No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of ‘A League of Their Own’: Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood

This gossipy outing by entertainment journalist Carlson (Queen Meryl) details the making of the 1992 film A League of Their Own. She describes how director Penny Marshall drew inspiration from a documentary, also titled A League of Their Own, about the WWII-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and enlisted veteran comedy writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel after failing to stir up interest from women screenwriters. Behind-the-scenes stories include star Geena Davis struggling to get a handle on the sport’s basics and Madonna complaining about being “dirty all day” from filming scenes on Wrigley Field. Elsewhere, Carlson discusses how Rosie O’Donnell refused Marshall’s request that she lose weight for her role, Marshall’s decision to cut a kissing scene between Geena Davis’s and Toms Hanks’s characters, and how the film beat the studio’s box office expectations. Fans will enjoy the on-set anecdotes, though some of the more tangential stories—about, for instance, Marshall doing LSD with Carrie Fisher in the 1980s or renting her guest house to Richard Dreyfuss—feel like fluff. Still, this connects more than it misses. (Sept.)