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Thu June 16, 2022, 6:30pm, Castro Theatre
Amazon Prime has a new series (premieres on Amazon Prime on August 12) based on the 1992 classic film about women playing profes­sional base­ball during World War II. Thirty years ago, the movie mostly played for laughs, leaving the lesbian undercur­rents mostly below the surface, but the reboot puts them (and the blatant racism of the day) front and center. Given that surviving participants of the real-life All-American Girls League say that a substantial majority — possibly as high as 80 to 90% — of the players were lesbian, it's an overdue recognition of something that is often whitewashed (along with the racism).
The main characters are actors, of course, but many of the players in the game sequences are real professional-caliber baseball players — except, of course, that in 2022 there is no women’s professional baseball league. (There are also actually fewer lesbian bars in the United States than in the 1940s!)
This series is obviously a must-see for lesbian sports enthusiasts, but I think most audiences will find it engaging; at turns funny, heartwarming, and cathartic; and on the whole a true gem of a television series, definitely binge-worthy.
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