A League Of Their Own - Tumblr Posts
it's too bad smoking is expensive and bad for you and everyone around you because we will never be able to replace the specific intimacy of lighting someone else's cigarette for them
i bet beverly was just like greta. a fierce protectiveness over herself and those she cares about. a strict composure in public spaces. but an intense soft spot for people like her. and then she’s the chaperone for the AAGPBL. a league full of vulnerable women like her. and she protects them with everything she has. everything she can do for their safety she does.
she saves jo from public humiliation and prison, with her own money. she tells carson it’s for the league, but really it’s because she knows firsthand what happens to “inverts”, and she can’t bear the thought of one of her girls going through that.
she gives jess her fines back. she lets the mask down, for a second. because she wishes she could love and live as wild as jess in public. her little act of service for her community; her tiny way of reclaiming herself.
beverly doesn’t care about baseball. she cares about these women. these reflections of her younger self, of the women she loved once. she cares about her girls.
Goddamn thank you so much I literally feel so enlightened
sorry not to flex my jock privilege but some of the tags y’all are leaving on my aloto posts are making me laugh. wdym y’all don’t know anything about baseball do you realize how much you’re missing? did you get that dove’s forkball was never gonna work for lupe? did you miss the beautiful moment of lupe asking carson for a sign in the final game and carson giving a one? do you get how fucking much it reveals about lupe that she’s a phenomenal pitcher AND a good hitter?
Jess Mccready is the Brittany S. Pierce of the Rockford Peaches send tweet
This is the letter Lupe sends in episode two! Couldn’t make out all of it, but here’s what I could see (rough translation mine):
Mi vida, Estoy en Illinois ahora…de pruebas y le gané a [cantidad?]….chicas. ¡Voy a ser la pitcher! Estaré en los Rockford Peaches! De hecho - Casey Porter va a ser nuestro entrenador! Te acuerda de él …? De los Cubs. El dice que tengo mucho talento, y también que soy su favorita - mira! Te muestras esto a Alma? Por favor, usa esto para todo de la casa. Estoy ganando muy buen dinero aquí y pronto mandaré más. Con todo mi amor, Lupe
My life (term of affection), I’m in Illinois now…tests and I won…girls. I’m going to be the pitcher! I’m going to be in the Rockford Peaches! In fact - Casey Porter is going to be our coach! Do you remember him … ? From the Cubs. He says that I have a lot of talent, and I’m also his favorite - look! Will you show this to Alma? Please, use this for everything for the house (all the family expenses). I’m earning really good money here and soon I’ll send more. With all my love, Lupe
jess misses her hit on purpose btw. if you even care,
i'm talking about this moment here, where lupe tells esti to do a double steal. now whether jess heard or understood what lupe said i don't know, but you can see that she still catches on to what they're doing before the pitch is thrown. so i think that when jess swings, she misses that ball intentionally, here's why.
some context for those not as familiar with baseball, jess is the team's shortstop, which is a position well known for having very strong all around players. meaning, there's a really really good chance she's going to hit whatever comes at her. especially this late in the season. the other team knows this, especially because jo has no doubt told them, and jess knows that they know this, so she uses it to her advantage.
now if jess were to hit that ball then she puts herself, lupe and esti all at risk of being out. if she doesn't swing then she's not in the way of the catcher, who will then have a much easier time throwing the ball out to jo at third base to tag lupe out. so instead, jess swings. and in the time that the pitch was thrown the other team would've had to go from covering the areas closer to their bases to prevent a possible steal, to then covering their wider fielding areas in the likely event that jess would hit the ball that she is currently swinging for. and then when jess misses, the other team has to quickly rush back to again try and cover that double steal, while their catcher also has to get enough space around jess to make a clean throw to third once jo is there to catch it. and they of course were unsuccessful.
if you watch jess' swing carefully you can see that it also just looks... really weird. it's too slow, her swing scoops down and there's just no power behind it. it looks fake tbh, which is strange for such a strong player. and when she misses she doesn't look upset or frustrated in the least, despite having just struck out. she's excitedly watching the double steal play out and cheering on her teammates when they pull it off. she sacrificed herself and an out to move her teammates further along, leaving them in the capable hands of shirley, who then brings lupe home before the inning is over.
