A League of Their Own
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When World War II threatens to shut down Major League Baseball, candy manufacturing magnate Walter Harvey (Garry Marshall) decides to create a women's league to make money. Ira Lowenstein (David Strathairn) is put in charge and scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz) is sent out to recruit players.
Capadino likes what he sees in catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis). She's a terrific hitter and, almost as important, a "doll". He offers her a tryout, but the married woman is content where she is, working in a dairy and on the family farm in Oregon. He's less impressed with her younger sister, pitcher Kit Keller (Lori Petty), who loves the game passionately, but appears to be less talented. He finally lets her come along when she persuades Dottie to give it a try. Along the way, he also checks out Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh), a great ambidextrous slugger from Fort Collins, Colorado, but the blunt-speaking scout sees too much of a resemblance to General Omar Bradley and rejects her. Dottie and Kit refuse to leave without her, and Ernie reluctantly gives in.
When they arrive at the tryouts in Chicago, they meet Doris Murphy (Rosie O'Donnell) and Mae Mordabito (Madonna). They are all assigned to the same team, the Rockford Peaches, which is managed by drunken, former baseball great Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks). Initially, Jimmy treats the whole thing as a joke, leaving the coaching duties to Dottie. But he eventually takes over, as he sees how hard and well his team is playing.
At first, the league attracts little interest. In one memorable scene, Lowenstein tells the Peaches that things aren't going so well and that the owners are having second thoughts. With a Life magazine photographer in attendance, he asks them to do something spectacular. Dottie obliges. When a ball is popped up behind home plate, she catches it while doing the splits; the resulting photograph makes the cover of the magazine. Jimmy is (predictably) disgusted, while the opposing coach and catcher are stunned. Gradually, more and more people show up and the league becomes a success.
When Dottie wants to quit, Lowenstein is alarmed. He had been publicizing the photogenic catcher as the "Queen of Diamonds". He mistakenly thinks it's because of a personality conflict with her sister, so he has Kit traded to another team, the Racine Belles. This exacerbates the already intense sibling rivalry between the two women. Kit has a massive inferiority complex; Dottie is a better player, a better hitter and much more beautiful. Kit blames her sister for getting her traded.
The two meet again in the championship game of the AAGPBL World Series. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Kit comes up to bat, with her team trailing. She hits the ball into the outfield and rounds the bases, ignoring the stop signal by the third base coach. Dottie catches the ball and blocks home plate, but Kit runs into her so hard she can't (or won't) hold onto the ball and Kit scores the winning run. Dottie quits baseball to be with her husband Bob (Bill Pullman), who has returned from the war, but before she leaves, she and Kit reconcile.
Many years later, the two sisters, who haven't seen each other in quite a while, are reunited, along with many of their Peaches teammates, at the opening of a women's section in the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Many of the older women shown in the final scenes had been actual players of the AAGPBL.)
