August 21, 2008

A League of Their Own

Did Dottie drop the ball on purpose? Discuss.

When forming your opinion (or backing it up or whatever), here are two points in the movie I believe are important to keep in mind:
1. At the very beginning, old lady Dottie tells her older grandson to go easy on his little brother and tells the younger to murdalize (as my little brothers would say) his older brother while they're playing basketball.
2. Somewhere in the middle of the film we see Dottie make the exact same play: she covers the plate; the runner bowls her over, and she hangs onto the ball.

What do we make of these things? I think it's pretty significant, too, that Dottie has the ball in her bare hand; it doesn't get knocked out of her glove by the impact--her hand opens, and it rolls out. That at least looks an awful lot like losing on purpose, but there is the nagging fact that she would be letting down an entire team of women she's obviously fond of after coming back for the last game of the World Series. She came back, so the game and the team must have been important to her.

But. Is her baby sister more important?

I still don't know what I've decided. Anyone have an opinion?

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