When the highly anticipated new A League of Their Own series finally dropped on Prime this summer I immediately binge watched it. And then I watched it again, and again, and again. And for months now I’ve been trying to find a way to eloquently express, in writing, why I care so deeply about the Rockford Peaches, Max and Clance included. But what started out as a love letter of sorts has now morphed into something else. Recent news of a speculative second season has me fired up.
On Tuesday March 14th, seven long months since the series made its debut, Deadline announced that A League of Their Own was renewed for a shortened and final season. But how short is “shorted” you may ask?
Four episodes!
That’s how short. And unless those four episodes happen to have the runtime of a more recent Stranger Things episode, that’s some bullshit.
On one hand, yes I very much want a second season, but on the other hand am I really supposed to celebrate that the news isn’t the alternative? I know many TV shows never last as long as fans had hoped, but the bigger issue with this development is that the news isn’t even remotely surprising.
When it comes to queer media and / or women in sports, there’s a perpetual, pervasive, and troubling sentiment that we should be happy with what we’ve got.
“If You Think About it You Already Won”
Even the characters in A League of Their Own are no strangers to this hogwash. When Carson is worried about being two games down in the championship series, her husband dismisses her as a professional athlete and tries to reframe her very real concern of elimination as a great story to tell their future kids someday. Charlie literally tries to convince her that just getting to play is good enough.
But it’s not!
And when Carson tries to “convincingly” pass this outlook along to the rest of the team, Greta thankfully calls her on that nonsense and tells her to find a way to show up and not prematurely accept defeat.
As the legend Billie Jean King once said:
“Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs. I want women to have the cake, the icing and the cherry on top, too.”
Of course she was more specifically referring to equally pay, but that rally cry still feels really apropos at the moment as A League of Their Own fans fight for #MoreThanFour.
The news has already resulted in an outpouring of fans sharing what the show means to them and a more organized fan campaign has kicked off as well. Case in point, they’ve already orchestrated a banner plane fly over at Amazon studios.
“The world doesn’t change.”
For some historical context, over 500 women played in the real life AAGPBL over the course of its 11 seasons. And when all is said and done, this version of A League of Their Own may only run for 12 episodes.
That’s not nearly enough.
The series was obviously never going to tell everybody’s story, but they clearly are nowhere near running out of source material or inspiration either as they’ve already successfully expanded the world from the original movie. But time and time again, female athletes, real or otherwise, don’t get the same space in the media as their male counterparts. This feels like yet another snub.
FOX’s Pitch was notoriously one and done. Netflix’s Spinning Out which was about competitive figure skating was likewise canceled after one season. Disney+’s Big Shot about a high school girls basketball team was just canceled after two, although I have a feeling that it was really more about John Stamos’ character. GLOW was renewed for a fourth and final season, but then Netflix reversed their decision due to pandemic-related concerns and left the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling in the lurch. (I will never get over this cancellation.)
Meanwhile Friday Night Lights lived through a writers’ strike and two networks and ran for 5 seasons. Starz’s Heels is awaiting news on a potential third season but was somehow able to film close contact wrestling scenes amid the pandemic when GLOW was not. Ballers ran for five seasons on HBO. The CW’s All American is currently in its fourth season, has a spin-off series, and is one of the only shows currently renewed for next year amid ownership and leadership changes at the network. Brockmire ran for four seasons on the little known IFC network. Paramount’s predecessor the Spike Network’s Blue Mountain State had three seasons and a movie. Cobra Kai just announced a fifth and final season after enjoying a meteoric rise in popularity after making the leap from YouTube to Netflix.
Even The Last Dance, the docuseries about Michael Jordan’s storied career with the Chicago Bulls, had 10 episodes at 50 mins a piece. And speaking of ESPN, their long running docuseries, 30 for 30 has had over 120 installments, very few of which feature female athletes.
And don’t even get me started on the ongoing trend of quickly canceling queer women-led programming, which you can read more about here, here, and here. In 2022 alone, more than 20 TV shows with positive LGBTQ representation were axed or ended. Obviously it’s hard not to assume that this pattern of bias wasn’t at play here too. The intersectionality is strong.
“Let’s Rob The Bank!”
After Greta knocks some sense back into Carson, she works up the courage to tell Charlie that she needs him to leave so that she can focus on herself and the team. And it’s then that she’s able to rally the troops with honesty and hope.
“But here’s the facts. The Blue Sox, they’ve always been stronger than us. Now they have Jo. She was our best hitter and… They’re better than us. They just are. […] But that does not mean they get to win.”
“We’re the peaches. And we fight to win. But if we lose… let it be fucking epic!”
So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna fight. We may be the underdogs, but we’re gonna fight to Renew A League of Their Own because these stories need to be told too. And if we go down, we’re gonna go down swinging.
