This A League of Their Own recap contains spoilers. (Buckle up! This is the longest recap about a single episode of television that I’ve ever written in my life of writing about television. I loved it that much.)

Max is damn near running down the stairs towards the darkness of night. She’s not with Carson. Make no mistake, Carson is right behind her, on her steps, breathlessly asking “It’s really dark!!??” and “Is this your field?,” scrambling to catch up — but Max is singularly by herself.

She came to Carson after the Peaches game (which ended in a brawl on the field by the way, long story) to call in a favor on Carson’s Big Gay Greta secret from the first episode — “You asked me to forget about what I saw. But it’s still fresh in my mind. So I need you to do something for me.” — and now here they are, fraught. Carson trying to figure out what comes next. Max only hearing her mother’s voice ringing in her ears.

She needs Carson to hit off her.

I know she’s having a breakdown and this not the time nor the place, but she is perfect to meeeee.

Max winds up. The first ball is strong, fast — but wide. She goes again and Carson taps it. Max grows even more frustrated and Carson tries to encourage, “Alright! Give me another!” But it keeps cracking through, her father telling her mother “it always comes back to Bertie!” and her mother spitting back “look at me and tell me that you don’t think she could turn into an invert?” Shit. Shit. Fuck. Max throws again, and Carson knocks it clear out of the field. FUCK.

Carson’s stunned, she’s never seen a woman who could pitch that fast. But of course, she doesn’t get it. Being a Black woman trying to compete means you can’t just be great, you have to be The Best. Great is below Max’s standards. “Great” leaves room for her to choke — and as we saw when she froze on the factory diamond, there can be no room for her to choke. Max isn’t herself. She can’t shake what she heard. She can’t go on if she can’t pitch. She runs away, leaving behind a Carson who has more questions than answers and also, her bag.

It’s fine. This is fine.

The next day at the factory, Max starts by apologizing to Clance. She was so wrapped up in her own baseball world that she forgot their first rule, no matter what else, that they always take care of each other. So how is Clance, anyway?

Clance is good! Sure she just said goodbye to her husband, possibly forever, and each waking moment without him is ripping her apart from the inside out, but that’s nothing! She’s good! You hear me? GOOD!

Max completely understands because she just blew what might be her only shot at her life’s dream, and also maybe she was never good enough to play baseball after all, oh and her entire life has been a lie but psssshhhh she’s fine!

They are Good! STOP ASKING QUESTIONS! They are good!

She’s an icon. She’s a legend.

There’s a new woman in the factory, Gracie, who Clance immediately says looks like Josephine Baker — and my friends, that’s how you know Gracie is gay (it is my personal life wish for someone to say I look like Josephine Baker, the highest of queer Black femme compliments!).

Gracie clocks right away that Max’s last name is Chapman, but there’s no time to get into it on account of this being the worst day of Max’s life. No. Sorry. I forgot. She’s Good.

Meanwhile, the Peaches brawl is front page news, and now even the Girl Scouts hate them! Girl Scouts!  Dove is gone for good and Mr. Baker Junior is here to deliver the bad news that the Peaches are on the verge of being shut down, and also that his uncle might put him in charge of the nougat division for this fuck up (“No one comes back from nougat!”). If the Peaches want to keep playing, from now on they need to be the best of friends. They need to hold hands — Sarge warns, maybe not hold hands — and they will need to kiss and make up — well, maybe not kiss either. Carson will be taking over for Dove as coach and Lupe is being blamed for the entire fight even though it was actually Carson who started it. That’s whiteness working overtime, folks. We’ll come back to this.

Carson and Lupe return home and we find out that the papers are being told that Dove will continue coaching from “from afar” (hahahaha), and also that the team as a whole has pretty much iced out Lupe. I have a lot of strong feelings about that! Considering that they had already isolated Lupe to begin with, when they had their little secret Peaches practice inviting everyone but her, but for right now Lupe takes it in stride with an excellent piece of physical comedy from Roberta Colindrez where Lupe takes a cigarette from Jo, promptly tells everyone Carson’s now in charge and oh by the way the Peaches might be over, and swiftly leaves into the house for Carson to have to deal with the ensuing chaos that Lupe left at her feet.

Carson makes long eyes at Greta from the porch and makes up an excuse about having to ughh… go pee, which obviously means making out in a car in the shed. Carson is stressing about being a housewife while Gretchen calls her “coach” and starts to unbutton her own shirt.

This is what the homophobic Amazon reviewers are complaining about when they shriek “gay sex!”

