During the coronavirus shutdown, each day we will bring you a recommendation from The Post’s Peter Botte for a sports movie, TV show or book that perhaps was before your time or somehow slipped between the cracks of your viewing/reading history.
A League of Their Own (1992)
Rated: PG-13
Streaming: Amazon Prime
Throwing like a girl was never more♔ of a com🔯pliment.
Actress-turned-director Penny Marshall (“The Odd Couple,” “Laver🃏ne and Shirley,” “Big”) presents a warm and often-hilarious account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that sprung up and thrived while countless major league players were overseas during World War II.
This actually might be my favorite baseball movie, and that’s saying an awful lot in the company of past recommendations such as “The Natural” and “Buꦜll Durham” ✅— as well as a few we haven’t gotten to yet, such as “Major League” and the original “The Bad News Bears.”
Geena Davis, as star catcher and slugger Do🍷ttie Hinson, and Lori Petty, as her kid sister Kit Keller, are convincing athletically, as are Madonna (“All the way, Mae!”) and Rosie O’Donnell (Doris Murphy) in supporting roles. And don’t forget the great Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh), what a hitter!
Even with six career Academy Award nominati🍎ons and two victories, this is among Tom Hanks’ most memorable roles, as washed-up, heavy-drinking former slugger Jimmy Dugan. (Especially his unforgettable rant about there being “no crying in baseball” and his signing of an autograph to two young boys: “Avoid the clap, Jimmy Dugan.”)
One minor note you might have missed: Betty “Spaghetti” Horn is portrayed by Marshall’s real-life daughter, Tracy Reiner, the adopted child of Marshall’s husband, actor/director Rob Reiner of “All in the Family,” “Th🅠is is Spinal Tap” and “A Few Good Men” fame.
Also, who even remembers there even was a six-episode TV series based on the film 🐻— starring Sam McMurray as Dugan, Carey Lowell (“Law and Order”) as Hinson, with🥀 Cavanagh, Reiner and Marshall’s brother Garry (as league owner and candy bar magnate Walter Harvey) reprising their big-screen roles?
Quote of Note: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” — Manager Jimmy Dugan to catcher Dottie Hinson
Botte Blows: 4.75 of 5