Daily Dialogue — December 10, 2014

Jimmy Dugan: Taking a little day trip?
Dottie Hinson: No, Bob and I are driving home. To Oregon.
Jimmy Dugan: [long pause] You know, I really thought you were a ballplayer.
Dottie Hinson: Well, you were wrong.
Jimmy Dugan: Was I?
Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It’s only a game, and, and, I don’t need this. I have Bob; I don’t need this. At all.
Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career, drinking. Five years. And now there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to get back any one day of it.
Dottie Hinson: Well, we’re different.
Jimmy Dugan: This is chickenshit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.

— A League of Their Own (1992), screenplay by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, story by Kim Wilson & Kelly Candaele

Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Quitting. Today’s suggestion by uncgym44.

Trivia: Jon Lovitz had a more substantial role in the film’s initial cut. During the extensive post-production editing and screening process, the filmmakers used only his meanest comments and most obvious punchlines and found the audience was roaring with laughter at everything he said. They decided to focus on those moments, cut out extraneous material, and ended up with one of the most popular elements of the final film.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by uncgym44: “I’m going to continue the Tom Hanks love fest and go with a quitting scene from A League of Their Own where Dottie quits the team.

What everyone seems to respond to in this scene is the line: ‘It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.’ A really well stated comparison to life.

My favorite choice in the scene is when the writer (or actress) said: ‘I don’t need this’ twice, making it obvious to the audience that she is trying to convince herself.”

If you have a suggestion for this week’s theme, please post in comments.