“No one’s ever done something like that for me before” NO ONE’S EVER BEEN IN THEIR CORNER. NO ONE’S EVER SAID I SEE YOU AND I’LL HELP YOU GET ALONG JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, NOT MAKING YOU CHANGE ANYTHING. NO ONE’S EVER SAID YOU BELONG HERE. YOU’RE AMONG FRIENDS HERE. NO ONE’S EVER SAID YOU ARE NOT WRONG. YOU ARE NOT WRONG!!! WE HAVE TO PROTECT OUR OWN!!!!!
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN | 1x08 "Perfect Game"
What you guys need to understand is that i have literally never been so emotional about a scene even after having watched it like. A hundred times.
it just feels so real
They just. They understand each other and i. Can’t explain why it affects me so much but it’s something about vulnerability and acting tough and being taken under someone’s wing and seeing someone even whilst they’re hiding and loving them for that. It’s taking care of someone for a bit before they even realize and it’s doing things you’re not supposed to do because you’re helping someone else.
Anyways i um. I think this show is really special and sees me in a really specific way
No one is talking about the most important scene in a league of our own which is, of course, when Beverly gives Jess all of her fines back.
And Jess’s face!!! She’s so happy and touched and she looks like she’s going to cry. Her little “no one’s ever done anything like this for me before”
And Bev! Smiles!! And says “well we’ve got to take care of our own” and Jess slowly realizes and smiles and Beverly WINKS
It was so touching and just so so so loving. It made me feel 😭
CARSON SHAW & GRETA GILL A League of Their Own | 1.03
D’ARCY CARDEN as Greta Gill A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (2022 - )
Lupe, Carson, and Gaydar
I've joked about the scene when Carson confronts Lupe in the gay bar constantly. It is maybe my favorite scene in the show, definitely the one I’ve rewatched the most, and it's my motivation for writing this. Because while it is an extremely funny scene, and it's very funny that Lupe seemed to be the only one that didn't realize that Carson was gay, I feel like it reveals a lot about their dynamic up until this point. I've made jokes about Lupe having a busted gaydar, because on the surface, sure, but I feel like its a lot more complicated than that.
Ignoring the scene itself for now, let’s start in the beginning-ish. Carson and Lupe don’t really interact all that much in the first episode. The one significant scene they do have is when all of the Peaches are at the bar (not the gay one), and we get the ending of a conversation they’re having. Lupe has apparently told Carson that her dad didn’t want her going there, but she went anyway. Then Carson says that she kinda ran away too. Lupe asks if that’s why she looks so different now (given her recent haircut from Greta) and Carson says she doesn’t look that different. Lupe says she does and then walks away. It's not an unpleasant conversation. There's not really anything negative going on here, and it honestly seems like Lupe is flirting at the end there. Carson doesn't really pick up on that though, and Lupe just sort of leaves and they don't really have any similar interactions after this.
This scene alone shows that while Lupe might not have straight up known that Carson was gay, she was at least willing to test the waters to see if that was a possibility. But even though their interaction here ends well, she never really attempts to flirt with Carson again. There is probably reason for that.
In the second episode, again there isn’t much in the way of interaction between the two of them. However, this is where you can begin to see that they’re in very different worlds. In fact, they’re both living in very different worlds than the majority of their team. First, let’s address Carson, and to explain Carson’s big divergence from the rest of her team, I think Greta actually explained it best.
During Charm School, it's made apparent that Carson is more or less immune to the danger that a lot of the girls are in here. Not only is she not masculine presenting like some of the girls are, she’s married. She’s not a danger to the team’s image, if anything she’s an asset. Because what better way to prove that they aren’t destroying womanhood than to have women who are not only married, but married to men currently serving in the war. Carson isn’t fucking going anywhere. Lupe on the other hand, is at risk, and she seems to know it.
