A League of Their Own commentary, part 1: ‘Mule!’ ‘Nag!’

COVID-19 has changed something for everyone. From my sports/social/writing perspective, I’ve been trying to find creative ways to keep busy and fill my cup. Instead of watching Minnesota Twins baseball in a highly anticipated 2020 season, I’ve watched replays of classic games. One night, I decided to pop in my old DVD of one of my favorite movies, “A League of Their Own.”

My brain turning a bit during my peak night-owl hours, I thought it might be a fun idea to jot down notes throughout the movie and write up a detailed summary and my thoughts on the movie. It’s one I already know so well with a lot of the memorable quotes, but I figured my notes couldn’t hurt to put it all together. I tried to incorporate as much of the movie as possible without getting any more long-winded.

So, I hope you enjoy my 14-part series on the film. I’ll publish a new post each day. Grab some popcorn and read along.

Setting the scene in the present
The movie starts out with who we’ll soon know as “older Dottie” packing a suitcase. A subtle touch is some old photographs on her dresser of her and, we assume, her husband. You can tell right away in the conversation with her daughter that Dottie isn’t really feeling this trip, whatever it is, surrounding baseball. I think I read somewhere that Geena Davis, who plays the younger Dottie in most of the movie, has her voice dubbed for these scenes. It makes sense because the voice is so familiar.

A couple of throwbacks to my childhood here as Dottie and her daughter head out to the car. Dottie calls her older grandson a “wisenheimer” after he makes a crack. That’s definitely a term I heard as a kid. Also, it must be in the parent handbook to say “I don’t want to get any bad reports,” like when Dottie’s daughter tells her sons the neighbor will be watching them while she’s gone.

Before they pull out of the driveway, we get a taste of Dottie’s competitive edge as she gives separate pep talks to her grandsons playing basketball. A simple “kill him” is uttered to the younger boy.

From there, the music comes up on the song “Now and Forever” as more opening credits roll while Dottie makes her journey on a Greyhound, which passes a sign welcoming folks to Cooperstown and eventually pulls up to Doubleday Field. Dottie enters the field to see teams of older women playing baseball and looks around in reflective awe.

Flashback to the 1940s
It’s only about eight minutes into the movie as the film fades from present-day to the black-and-white film and narration clearly taking everyone back to World War II times. We don’t know it yet, but pretty much the entire movie is a flashback as Dottie remembers her one season in the All-American Girls Baseball League. Sometimes flashbacks are cheesy and not well done, but I’ve always thought this was a great way to handle this one. There’s no jumping around, and it makes sense that she’s flooded with all these memories.

Anyway, the black-and-white segment sets the scene for the movie, explaining the need for the baseball league. Instead of shutting down baseball entirely during the war as the men went off to serve, “the candy-bar king” Walter Harvey put his “whiz kid” Ira Lowenstein in charge of figuring out how to keep baseball around.

The first old-time scene opens up with a graphic to establish we’re at a local ballpark in Willamette, Oregon in 1943. Where’s Willamette? I have no idea, but judging by the cornfields beyond the outfield, it’s in farm country.

The first line here belongs to actor Jon Lovitz, playing baseball scout Ernie Capadino. Some fan is standing in his way in the bleachers behind home plate, and Capadino lets him have it: “Hey, fatso, get out of the way! What are you, crazy?” Lovitz has a relatively smaller role and sticks around in just the beginning of the movie, but man, he’s one of the best characters with most of his lines being great one-liners with a bunch of sarcasm and snark attached.

‘No high ones’
Dottie establishes the sister relationship right away with Kit, who’s on deck in the game as they’re both wearing their stylish “Lukish Dairy” baseball uniforms. Dottie is trying to give her some pointers.

“Look, sis, she’s getting everybody out high. Don’t swing at that pitch, ok?”

“I can hit it.”

Kit’s stubbornness is evident from the drop, too. She’s going to prove her older sister wrong. But Dottie presses and tells her “no high ones.” To which Kit responds: “I like the high ones.” This will, of course, come back near the end of the movie as a theme between the sisters. I never really got the whole “Mule!” “Nag!” exchange between them, but it sticks out enough to be important as something between them.

True to Dottie’s warnings, Kit whiffs badly at a pair of pitches head-high. Kit glances at Dottie, who again motions and mouths “too high.” In her head now, Kit is clearly determined to let the next pitch go by, which ends up being right down the middle for strike three. Kit is super pissed and tosses the bat against the chain-link fence as she storms back toward the dugout while a casual Dottie heads to the plate.

Meanwhile, Capadino offers a small chuckle from his seat where he’s taking notes with a big cigar dangling from his lips. As Kit stands to the side, there’s a billboard in the shot behind her that reads “Buy War Bonds,” which is another sign of the times, in case the audience isn’t caught up yet.

For the first, but not the last, time in the movie, Dottie provides the walk-off hit as two runs come in to score. If we’re not sure this is Dottie by now, the fans start up chants of “Dottie! Dottie!” One of the fans throws some salt on Kit’s wounds, telling her it’s a good thing her sister bailed her out.