"A League of Their Own" Season Review: Come for Baseball, Stay for Personalities

Release Date: August 12, 2022

Platform: Prime Video Genre: Comedy/Drama

This retelling of the 1992 film, "A League of Their Own" captures the lives of the Rockford Peaches, a women's professional baseball during World War II America. Fronted by their star player, Carson Shaw (Abby Jacobson), the Peaches fight to rise above the misconceptions about them and the middling confidence of those in power to prove that women deserve a place on the field. While that is their goal as a collective, each woman is also seeking their own self-discovery and those dynamics will have an impact on their ability to work as a team. Occurring in the same town at the same time, a young, baseball obsessed black woman named Maxine "Max" Chapman (Chanté Adams) deals with the barriers placed in front of her to find an opportunity to play the game she loves. Working against the pressures of her family and the roles society has set in front of her, Max is seeking a similar sense of acceptance as that of Carson Shaw and the Peaches.

This series tackles a number of real world issues: racism, women's rights, LGBTQ discrimination, gender identity, immigration, and the hardships of war. Those themes lead to some heavy moments, specifically those surrounding the discrimination of gay people in the 1940s. It was a common thread that connected many of the characters on the team, as well as Max, and climaxed in a difficult to watch bout of police brutality. Coming with the expectations of a more baseball-centric story, it was off-putting to find the show diving deeply into such mature themes. Though appropriate for the time period, the show felt flooded with too many of these themes. Some of the episodes felt spread thin with its various areas of focus and resulted in minor pacing issues as the beginning of the series was getting established. As a baseball fan, it was unfortunate to find that the show did not prioritize the games, though not a surprise. Grounding itself in its deep character work only strengthened what ultimately lied at the core of the show: the relationships between the characters and their perseverance in a world against them.

Throughout both narratives, those of Shaw/Peaches and Max, a slew of diverse supporting characters are introduced that help flesh out the story with fresh perspectives. For the former, spit-fire Jess (Kelly McCormack), isolated Izzy (Priscilla Delgado), and conservative Shirley (Kate Berlant) are but a small sample of the ancillary cast who carry their own scenes like leading ladies. Although the bulk of the character work focuses on Shaw and fellow teammate Greta (D’Arcy Garden) exploring their romantic feelings for each other in secret, it is the rest of the Rockford Peaches that I found to bring the more unique tones and angles to the story. Some of these characters, like Izzy who struggled to fit in due to a language barrier, could have easily carried more of the story and better separated itself from Max’s narrative. Shaw and Greta had their moments of intrigue, but that interest wears down quickly and its core themes are rehashed in the show’s other narrative.

There is more entertainment to be found in the Peaches journey to adjust to the league's expectations while also fielding a winning team, but Max's more personal narrative carries just as much of the weight. Adams’ performance fully captures Max’s self-exploration as a blossoming lesbian who must juggle her family’s expectations with her own dreams while also combating the racial prejudices of her town. With the assistance of her best friend and comedic relief Clance (Gbemisola Ikumelo), this portion of the narrative carries a sweet determination that builds up to a major exploration of gender roles and perseverance realized. It becomes a joy to see Max’s development as she becomes more assertive towards her mother and takes bold chances to better differentiate who she is from who she is told to be. That is all with her putting baseball behind more, making it that much more exhilarating when she gets her chance to get on the mound.

Both of these stories are strong on their own, even if quite derivative, but the connection that draws the stories as parallels is very weak. The late night conversations between Shaw and Max feel very manufactured as a ploy to keep these tales intertwined. Their meetings just felt like recaps of what was already seen and stole time from many of the other characters who deserved bigger roles. The narratives are already both tied to the baseball history in the town and had similar explorations of gay life. Rather than recap conversations between Shaw and Max, I think the series could have been better balanced by taking a more anthological approach.

This was a fun series that builds strong momentum into the finale and easily finds you connecting with its characters and their goals. It is a very gay show that frequently visits LGBTQ issues and relies on those empathy tones to draw audiences closer to the characters. The baseball games, even with somewhat silly ball effects, will have you cheering for the game and on the edge of your seat come the season finale. This is all due to how well the personal stakes are established. Come for the sport and stay for the personalities as "A League of Their Own" takes just a few episodes to capture its efficiency at balancing the two and creating a deeply involved victory.

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RATING: ⚾ ⚾ ⚾ ⚾ / 5

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