She is trying to smile and give a good attitude and appearance when she's being judged.
While Jess and Fern (the girl who gets kicked out) are joking with Carson, Lupe is taking this all very seriously. You don't see her often in these scenes, but when you do, she's focused. It's almost bizarre when you notice it for the first time.
And then afterward, when they pass and the surviving Peaches are going out to eat, Lupe isn't visibly uncomfortable in the same way that Jess is. Jess is physically uneasy with herself. Lupe, maybe has some of that too, but she seems more to be trying to mentally snap out of something. As if she had to put herself in a headspace that isn't comfortable or easy for her to get out of.
Lupe isn't the only one uncomfortable after Charm School, but she definitely was one of the ones that was, where again, Carson wasn't. Carson was always safe, and she wouldn't have even realized how unsafe the others were if Greta hadn't been blunt with her about it. They are exceptions within their team, but while Carson's exceptions makes her safer, Lupe's puts her in danger.
So let's jump ahead to their first game.
So the very first game starts for Lupe with racism. Not only are they playing on racist tropes in order to get the "customers" interested in her, but they also also have to lie about her to make her more palatable. Her being Mexican isn't appealing and might actually upset people, so the league has decided to make her Spanish instead. This along with the sexism that all of the other girls received from the announcer, is what she's greeted with on her first game.
Now, maybe Carson received some sexist comments too. I'm sure she did to some extent, but she's again, married to a man currently serving at war. I don't think that she would have gotten nearly as much as the unmarried girls, especially since the announcer seems to feel the need to point out which girls are single. And she definitely didn't get any of the racism that Lupe (and probably Esti, though I don't recall a specific instance of that) got while playing. Not to mention that when the girls get their first pay checks in episode 3, Lupe and Esti are the only ones that Bev feels the need to tell this to:
For some reason they are the only two that Bev feels the need to suggest they be patriotic. I'm sure its nothing.
None of this specifically connects their relationship, but it's important background knowledge to keep in your head when looking at the next few episodes. Because this is the world that Lupe is living in when she really starts to see Carson very differently than her initial flirting.
So episode three is where you really start to see the conflict between Lupe and Carson develop, and for the most part it initially just revolves around them independently trying to deal with Dove. No one on the team seems unaware that Dove is an issue, though it seems on a surface level that Lupe doesn’t notice it, given that she appears to just goes along with everything Dove says without question. Even the other girls think that Lupe is “up Dove’s ass” and would rat them out if she knew they were doing secret practices, so they don’t tell her. They all exclude her. Even Esti. Even Jess. And she knows that she’s being excluded from something because she wakes up for breakfast and nobody is there.
Now, the secret practice itself isn’t entirely Carson’s doing. They all came up with the idea more or less together and went along with it, but Carson is the only other one on the team that is seen trying to deal with the Dove problem (outside of Jo telling him something and him lashing out on her). Her initial attempt was to give him a conversation pie. Now to literally anyone with eyeballs who isn't experiencing this show through Carson's point of view, it would look like Carson is sucking up to him. This is after Greta repeatedly made jokes about Dove being her “daddy,” and making Carson reveal that she and Dove have talked privately. So, Carson looks like she’s sucking up to Dove. Not only that, she made him a fucking pie. Can you get more stereotypically conservative American housewife than making someone a pie and then trying to talk to them about some problems you want them to fix.
Let’s talk about Lupe’s reaction to Dove. Lupe is not comfortable with Dove, but like Charm School, she sees it as something she just has to get through. If you think she likes Dove, let’s look at her initial reaction to when Dove gave her the nickname that sticks with her for the rest of the season.
Dove just says a bunch of racist stuff to her face (after indicating that she would be the keeper of his legacy, of course) and then goes on with the interview. Lupe is visibly upset by this, and looks to the other two authority figures that could stop Dove, and she gets told to keep smiling. So she nods, and continues to smile through the interview while Dove strokes his own ego.