Shirley is still really freaked out that Jo might be “a queer” by the way, so Carson tells her that Jo and Dove were actually having an affair, as a cover.

I know that in the comments of our recaps there’s been discussions about Shirley being played as a neurotic Jewish stereotype, and I’ll admit that I didn’t notice it in my first watch of the show, but that’s very real. It’s also definitely not my place to say, other than as a fellow highly anxious person I found Shirley’s self-soothing while Jo crows about her Big Leo Energy (that’s gay) from the hallway to be so comforting, if only because we rarely get to see self-soothing on television at all. My personal method of choice is the 5-4-3-2-1 system, but Shirley’s self-taps while counting to 12 will definitely get the job done.

(Fellow anxiety sufferers — your brain can’t do two things at the same time, so a great distraction is also doing math problems, you’re welcome.)

“Don’t you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you.” — August Wilson (Fences, 1985)

Max stares at her bedroom wall in the middle of the night, before all at once she starts tearing down all her baseball posters. The stew of rage, confusion, and loathing has roiled to a boil and now there’s no containing it, just spit and snot and tears coming down as Miss Toni comes running into her room at the commotion. Miss Toni, a Black mama to her core, wants to know what the hell has gotten into Max’s head making all this noise?? But Max is just getting started, shouldn’t her mother be happy? She’s giving up all this baseball foolishness for good.

Miss Toni never wanted for Max’s heartbreak, she loves her. Max narrows all of her emotions into a laser, focused directly at her mother: “You love me, but you don’t like me.”

Miss Toni’s taken aback, “it’s not my job to like you. It’s my job to raise you.”

(I’d bet good money that this phrasing is an intentional reference to my one of my favorite August Wilson monologues from Fences, which is also looking at questions of Blackness, worth, and parenting in an mid-size industrial city, in this case Pittsburgh, set in the 1950s, not long after the time period of A League of Their Own.)

Max’s face squeezes tight. Each word pushed out from some place deep inside of her like it’s a punch, “as long as I don’t end up like Bertie… right?”

There it is.

It always comes back to Bertie.

Max always thought that Bertie had done something to Miss Toni, but actually it was Miss Toni who threw Bertie away. “You’re gonna throw me away too if I ain’t what you want.” Max’s chest is heaving, but her back is straight. She knows its the truth.

Miss Toni tells Max that if she don’t stop disrespecting her in her own house, so help her God —

Max gasps quietly, her first real breath since the fight began. Her voice waivers, “You would, wouldn’t you?”

Miss Toni takes too long to respond, just a second too long to say “Maxine stop this” but there is no stopping this, because they both know. Max has known since she heard her mother call her an “invert,” she’s known since every time her mother winced when she put on pants or grabbed her mitt. She just didn’t know the words, and now she does.

Max moves in with Clance that same night, who admits that despite her Oscar worthy performance from earlier – she is not OK. Max agrees to sleep in Clance’s bed and let Clance be the big spoon (and if Clance maybe grazes her ass a few times in her sleep because it’s muscle memory for when Guy was her little spoon, that’s just what friends are for). They will make it through this together.

In Mean Girls, this would be the part when Karen asks Cady if she’s from Africa then why is she white.

The next day Carson shows up at Max’s job at the factory bringing her signature “I need someone to do me a favor” pie and Max’s lost bag, which provides some *truly Top Tier comedy* from Gbemisola Ikumelo as Clance stage whispers, “Is this white woman smiling at you?” followed by the absolutely pitch perfect “don’t you go nowhere with this white woman” — I have nothing to add. No notes. If you know, you know.

That night, Carson and Max meet again on Max’s field. Max admonishes Carson, “you can’t just show up at my work like that” (of course, Carson being conveniently unaware of her own white privilege being a reoccurring theme of the episode, and the series overall if we’re being real). Carson wants to pay Max off to keep the Greta secret, but Max doesn’t want the money, she just needed someone to pitch off of just to see if she’s good enough to keep trying. She got her answer.

Carson wants to go back when baseball was actually fun, because if we’re honest right now it kinda blows. She wants to have a catch (!?!? Carson what??? But also it’s only ever going to be “have a catch” from now on, so sorry), and that’s a turning point in their relationship. Trying to once again find the love of the game they both once loved so greatly.

When we next see them together, it’s daytime and they are having more catch.

I’d let Max Chapman throw me around like she’s throwing around that baseball

hahahhahahaaa WHOOPS!

