Marshall’s ‘League’ still resonates in sport
The movie grossed $132 million, lent sports one of its most enduring phrases and capped what might be considered a golden decade for baseball and cinema.
But “A League of Their Own” played a role far more significant than even “The Natural,” “Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams” fulfilled: It captured a moment in time that was nearly forgotten and helped spark a movement that carries on some three decades later.
Penny Marshall’s death on Monday at 75 came 26 years after her film about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League brought to the modern screen a tale of inclusion and empowerment. Hatched as a wartime diversion while many of the major leagues’ players, including Ted Williams, fought overseas, the AAGPBL outlasted World War II, spanning 1943 to 1954.
Barnstorming through Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and eventually Michigan, the league faded as the lads came home and the major leagues were whole again. But the barriers broken by the league’s women were significant. .
“If it had not been for Penny Marshall, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League would still be unknown,” Shirley Burkovich, one of 79 surviving members of the league, told USA TODAY on Tuesday. “It would have been known only to those who lived in that area at that time. To have her realize the significance of that league, and to put it into a motion picture that became the No. 1 grossing baseball movie ever made, that to me shows you the type of person that she was. I don’t know if it would have even gotten into the history books.”
Burkovich, 85, played for three teams in the AAGBPL from 1949 to 1951, including the iconic Rockford Peaches. Some 640 women participated, says president Richard Chapman, and there might be more survivors whom the organization has not been able to track down.
Burkovich still serves on the AAGBPL board, and her shock of white hair is impossible to miss at girls baseball tournaments or perched behind home plate at the Women’s Baseball World Cup in Au- gust in Viera, Florida.
Her role, and, by extension, Marshall’s, in blazing those trails for women in baseball is not lost on her. “Back in those days, there was nothing for women,” she says.
“Then, after all those years, and that movie came out, we became known to everybody, worldwide. And that was something that was so hard to believe, because when we saw the movie, and the reaction we got from people, and they realized we had played in that league, it was just amazing.
“And these young, young girls coming up to us and saying thank you, thank you for being pioneers and the chance we have to play ball. This is what’s so heartwarming; these girls feel like we were responsible for them having the chance to play baseball. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But nothing happened until that movie came out.”
Girls have participated in Little League without restriction since 1974, thanks to a court ruling that forced the Little League Federal Charter to remove a gender clause. While a majority of girls opt for, or are funneled toward, softball, baseball remains a goal for many.
Some have cracked the game’s executive ranks: Kim Ng has served as an assistant general manager for teams and worked in the commissioner’s office. The Athletics (Haley Alvarez) and Mariners (Amanda Hopkins) employ women in their scouting departments, and myriad women have landed jobs in teams’ analytics department.
Marshall’s initial fame came in the seminal 1970s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” in which she portrayed Laverne DeFazio. But her greatest professional acclaim would come in the director’s chair, at a time it was not a particularly hospitable place for women.
Sports would figure significantly in her canon.
Marshall, who cultivated a large sports memorabilia collection, was an NBA fan. She had season tickets to Lakers’ and Clippers’ games. She told The New York Times in 2008 that she sat near the visitors’ bench instead of the Lakers’ bench because, “When you sit near the Lakers, they don’t let you near the players. Here I have clear access to the players. I’ll talk to them and we’ll carry on conversations.”
Marshall also directed a documentary about Basketball Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman called “Rodman” which is in post-production and scheduled for release on Sept. 1, 2019.
It was “A League of Their Own” that left her biggest footprint, however.
Marshall had directed Tom Hanks in “Big” four years prior, which earned him an Oscar nomination, but he was languishing after that. Hanks’ Jimmy Dugan, however, set the actor back on a proper course, that role preceding his star turns in “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump.”
Dugan provided one of Hanks’ most memorable lines: “There’s no crying in baseball!” The phrase immediately was imbued in baseball’s zeitgeist.
The entire 2 hours, 8 minutes are unforgettable, even for those born more than a decade after the movie’s premiere. “They’ve memorized the movie,” says Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball for All, a group that staged seven tournaments featuring more than 500 girls in 2018.
Burkovich is a consistent presence at Baseball For All tourneys. She says baseball “gets in you, and never leaves you.”
“We had reunions,” she says of her AAGPBL sisters. “We sold T-shirts to each other. And that was it. We have everything in the world to thank Penny Marshall. Had it not been for her foresight, I know we would have never been known. And we’d be sitting in our little houses, and going to our little reunions, and that’s it.
“We’re that generation. We’re losing players constantly. And now we’ve lost our star player. She was responsible for giving us this opportunity now, at this age, to be able to enjoy this.”