players on the Racine Belles.
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  (#1) No One Thought That 'There's No Crying In Baseball!' Would Become A Classic Movie Line

  Decades after audiences first heard Jimmy Duggan scream, "There's no crying in baseball!" the quote remains a fixture in pop culture. However, screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel never thought the scene would continue to be quoted years after the film's release.

  The intent of the scene, the screenwriters told ESPNW in 2017, was to show how different the cultures of men's and women's baseball were. "We never said, 'And then there will be this great scene where the coach says, "There's no crying in baseball,"'" Ganz claimed. He added that the line didn't come from knowing that Tom Hanks would be playing the manager; it was in the very first draft of the script, well before the actor had been cast.

  Bitty Schram, who played Evelyn Gardner, the right fielder who breaks down in tears when she is berated by her manager for missing the cutoff man, said that the scene was filmed out of sequence and took numerous takes to get right. "What kind of sucked was that they had to fix my face for the next take because I couldn't look like I'm crying before I'm crying," Schram told ESPNW. The actor admitted she couldn't stand to watch the scene when she went to the film's premiere because "it made me nauseous. All I could see is 'Oh, they pick the take where I look like I was crying before' or 'Tom is great, but look at my f***ing double chin.' That's all I think about."

  Geena Davis said she always thought the line was very funny, but never thought it would become as iconic as it has: "That line is a signature. Right up there with 'Hasta la vista, baby.'"

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