Max fires one off. “Satchel Paige.” Arguably the most famous Negro League pitcher of all time, with a career that spanned five decades, credited by Joe DiMaggio as the best pitcher he ever faced.

Then another one. “Bullet Rogan.” The player who won more games than any other pitcher in Negro League history, while simultaneously ranking fourth highest in career batting average.

Max says the MLB ain’t got nothing on the Negro Leagues (facts) and Carson tells her to throw one as herself, but I beg please no because I cannot handle it. Every time Chanté Adams winds up, it is hard enough. I am weak. WEAK, I SAY.

Carson notes that Max has the yips and the only way out is to have to face those voices that tell her she can’t “right in the eye… wait no, voices don’t have eyes… right in the mouth.”

The advice leads Max right back into Miss Toni’s house, but this time she’s riffling for something specific — and she finds it: Bertie’s address, tucked inside Miss Toni’s bible.

Max walks to Bertie’s, a modest home with panel siding, a white iron porch and faded stripped awning. She nervously clears her throat before knocking. And who opens the door? Gracie, who looks like Josephine Baker, from the factory.

Gracie smiles big at the confirmation of her niece standing in front of her, but Max stammers — sure that she has the wrong address. Before Max can get a full sentence out, Gracie calls behind her upstairs, “Bertie! We got company.”

Suspenders and the chain of a pocket watch is some elite level masc fashion, Bertie said you goin’ know about me.

Max comes in as Bertie descends down the stairs, black pants and suspenders over a white button down with a pocket watch tucked in their pocket. Their hair parted to the side. Max’s eyes go slightly wide, she steps back.

Max: “You’re my Aunt Bertie? Toni Chapman’s Sister?”
Bertie: “Well, I am Bertie. Everything else you said is up in the air.”

Max says nice to meet you, but Bertie says they met once before – when she was a baby. With every sentence, Max’s eyes grow just a little wider and wider, her eyebrows arching up, as Gracie (who is leaning on Bertie’s shoulder) tells Bertie about how Max has become a leader at the factory. Bert credits Max’s work ethic to their side of the family — and that stance too, both of them looking at each other with their arms crossed in front of their chest, feet wide apart.

“Two peas in a pod,” Bertie beams. Gracie offers to fix Max a plate and Max asks to use the restroom first. As soon as Bertie and Gracie leave the room, she bolts out the front door.

It’s too much. It’s all just too much, too quickly. For the first time Max is looking at something that could maybe be a mirror.

The overwhelm of it takes all the air out of her lungs.

Meanwhile, Carson tries the whole “have a catch” thing with the Peaches, reclaiming what we loved, so on and so forth — and hahahaaaa that’s gonna be a big NOPE as the Peaches almost immediately descend into in-fighting and bickering. You wanna talk about overwhelm? Carson is in over her head.

Her lips quiver.

Lupe asks what’s wrong with her face.

Jess (who’s sporting a black eye from last episode’s fight) warns her, don’t you — don’t you do it. Don’t even think about it.

Carson crumbles. It’s too late.

Lupe gets the honor of saying it in the show, but let us all say it together right now, as is the divine right of our people.

1…

2…

3….

“THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!”

🗣 Tom Hanks Voice

(By the way, Carson calls Lupe a head case, which… again… feeling mighty white of you there, Carson. Lupe will later disparagingly call herself a “head case” while throwing balls against the team house to check her arm. And that’s what happens when you are racist and ableist and also 🎵 ableism is often tied to white supremacy, these things don’t exist in a vacuum, lalalaaa 🎵)

That night, Sarge tells Carson that “unmarried women are always a half step away from being an angry mob” and that she should toughen up and own her power. Be the boot! I still don’t quite get what “be the boot” means and I’ve watched this scene 3x, but fuck it — it sounds cool. Be! The! Boot!

The next day, Carson will take the “be the boot!” theory out for a walk in the team locker room, to mixed results. Though Greta does find Carson being an asshole to be hot, which she shares in their daily shed car make out session. Carson wants to engage in the time-honored queer tradition of Processing Our Feelings^TM but Greta’s shutting that shit down. She’s worried about how sloppy she’s gotten lately, she worries that Jo was right. So instead, Carson and Greta fight.

