Character Arc (Maybe!) in A League of Their Own

I recently listened to the A League of Their Own episode of The Rewatchables podcast, a favorite of mine. Near the end, the hosts ponder whether or not Dottie (Geena Davis) intentionally dropped the ball in the climactic moment of the final game—one of their “unanswerable questions.”

The scene plays out as the culmination of a bitter rivalry between sisters Dottie and Kit. It’s the primary subplot and core relationship story of the film, and it ends with a showdown scene at home plate. Kit runs the bases and attempts to plow into Dottie (the catcher) hard enough to make her drop the ball and score the winning run.

Kit succeeds, but the scene is filmed in a deliberately ambiguous way. We don’t know if Dottie drops the ball on purpose or is simply knocked senseless enough to lose her grip.

I read the script pages, and the action description offers no additional clues—it was likely the writers’ intention to let the audience ponder and make their own decisions. For some, great filmmaking. For others, frustrating. Either way, it offers yet another opportunity to talk about character arc.

So did Dottie drop the ball on purpose?

I respect the decision to leave the scene open to interpretation, but I believe most screenwriters will have a vastly preferred answer: Yes, she did.

Most great films are, at their heart, about human transformation. As I’ve discussed before, some genres get a pass—plenty of great horror and action films have no measurable character arc. But in general, we respond to a character’s journey because of the way it changes them. It’s the core of our human experience (and it can be fun, too).

There is a LOT going on in A League of Their Own, and Dottie’s evolving relationship with her sister probably isn’t her core character arc—I’d give that award to her internal struggle between commitment to her team and society’s expectations about her social role and domestic obligations. But I’d like to think there IS a transformative arc there, and it’s all about that dropped ball.

If Dottie drops the ball purely because she took a bad hit, then it’s all accidental. Kit wins, Dottie loses, they make up, everything works out. Perfectly fine.

But if Dottie drops it on purpose—wow. She’s become a different person. During the course of the film, she’s learned to appreciate Kit’s struggle: that her younger sister has lived life in the shadow of her perfect older sibling and suffered for it. Knowing this, she makes a decision to give up her own role as the perpetual “winner” so her sister can shine.

In that last split second, knocked flat with her hand on the ball, Dottie’s whole life with Kit flashes through her mind—the fights, the struggles, the bad feelings, and her own domination—and makes a choice to do something entirely selfless. It doesn’t even matter whether or not Kit deserves this “gift”—it actually enhances Dottie’s sacrifice if Kit doesn’t.

I like to think in their heart of hearts, the screenwriters preferred this interpretation—their protagonist evolving in more ways than one. The Dottie at the beginning of the film would never have made this choice; she’d have held onto that ball no matter what. But after all they’ve been through and all she’s seen, could she drop it on purpose?

Absolutely.