A League of Their Own — the league was this city's; the cameras were not

The film of 1992; the Blue Sox of 1943–54

The test: Ask the world where the women's professional baseball of the 1940s happened on film and it will name this league's cities — and South Bend fielded the South Bend Blue Sox in that league for all twelve of its seasons, 1943 to 1954. But the 1992 film that made the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League famous did not shoot a frame in South Bend, on the production record reached: its tryouts were filmed at Chicago's Wrigley Field; the Rockford Peaches' home ground was played by League Stadium in Huntingburg, Indiana, an 1894 park Columbia renovated for the production; the Racine Belles' home and the championship game were played at Bosse Field in Evansville; and the Hall of Fame sequence was filmed at Cooperstown. The 2022 streaming series of the same name likewise shot elsewhere, in western Pennsylvania. The association's true shape prints plainly: the Blue Sox are this city's — their twelve seasons, their 1951 pennant and their two playoff championships are the Blue Sox team history's in this record — and the cameras that made their league immortal were in Evansville, Huntingburg and Chicago. South Bend is the film's subject's hometown and not its location, and both halves of that sentence belong in the record.

The grounds the film missed: The Blue Sox played at Bendix Field and at Playland Park — the first of which this record cannot locate at all, as the following entry and the Mysteries history tell, and the second of which stands in the IU South Bend River Crossing campus, its marker under a walnut tree. The most famous league in women's baseball played twelve seasons in this city, and neither of its grounds made the film, because the film was never here.

Cross-reference: this history owns the twelve seasons whole; Sports carries the league in the city's sports survey; Historical Mysteries carries Bendix Field. This entry carries the screen test and its result.

Sources

1. The AFI-based production record of A League of Their Own (1992), as compiled in the location histories — Wrigley Field, Chicago (tryouts); League Stadium, Huntingburg (the Peaches' home; renovated by Columbia in 1991); Bosse Field, Evansville (the Belles' home and the championship); Cooperstown (the Hall of Fame sequence); production begun at Wrigley Field, 10 July 1991. No South Bend location appears in the record.
2. The Blue Sox team history in this record — the twelve seasons, the 1951 pennant, the playoff championships of 1951 and 1952, and the Bendix Field/Playland Park grounds.
3. The published production record of the 2022 series — filmed in western Pennsylvania.