Later, Jo and Greta share cigarettes. Yes, Jo was the one who was so worried about following the rules, but right now in this moment? She’s feeling hopeful. After Dana, Greta’s first love who we later find out was sent away by her family for being gay, they had to be so careful. But now? Look at them. They are playing professional baseball, the world is changing. And Greta, Jo’s oldest friend, seems genuinely happy with Carson. Jo wonders out loud, “so what if right here, right now, we forget the rules, both of us. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

I know! I know my timing is terrible! But to be the loose cigarette in this woman’s hands, I —

In the living room, Jess throws Lupe a pillow “for your ass. It’s getting soft from sitting on the bench so long” — Jess is over it, they were supposed to brothers. They were both supposed to be about winning, and right now Lupe is holding the team back.

But Jess isn’t the only one who is over it.

Lupe: She grabbed me. But I’m the ‘fiery troublemaker’? She started the fight, not me. She had secret practices behind my back. She drove Dove away. And now she gets to coach! She didn’t even want that. Just had it handed to her. And you… never wondered why that is? Hermano.

Lupe takes a resigned exhale. Jess casts their eyes up towards the ceiling, caught, then back at Lupe, not knowing exactly what to say. Jess hadn’t thought about it like that before. Lupe points out, Jess hasn’t had to. White privilege and white investments work to mask themselves.

Even if we’ve all seen it, I’m grateful the show directly addressed the unequal treatment between Lupe and Carson, the team’s racist framing of Lupe being “lazy” or a “troublemaker,” and that Lupe gets to say her own peace. I think that even a few years ago, a different version of this show might have made a different (and worse) storytelling decision. As a matter of craft, it doesn’t feel like exposition, but a genuine moment of connection between Jess and Lupe, brothers on the team. I’ve had conversations like this with white friends, and it’s never easy. Not all of those relationships survived it, but the ones that did are stronger and deeper. I wish the same for the hermanos.

At the same time, however, it’s hard not to notice that Lupe’s critiques are not taken to Carson directly — which is a misstep. The two later make up, with Carson telling Lupe to stop wrecking her arm over Dove’s forkball and to throw her own pitches instead, but the reconciliation is not on Lupe’s terms. Instead, it comes from a confrontation between Carson and Max.

Speaking of which, what has Max been up to? Extreme Gay Panic, that’s what!

“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane.” — Dr. Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969)

Max goes to Toni’s hair salon after hours, surprising them both. She asks her mother to do her hair, “any style that you think will look nice” — even though she almost never lets Toni touch her hair at all.

I’ve never known an intimacy like my mother’s hands in my hair. For me, it’s warmth and safety and sacred. It’s been a place of kindness, even when I didn’t know how to be kind to myself. And that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot (a lot) of judgement also wrapped up in Black hair. There’s respectability politics and white standards of beauty and criticism. But those cuts burn so deep because of the intimacy that’s at the root to begin with. The vulnerability of baring your scalp to be nurtured and cared for by the same hands that brought you into this world, that fed you when you couldn’t feed yourself. The opening yourself up to the pain that same vulnerability can uncover.

Which, of course, is also why this scene broke me. Max isn’t coming to her mother for comfort, even though I think she thinks she is. She’s coming to her mother because seeing Bertie scared Max of a possibility she never knew was in front of her. So instead she’s back here, trying desperately to be the daughter her mother always wanted her to be.

In the most intimate way possible, Max is silently asking her mother for acceptance. She’s willing to rip herself into a million pieces to do it. And either because she doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care to notice, Toni lets her. At the precise moment when Max needs her the most, when a mother is supposed to fill your cup, Toni instead manipulates their closeness and drains her. Referencing their argument, Toni tells her daughter that she’s always liked her. She likes her fire. Her personality. Her hair. She’s always had such good hair.

Next, Max — with her newly femme, Mis Toni approved hairstyle — knocks on Gary’s door. She would like have The Heterosexual Sex please, with Gary (of can’t play baseball worth a damn and got his ass beat fame). Gary starts to question if they should slow down but Max is a woman determined and so here they are, having very lackluster sex while Gary says Max is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen (and I believe her really means it) and Max tries to look anywhere but the baseball posters on his walls, a lump in her throat.

It’s over quickly and please give Chanté Adams an Emmy for the ultimate dime drop beat exchange from the sadness of their sex to the comedy of Max popping up to get dressed because she has to bake a pie (!!!) — anything to get out of there as fast as possible.

Later, Max has a catch with Carson (I told you it was sticking) and, after noticing her wedding ring, asks Carson about Greta. Of course Carson assumes that Max wants to know how could she have sex with Greta if she has a husband. But actually Max wants to know how she could have sex with him — they look at each other, a little flummoxed at what Max is admitting in this moment. Carson says sex with a man can be nice sometimes (Max says they can agree to disagree lol), and then admits her bigger problem is that she… she might love Greta. Now they’re both stunned again, this time at how honest and close they are becoming, so quickly.

