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

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  (#17) Jon Lovitz

  Lovitz plays the sarcastic scout who recruits many of the various players. When he starts to leave after taking Dottie, Kit, and Marla to the tryouts, he tells them he will be going home to give his wife a "little pickle tickle," a line that was reportedly ad-libbed by the actor.

  Lovitz's part was originally larger. One of the scenes Marshall ended up cutting from the film involved Lovitz giving a monologue that references Babe Ruth and calls a hot dog a "meat rocket." When Lovitz protested to the director that she should keep the scene in the film, Marshall responded, "You're in the film just enough."
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  (#12) Geena Davis

  • Actor

  In the film, when the league struggles to draw fans in the first weeks of play, the man in charge of promoting the league (played by David Strathairn) asks the players to do something spectacular that will catch the eye of some visiting photographers. So when Davis's character chases after a foul pop, she does a full split as she catches the ball. And yes, the actor, not a stunt double, was the one who pulled off the move.

  "Penny asked if I could do a split," Davis told USA Today in 2017. "I said to put it later in the shooting schedule to give me time to work up to it. It’s hard to learn that quickly. But I did." 

  But while she nailed the split, the actor had a little trouble getting back up. In the film, Davis explained, "My character does a Chuck Berry split and then hops right back up. There was no popping up happening. I was stuck there and had to be helped up.”
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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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  (#10) Madonna

  • Band/Musician

  In the early 1990s, Madonna was a huge star. She had been nominated for multiple Grammy (and other) awards, and each of her first four studio albums had gone multi-platinum in the United States. She had nine singles top the Billboard Hot 100 and completed two successful world tours. She had also been in several films, most notably Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) and Dick Tracy (1990). Still, when it came to casting her in A League of Their Own, some of the executives at Columbia Pictures weren't sure whether she would be able to handle a sizable role. 

  "There's still some dispute about whether she's a 'movie star,'" a Columbia Pictures executive told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. "The feeling is that, surrounded by the right people, she's fine. The big question is whether she can take on a big role and carry it off on her own."

  Marshall thought of casting Madonna in A League of Their Own after the actor chosen to play All the Way Mae dropped out of the film. Madonna was eager to be in the film, and when producer Robert Greenhut warned her she wouldn't be paid very much, she replied that she wanted to diversify her career. Greenhut recalled that she took her role very seriously, and that although he had to occasionally reprimand her for being late to the set, she was determined to do a good job.

  Lori Petty told The Ringer that Madonna was such a huge star at the time that she wasn't even sure how to address her. "We were like, what are we even supposed to call her. We can't call her Madonna! That's like calling her the Empire State Building!" But sharing a makeup trailer with Madonna helped Petty relax around her. Madonna even confessed to the other actors that she hadn't been confident that she was going to become a huge star.

  Marshall also didn't know how to act around the superstar singer. "I couldn't get the word 'Madonna' out," she wrote in her memoir. Her solution was to deal with Madonna and O'Donnell in the same breath as "Ro and Mo."

  Davis was another person who wasn't sure what to expect, telling USA Today in 2017, "She was Madonna. We wondered if we were going to be able to talk to her. Was she going to have an entourage? Were they going to put up walls around her where she stands?" But the actor went on to state that the singer fit in well, training hard for her role and doing her own stunts like sliding head-first into the bases.
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  (#8) No, Tom Hanks's Long Bathroom Break Wasn't Real

  The scene where a drunken Dugan stumbles into the locker room and proceeds to take a long pee lasts approximately 53 seconds. But Hanks wasn't really taking a leak.

  Instead, Marshall stood just out of camera range with a hose and a bucket to simulate the sound of the action.
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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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