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?

Alert! Musing content trending toward serious. In the miniseries, “Lonesome Dove”, the two main characters of Gus and Call were former Texas Rangers as was a third friend, Jake. Of the three, Call was the most rigid when it came to questions of good and bad, Gus was more philosophical and Jake tended to get into more trouble than the others. At one point in the series, Jake strikes out on his own, but it is dangerous territory and he winds up with two men who are in fact not averse to theft and murder. This was not Jake’s intent of course and as the tragedy unfolds, Gus and Call are forced to acknowledge that Jake is involved. During the intensifying situation, Jake protests his innocence about “having crossed the line”, with the exclamation of, “I didn’t see no line. I was just trying to get through the territory.” (Or words to that effect)

That is an incredibly accurate description for so many of us about many things. Seeing the line between right and wrong is often difficult and like in a rapid sport, it can be easy to step across the line before you realize it. In the realm of “right and wrong” though there is the complication of lines being blurred when you ask yourself honestly where a particular line is. Does the line exist because you believe it to, or because you have generally accepted it as a line? Does a line now exist where it did not before or vice-versa? What we once believed to be harmless fun, we might now come to see is hurtful. Or perhaps something that we once thought was inappropriate, we now put into perspective as no big deal. Yet in the desire to be “non-judgmental” do we run the risk of losing all standards? And where does “sticking to your principles” become an unwillingness to honestly examine a position to see if perhaps you should change? No easy answers here, are there?

Musing content alert! We are fans of the series, “Game of Thrones”, although we haven’t read the books because, quite frankly, I tried and the body count was simply too much for my taste. The series is bad enough with that and I will attempt to be careful in writing this so that if someone hasn’t watched the last few episodes, it won’t be a spoiler.

As a quick summation, the “Game of Thrones” refers to the constant jostling among the seven major houses (kingdoms) as to who will rule and sit on the Iron Throne. The king who had brought everyone more or less into line died and an event occurred that caused a war to erupt with the claim that the very young (and quite unbalanced) King is not the rightful heir. His maternal line is the powerful house of Lannister and so far, they’re managing pretty well to retain their hold on power. It is the grandfather who not only wields the real power, but who understands the machinations and has outmaneuvered those he considers a threat. Which brings me to the point of the blog.

In the season finale, a brutal event is set into motion by the grandfather and one of his sons questions the lack of honor in the action. “I did it to stop this war,” is the answer. “Why is it considered more honorable for 10,000 men to die on a battlefield than for a dozen to die thusly?” (I just paraphrased that). Okay, that would seem to be a good question and you think, well, yes, perhaps that would be justified. Except – the core point is that while the war was launched by another house, it was the specific action of the young King that precipitated the response. And, if the grandfather was willing to face the truth, he would learn that perhaps the young King’s hold on the throne is in fact dubious at best. Ergo, his claim of desire to end the war (while ensuring his family stays in power) fails to address where the actual responsibility lies.

I will grant that in this scenario, admission of responsibility is likely to end in significant bloodshed, but in the metaphorical sense, the “bloodshed” can mean adverse career or relationship impact. It is, too often, the wish to avoid those impacts that cause individuals to obscure responsibility when an action he or she goes badly.