Then Carson says, “wow I wish I could talk to my pitcher like this” and the entire house of cards falls down.

“… and that’s why I’ve always thought Bette should end up with Tina”

?!?!?

First of all, it was not (and will never be) Lupe’s fault that Dove latched on to her like the white colonizer he was and named her the “Spanish Striker” for him to imprint on. It’s largely Carson and Greta’s fault that the team isolated Lupe, and she never stopped it.

But second, Max asks, where was this same “oh you are so talented!! I wish you were my pitcher!!” energy when she was getting thrown out of AAGPBL try outs?!? Oh that’s right, it was non-existent. Carson was there. She saw Max pitch. She knew Max was the best woman out there and she said absolutely nothing. None of them did. They all just watched, safe in the bubble of their white privilege, as Max’s dream died. So no, fuck off with “I wish you were my pitcher.” That is not a thing that Carson gets to say.

OK. Max doesn’t say “fuck off,” that’s me — but the points are made and I’m glad Max made them. Still, and I have to say it again, Max is not the only person of color that Carson has wronged. The fact that Carson’s not also confronted by her own teammate allows her white privilege to remain unchecked in the eyes of the Peaches. It also robs the audience of a model for sustained accountability, growth, and makes the subsequent repairing of Lupe and Carson’s relationship feel a bit hollow.

Max ultimately leaves the field, muttering “I can’t keep doing this to myself,” before going home to Clance. She tells her best friend that she’s done with baseball. She doesn’t know who she is without it, and maybe that’s been the problem all along.

Carson apologizes to the Peaches, who finally win a game! In the celebration at the house, Jo and Jess “shower” Lupe with congrats by way of shaken up beer bottles and damn the queer brotherhood of this show remains one of my all time favorite things. Greta tells Carson the truth about Dana — the first time she’s been vulnerable with her.

Carson promises that they won’t get hurt, but there’s no way for her to promise that.

And Max? Max goes back to Bertie’s.

❤️

Max sits in Bertie and Gracie’s warm yellow kitchen on a stool. Three Black queer people, across two generations, creating a new family other their own, rooted in our oldest traditions. The kitchen hair salon goes back as far as Black folks. It’s on purpose that it’s here. Bertie asks if Max is sure about this.

Max inhales and licks her bottom lip before letting her teeth graze across it. Miss Toni said that Max’s hair was one of the things she liked most about her, so yes, this is the first step to Max figuring out who she is on her own. She’s sure.

Gracie promises that Bertie’s going to make sure she looks real good, Bertie walks behind Max to put a towel on her shoulders.

“Your mama and I learned how to cut hair together.” Bertie starts to hum as she opens and closes the scissors. Max lets out a stuttered breath. The camera comes in close on Chanté Adams’ face. Her shoulders are still tense — but her eyes flutter open, her brain trying to place where she’s heard that song before.

“Mama always sings that.”

“Well, maybe you came here to find a piece of home.”

Bertie goes back to humming and Max blinks her eyes slowly, considering every step on every broken road that has brought her to this moment. Her cheeks move slowly, so slowly, each muscle becoming a barely there smile. Her shoulders finally drop.

I think a lot of times when we talk about queer television, we think about romance. We want to know “how many episodes until it gets gay” — and we usually mean how many episodes until the gays flirt, until they kiss. And that makes sense, of course. Queer love stories are still rare, the kind that make your heart fill and knock and pour out. The kind that make you feel like someone out there will keep you safe and warm.

That’s also not the only kind of love story.

I still haven’t gotten over it. I feel like I’ve been replaying this scene in my mind like how you move a pencil between your fingers, marveling at the wonder of its balance, as if nature still has a a magic trick that you’ve never seen before. The care for Black queerness, back then. We somehow always found each other, loved on each other, even back then.

Quietly, in the safety of her own queer family that she never knew she had, Max finds peace. In the intimacy of her Bertie’s hands through her hair, she finds a new path. It’s everything she looked for in Toni’s salon, and instead came away with panic and fear — but here, there’s safety. And maybe, just maybe, Bertie’s right. Maybe it can be home.

Every episode of A League of Their Own is streaming on Prime Video. Editor in Chief Carmen Phillips and Senior Editor Heather Hogan will be trading off recaps, one a day, every single day, for the whole first season. See you back here tomorrow! 

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