So: Yes. Rockford made the right decision in trading Kit.³

DID DOTTIE DROP THE BALL ON PURPOSE SO THAT KIT COULD FINALLY HAVE HER BIG MOMENT?

Yes. I wish it weren’t the case, but it is. The movie gives us just enough clues to let us know that it’s happening. To wit:

Dottie says on multiple occasions that she doesn’t love baseball, that it’s just something she does.⁴ It’s why she has to be coerced into even trying out for the league. It’s why she abandons her team right before the World Series starts when her husband comes home from the war. It’s why she only plays the one season. Dottie liked baseball, yes, absolutely. She probably liked it a lot. But she didn’t love it—at least, not the way that Kit did. Baseball was everything to Kit. And Dottie understood that. It’s why she wanted Kit to win. She knew that, even beyond just the personal and athletic glory, winning that World Series would mean a different kind of life would lie ahead of Kit than if she’d lost it.⁵

“There’s a lot of reasons I can’t go.” That’s what an elderly Dottie tells her daughter at the beginning of the movie. Dottie’s daughter is trying to convince Dottie to go to the AAGPBL reunion and Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Dottie pretends like she doesn’t want to go because she doesn’t think anyone will remember her, but really it’s because even all those years later she still feels guilty about throwing Game Seven.

“Now remember: No matter what your brother does, he’s littler than you are so give him a chance to shoot.” That’s what an elderly Dottie says to one of her grandsons as she’s on her way out of the house to the reunion. The grandson she’s talking to has a younger brother. They’re playing basketball together. This, I think, is the most obvious signal that Dottie dropped the ball on purpose.

“Why you gotta be so good, huh?” That’s a line that Kit says to Dottie during a fight they have in the locker room after that game where Dottie has Kit benched. Kit goes into this whole speech about how whenever Dottie is around she feels like she barely even exists. And when she’s done, Dottie is very visibly shaken. It’s right here, I would guess, where Dottie decides she’s going to sacrifice baseball for Kit’s own well-being. (Which is why she tells the person running the league that if they don’t trade her then she’s quitting and going home.) (Bonus: Kit makes a similar argument earlier in the movie when she talks Dottie into trying out for the league. It’s the one card she can play against Dottie that Dottie never has a good enough answer for.)

A precedent. There’s a play earlier in the season when Dottie gets trucked by an opponent’s catcher at home plate in a play similar to the one between Dottie and Kit. The catcher is much bigger than Kit, and Dottie takes the collision like it’s nothing. Getting smashed by the catcher and not dropping the ball and then getting smashed by a significantly smaller Kit and not dropping the ball is like bench pressing 180 pounds easily but for some reason not being able to bench press 115 pounds.

After she gets the big hit off Kit to put Rockford up 2–1 in the ninth inning of game seven, she sees Kit having a breakdown in the dugout. It’s clear that watching her sister go through it affects Dottie. And I have to assume that Dottie knew Kit was going to be batting third that inning, which is when she started on plotting setting up Kit for her shot at heroism. And that leads us to the three things people who argue that Dottie did not drop the ball on purpose like to point out…

EVIDENCE THAT APPEARS TO BE AGAINST THE CASE THAT DOTTIE DROPPED THE BALL ON PURPOSE

She had Kit pulled out of that game. This would seem to be proof that Dottie values winning over her sister’s feelings, which, if extrapolated outward, means of course Dottie would never give up a World Series just to make her sister feel better. But the Getting Pulled from the Game situation and the Dropping the Ball situation are two very different things. In the former, Kit still gets to be part of the winning side.⁶ In the latter, Kit is haunted by the three hits that she gave up in the top of the ninth to lose the World Series for her team for literally the rest of her life.

The ninth inning hit I mentioned a moment ago. You might say, “If Dottie wanted Kit to win, why not just go down swinging in her at bat in the top of the ninth? If she would’ve done that, Kit’s team would’ve won and Kit would’ve still gotten to be the hero.” And to that I say, “Because Dottie wasn’t sure right then that she wanted to let Kit win. It wasn’t until after the hit when Dottie saw Kit falling apart in the dugout that knew she had to save Kit.”

Telling the pitcher about Kit’s weak spot as a batter. Right before Kit’s at bat in the bottom of the ninth, Dottie calls time and then goes and tells her pitcher to throw high fastballs, that Kit “can’t hit ’em, can’t lay off ’em.” This would seem to be a clear sign that she wants to win, and that she’s willing to sacrifice Kit to do so. Except here’s the thing: She wasn’t sacrificing Kit. She was setting Kit up for the biggest hit of her life. Kit, we’re told (and shown) for the entire movie that the high fastball is her favorite pitch. Kit also knows that Dottie knows she likes the pitch (and that she has trouble with them). After the pitcher throws two straight high fastballs, Kit and Dottie stare at each other. It’s right here where Kit sniffs out that another high fastball is coming, and why she’s prepared to hit it. Dottie knew that Kit was going to figure it out, which is pretty much the most she could do for Kit in that moment.

Kit was smart, and capable, and clever. Had Dottie played her hand in any kind of other way, Kit would’ve been able to tell that Dottie had tipped things in her favor, which would’ve ruined it for Kit. Dottie had to set all those pieces up in exactly the right way, which is exactly what she did.⁷

WHO GETS THE MOST BLAME FOR ROCKFORD LOSING THE WORLD SERIES?

The first pick you have to go with is Dottie, seeing as how she orchestrated the ending. But I don’t figure that’s right. She was mostly just reacting to the situation she’d found herself in. (You can give her 25 percent of the blame, if you like.) (Also, let’s consider for a second how insane it was that the best player in the league decided she’d just skip out on the World Series the day before it started.) (And I’d also like to ask her a few questions about her alibi.⁸)

The second pick is you have to go with Jimmy Dugan, seeing as how (a) he let Dottie play in game seven, and (b) he never replaced Evelyn, their right fielder, despite the fact that Evelyn screwed up more times than nearly everyone else in the movie. But I don’t figure that’s right either, because he proved himself to be a very good manager. Rockford went into the World Series missing their best player (Dottie), a starting pitcher (Kit, who’d gotten traded a week or two earlier), their starting left fielder and relief pitcher (Betty “Spaghetti” Horn, who left the team after she received news that her husband had been killed in the war), and their best hitter (Marla Hooch, who left the team after she got married to the guy she was singing to in the bar). Getting Rockford to a game seven is an impressive enough achievement to save Jimmy from absorbing too much blame here. Give him 15 percent of the blame.

Marla has to get a ton of blame for cutting out on the team after getting married. (Give her 20 percent of the blame.) Betty gets a pass because of the dead husband thing. (Give her 0 percent of the blame and 100 percent of the condolences.) And Kit has to get a pass because Dottie probably overreacted to the fight she had with Kit that led to Kit being traded. (Give her 10 percent of the blame.)

All of those people are out. You know who the answer is? You know who gets the most blame for Rockford losing the World Series? Evelyn. She was the one who had her son hanging around the dugout telling everyone they were going to lose before game seven. She was the one who made the error early in game seven that allowed Racine to score their first run (she missed the cutoff throw, which is the same mistake she’d made in a game earlier in the season that cost Rockford a lead). And she was the one who was playing way too far up in the infield when Kit got her hit in the bottom of the ninth. (The ball sailed clean over her head, a good thirty yards behind her. She should’ve known that Kit was taking big swings. Any contact Kit made was going to result in the ball sailing.) She’s 30 percent responsible for Rockford losing the World Series.