When A League of Their Own was released in 1992, it brought attention to a women's professional baseball league that had disbanded nearly 40 years earlier. Based on the true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which existed from 1943-1954, the film attempts to put the AAGPBL - which went from being a gimmick to save baseball from going extinct during WWII to a respected league that drew sizable crowds for years - in some sort of context.