A League of Their Own

From the 1992 film "A League of Their Own" starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz, and Madonna.

While the men were off fighting World War II, women were recruited to play baseball to keep the game alive. One of the teams was called the Rockford Peaches and they played in Rockford, Illinois at the intersection of 15th Street & Seminary Street. Their field was torn down a couple of decades ago and now it's just a public soccer field, but the original Peaches turnstile remains.

We spent Sunday doing Spring yardwork. Finally, a nice day after 8 straight days of rain and the obligatory April-flooded-basement week.

The boys trimmed the front tree branches that were growing too close to the house, cut them up into bonfire size, and hauled them to the burn pile. Raked the leaves off the garden bed (still not finished). I mucked out the chicken barn which means shoveling up the pine shavings on the floor into bags for compost and spreading new shavings around. Also, there were some seriously ginormous cobwebs that had to come down from the rafters.

We checked out the fruit trees we planted last year and found buds and new growth on all but one pear tree. My lilac from last Mother's Day is coming along nicely as well as the pretty cherry blossom tree. I have got blue muscari (grape hyacinth), red and yellow tulips, and forget-me-nots coming up all over the place. And the lawn is bursting with beautiful wild violets.

So, after a day of work the boys were heading out to see the new X-Men Wolverine film that night and I managed to squeeze in a trip downtown to see this Peaches field. We had just watched A League of Their Own together the night before and in my family you've got to strike while the iron's hot, so off we went and managed to find it just before dusk.

A bit of local history, anyway. I'll have to check out what else is around this area...