Lupe does not like this man. Lupe tells the reporter that she’s just excited to get some in before Dove interrupts her, and reminds them all that they’re here to talk about him. So it's made clear to Lupe that the way to get through this is with Dove. So Lupe sticks with Dove. Early on, maybe she could have been convinced to go against him some, but why would she go against him later on? When the other girls did so, they specifically left her out.
Lupe injures herself doing Dove’s stupid pitch because she’s not given any other way to make it for herself except through Dove, because her own teammates excluded her. There might have been ways to get through to her if they’d tried, but they didn’t. So now Lupe has to double down and stick with Dove’s plans entirely because its the only one.
Now, let’s think of some of the reasons why Lupe might think she has been left out. She might realize she’s “up Dove’s ass.” Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. But Carson made him a fucking pie to butter him up. She’s looks like she's up Dove's ass too and she went to the secret practices. So what else could there be? She’s not the only Hispanic person in the house who’s whiteness and patriotism is actively questioned. Esti went to the practice. And she’s not the only visibly queer person. She is however, the only one that hits all of these "faults." Others might be different, but Lupe is too different. At least, she is if you're someone who would be bothered by different things.
We the audience know that this isn’t why Lupe was excluded. But why would Lupe know that? Especially when Esti eventually outs Carson as the person behind the practices. Regardless of whether or not it's actually her doing entirely, she’s the one that gets pointed to, and you know what, that would just make sense, wouldn’t it.
Little Miss American housewife with the army husband, from a farm in the country excluding Lupe specifically. When Lupe gets injured, Carson is the one that jumps on benching her. Carson seems to be the one isolating her from the team, and is now trying to get her off it. Unlike that first night in the bar, now Lupe would be well aware that Carson is married with her husband at war. That she’s from a farm (not really but ya know). Lupe doesn’t know about Carson’s internal goings on. She doesn’t know about her getting close to Greta or any of the others that might be queer. Lupe sees her own experiences with Carson and has figured out who Carson is: a typical white conservative housewife from rural America that would turn her ass in the second she had a reason to. Genuinely, why would Lupe think anything else of her at this point? She hasn't been able to see any other side of Carson.
So jumping forward quite a bit to when Dove leaves. Lupe has up until this point been doing everything that she was “supposed” to do and gets rewarded by most of the team picking Carson over her as the coach. Lupe was the one that stuck with Dove like management wanted and Carson was the one that lead the coup against him, yet Carson gets rewarded. Wonder why?
This entire time, tensions between them increase. When they’re playing the night game and trying to call out the cheating, Carson gives some stupid speech about what her soldier husband would want. Lupe actually knows the rules and gets something done about it. Carson is given authority because she’s the token white married woman on the team (except maybe Terri but ignore Terri we have no idea if she’s actually married). She’s the safe one. Lupe ticks too many boxes on why she isn’t acceptable despite doing everything right.
Then, we have Greta making things a bit worse.
Here we have Greta just sticking her beautiful birdlike neck in where it shouldn't be in order to try to stick up for her girlfriend. Lupe doesn’t know they’re together or even that they're gay. She probably doesn’t even know they’re friends because of how discreet they've been trying to be. She just sees Greta confirming that she’s known all along. Carson is the poster girl. Lupe is the one that’s too much. After Greta leaves, she angrily and sarcastically asks “Why’s that?” and then beats her hat against the post when Carson leaves. The woman is at a breaking point.
And then the fight happens.
It’s the fucking hick comment that convinced me, really.
Lupe tells Carson that she hasn’t been able to play because of her, because yeah, from where she’s sitting it does look like Carson’s fault. Carson is the one that didn’t include her in practices. Carson is the one that got her benched. Carson is the one that took the job that she was more qualified for. And every single person has sided with Carson against her. Can we blame Lupe for finally having enough? Because even if she’s missing very important context that would explain things some, she has no way of having that context.
