I hadn’t seen “A League of Their Own” for quite some time and caught the last half hour of it yesterday. Unless you’re a real baseball or WW II history fan, I’m not sure how many people knew about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that played from 1943-1954. The movie was a fictionalized account, and notwithstanding Hollywood’s lack of historical accuracy in many movies, it certainly had the proper period feel even if it might have been lacking in facts. (On the other hand, since I don’t know the history, they may have gotten very close with this one.) It’s a Penny Marshall film with a great cast and in a nutshell, begins with the older Dottie (played by Geena Davis) trying to decide if she will attend the induction of the League into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Most of the movie is then in flashback to the first year of the League and all the ups, downs, drama, and humor. And yes, the famous line, “There’s no crying in baseball,” came from that movie.

It is the final twenty minutes or so that I am posting about though and I used this illustration in Your Room At The End: Thoughts About Aging We’d Rather Avoid. The last part of the movie brings us back to the present with the players now as seniors and they have an exhibition game for old-times sake. I found that to be a wonderful scene and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was truly surprised when a friend of mine took exactly the opposite view as we discussed the movie one day. She found that same scene to be depressing because here the women were, no longer the attractive, athletic versions they’d been when gracing the cover of magazines. She was correct in that they were wrinkled, some a bit heavy, for sure slower in their movements. To me, it was, however, an affirmation of the vibrancy that was simply another stage of their lives. Any thoughts on this one?