And to cap things off, when she finally just has enough and the fight happens, everyone still sides with Carson against her. Carson becomes the full time coach, everyone blames her for the fight, and the only person that eventually somewhat understands what the problem is, is Jess. Even then, that’s only when Lupe explicitly points out to Jess that she’s dealing with shit Jess doesn’t have to think about. And while Jess eventually gets that, she still has more context than Lupe because she not only was included in all of the things that Lupe wasn’t, she also knows that Carson and Greta are fucking. So she knows that Carson isn’t entirely the impression that Lupe has of her.
And now we get to the scene.
Lupe has been through all of this. She has had to deal with this woman for the entire season. Things are finally calming down. Then one night when she’s at a gay bar, where she is explicitly safe from people like Carson, Carson fucking follows her to the bar.
Now this is terrifying. Because while Carson could only argue and complain before, now she caught Lupe doing something no one is supposed to do, someplace none of them are supposed to be. Like, literally, Carson is now a serious danger to Lupe, a danger to Jess, a danger to Lupe’s date, and a danger to the entire bar. It initially seems to Lupe like Carson knows exactly what is going on and is disgusted by it. And if she said something, people would believe Carson. Because they always have before, and honestly, who wouldn’t believe it if Carson outed Lupe?
See I joke about Lupe’s broken gaydar here, because it is funny. Like, literally every other queer person knew something was up with Carson, but none of them were Lupe. None of them had to deal with things that Lupe had to deal with, and none of them were excluded as much as she was. Lupe’s gaydar is broken with Carson because she never had a chance to have any other impression of Carson. And clearly it wasn’t actually broken, because she tested the waters with Carson the very first night in Rockford. It was everything that happened after that made it seem like that initial impression was very wrong.
This revelation that Carson is not only queer, but sleeping with Greta really flips everything for Lupe. Because what she thought she understood as passive aggressive hostility was clearly just Carson being fucking stupid and clueless. And now she’s not the bigot that is gonna turn her in and ruin her life and dreams of pitching, but she’s a little baby gay who didn’t even know that places like this existed. That didn’t know the Jess and Lupe were gay, or what butch means, or that half of the league is gay. Now Lupe's laughing with Jess as they try to explain queer shit to Carson, and that is the first time she really seems comfortable around Carson. Because this is when Lupe realizes that Carson has been excluded from something this entire time that she didn't even know existed.
It's not just that she hated Carson and so assumed that she was straight, or that she learned that Carson is gay and so suddenly likes her. It’s that she didn’t have any reason to believe anything but the worst about Carson, and now she has the context that makes a lot of things suddenly make some sense. And because now, she’s clearly the authority on things that Carson really wants to learn about. Now they actually know each other’s secrets, and they’re shared secrets and it’s found in a place where they don’t have to hide it. This is the first time that Lupe and Carson are instantly on the same page about something.
After this, there’s no real tension between them. It's not so much that everything is ok and fixed. Lupe is still dealing with stuff, it's just clearly not Carson that's the issue anymore. It's not Carson who seems to be doing these things to her. Carson's now one of the few people that's approachable and who Lupe is willing to loosen up and joke with. Whereas before she might have tried to avoid Carson entirely unless absolutely necessary, now she's pulling Carson in to mess with other people and have fun with their ignorance. It's other people that won't know what's going on now.
Now that they share something, it's almost everyone else on the team (and otherwise) that’s excluded from their fun. Now, they’re both actually understanding each other and can work together for the first time.
Now it's not Lupe excluded from the rest of the team, and it's not Carson thinking that she and Greta are alone in their queerness. Now it's all of the queer Peaches having their own celebration together and not letting anyone else in on it. Because as overdone the metaphor is, now they all know they're on the same team.
So, no, I don't think Lupe's gaydar was broken, no matter how funny that joke is or how many times I make it (and will continue to make it). I just think that there was some very understandable interference preventing her from getting a good reading.
Madonna as Mae Mordabito in A League Of Their Own (1992)
Today's sapphic character of the day is Maxine Chapman (A League of Their Own)
jess mccready + her ongoing war on lupe's personal space
bonus:
