Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up, learn about a uniquely Southern Indiana landscape painter.

Learn the true story of a pioneering women's sports league.

And visit a group in Lawrence County recreating scenes from the Wild West.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana"!

♪ Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla, and we're coming to you from League Stadium in Dubois County.

Built in 1894, League Stadium is home to the Dubois County Bombers, a summer collegiate league.

And in 1991, the ballpark was used for the filming of "A League of Their Own," serving as the home field for the fictional Rockford Peaches.

The film opened in theaters 30 years ago this summer.

And we'll learn all about this historic ballpark and the filming of "A League of Own" in just a bit.

But first, we're headed to Monroe County where Producer Tyler Lake explores the complicated landscapes of painter Meg Lagodzki.

♪ >> When I first saw them, I was coming to it thinking, wow, this disrupted landscape.

My name is Meg Lagodzki, and I am a painter.

I paint landscapes.

One of the ideas that I read about a lot and think about a lot is the idea of wilderness, because I do like to paint things that don't have people in them, that look natural and wild.

But the truth is, the things that I'm painting are, you know, right down the road.

They are not in a national park.

There are a lot of beautiful wild things to be seen just in city parks, without having to go to a national park.

I'm trying to be very intentional about painting things that are close to home and showing how beautiful they are without having to go far away, because the truth is, we have created big, special parks, but they are things that have been set aside.

The vast majority of this country is now used for some purpose or another.

The idea of America is uniquely sort of rooted in our ideas about the landscape and wilderness.

So I think a lot about what is wilderness?

What is nature?

What is the landscape?

Whose is it?

And what does it mean to portray it?

What kind of message am I delivering?

And what sort of cultural baggage do I bring?

I did not grow up here.

So I did not have those teenaged years of cliff diving in quarries.

The hook for me in the landscape is what's the story here?

And the story was very much about this disrupted landscape.

How dramatically does, you know -- the bedrock going so deep, had just been torn up, cut up, and then left in these huge piles.

But then nature's coming back and reclaiming it.

And that story is a very specific Indiana story, but it's happening in a million ways all over the world.

This is just what's in my own backyard.

So for me, the quarries became about just sort of an awareness of the human impact on the landscape.

♪ So I studied painting and photography in college.

I was really interested at that time in painting the figure.

That led me to do a lot of portrait work.

In my 20s, I would say all the work I did at that time was the figure and portraits and portrait commissions.

I would say in my 30s, I had basically stopped painting.

I had just -- I had a career, and then I had kids and we moved a lot, and I just -- for a good ten years, I just didn't pick up the paint brush.

And then I guess about ten years ago -- I'm a cancer survivor, and they thought that the cancer had come back to my thyroid.

And so they said it had to come out.

So I had surgery to have my thyroid removed.

And as a result of that surgery, I lost my voice, and I couldn't talk for about a year.

So I got -- I got kind of depressed for a while there.

And I really kind of credit my mother, of all people, she called and said, you're sad.

You used to get a lot of joy from painting.

You should pick up your paint brushes again.

Someone at IU over the summers invited me to come and take a landscape painting class.

I agreed to give it a try, and I just, from day one, was just hooked.

I just loved packing my easel out and getting out there, kind of away from people and getting into the landscape.

I'm still painting in quarries a lot, but I think having that entree into the landscape got me into some other ideas.

Typically, most of my work just starts with hiking at a location.

Pretty much, from March to June, I'm out with my plein-air easel, every day that weather permits.

So I'm sketching.

I'm painting these little plein-air paintings, and I'm kind of gathering all of these ideas.

And then start to find that I'm going back to a site over and over and over again.

I will paint the same place a dozen times.

And I will start to think about, you know, which of these could be something more?

You know, the plein-air paintings are one thing, but sometimes I want to tell a bigger story.

Okay, there's some landscapes that just -- you know, this size is important.

If I need to come into the studio and do something 8 feet long, because it's important to me to show the scale of this thing.

Some motifs, that's what I need to do with them.

Some, doing it this size, that's all they ever need to be.

You know, I've told the story.

But some things I just need to go a step farther.

And then over the last couple of years, I started experimenting with collage, and that became another step further.

So for me, the quarries became about just sort of an awareness of the human impact on the landscape.

I think it's important to be aware of what we have left, wherever it is, to be aware how special it is.

>> ASHLEY: Something that I love about Meg's work is that she can truly find the beauty in -- in her own backyard.

She's right.

We don't need to go to a state park or a national park to be able to find beautiful scenery or inspiration.

It truly can be right in your backyard.

Want to learn more about Meg's work?

Head over to the address on your screen.

Up next, Producer Nick Deel brings us the real life story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the inspiration for "A League of Their Own."

It was 1943, and Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, had a problem.

The draft was threatening to gut the rosters of Major League Baseball.

Wrigley worried attendance at his ballpark would plummet with a wartime thin roster.

And so he scoured the continent to enlist women to keep baseball alive until the men returned home.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was born.

>> It really kind of just started as we need to keep baseball alive.

It's a big morale boost.

People will want to see it, and having it kind of in the heartland of America.

>> The All-American had four teams that inaugural year.

They were founded in small towns around Chicago, including one in Indiana, the South Bend Blue Sox.

>> When we first started playing, people came out to laugh, you know?

Oh, my god, you know, girl baseball players, but we -- we showed them that we could play just as well as men.

>> And they did it in skirts!

♪ >> They did have in mind functionality and things like that, but also had to take into account the femininity standard.

>> Kristen Madden is the archivist at the South Bend History Museum, home to the official archive of the All-American.

>> I think the girls were probably okay with it overall, because it gave them the opportunity to play, but I don't think anybody really wants to play baseball and slide in a dress.

>> Any injuries from sliding -- or strawberries -- certainly didn't stop the likes of Sophie Kurys, the most prolific base stealer in the history of the league.

In her 1946 season alone, she stole 201 bases.

>> We never quit.

Listen, you could get strawberry upon strawberry and go on the other side, and you would get another strawberry.

But I tell you, the women were far tougher than these guys that are playing ball nowadays.

>> As the women continued to prove themselves, the league began to catch on.

By 1948, there were 10 teams across the Midwest, and attendance soared to 900,000.

>> An all-American pastime, baseball brings out the All-American Girl Baseball League for spring training at Alexandria, Virginia.

>> The competition was fierce!

A shortened baseline, and the eventual introduction of the overhand pitch made for a fast-paced game, on par with the men's league.

>> Tiby Eisen slides home with a run and a nicely bruised leg.

Better a bruise than long pants, hey, gals?

>> The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was 100% real professional baseball!

And they are out there busting their butts so that they could do something that they loved.

>> But it wouldn't last.

After years of mismanagement, the small town clubs began to falter.

Television and the automobile were drawing fans elsewhere.

In 1954, after 12 seasons, the league abruptly folded.

It was soon largely forgotten.

>> People made fun of you.

Like, you told them you played and you played men's rules and that.

They're like, yeah.

You know?

Yeah, right.

So you -- you felt embarrassed, you know?

So there came a time where you didn't tell anybody.

>> In 1986, former players founded the players association.

They began advocating on behalf of the members, and by 1988, they were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

>> Okay.

Let me see what happens, Rosie and Madonna.

>> Then in 1992, Penny Marshall gave the women of the All-American the Hollywood treatment!

>> There's no crying!

There's no crying in baseball!

>> "A League of Their Own" was a box office grand slam!

It brought the All-American out from the shadows and elevated the players to near folk hero status.

>> You know, nobody paid attention to us for the longest time, and then all a sudden Penny Marshall, it clicked in her head, that'd make a great baseball movie, and by golly it did!

>> Today, the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League are considered pioneers in women's sports, but back then, they were just playing a game they loved.

>> We all would have played for free!

Just to have -- just to be out there playing in front of the public.

That's it.

Loved the game.

They really loved the game.

There's no kidding about that.

>> ASHLEY: These women had to endure so much just to play baseball.

I mean the fact that they were sliding in skirts.

I -- I personally don't think I could ever do that.

I mean, they truly must love the sport if they are willing to go through all that pain for it.

To learn more about the All-American and the South Bend History Museum's exhibit head over to the address on your screen.

Earlier, we caught up with some of the locals to learn all about League Stadium.

♪ >> Built in 1894, League Stadium in Dubois County has had many lives.

It was originally built as a grandstand, not as a stadium at all.

Throughout the decades, many teams called the grandstand at Huntingburg Park home, including several professional teams.

But by the 1980s, the grandstand was on life support.

Part of the structure was demolished due to deterioration.

It looked like the end was near.

Then, Columbia Studios came calling.

>> I started in February of 1991, and I happened to be working at the park over there, not too far from the stadium, and a van pulled up by our stadium, had four, five guys in it.

One of them come over to me, and said, hey, we're with Columbia Studios.

We'd like to look at your stadium.

Is it all right if we go in and look around?

So they went in there.

They were in there, oh, about half hour, 45 minutes.

And they came back out.

He told me, he said, well, we like it.

So they said they were going to get Penny Marshall to come back the next week, let her look at it.

And if she was happy with it, he said, I think we are going to build you a stadium.

Just right in the middle, right over here, is this part that was the old stadium.

They had to move it back -- it was closer to the field at that time.

They moved it back and raised it up, and then the box seats, everything from this walk here, forward, and everything from the corners here, that way is all brand new.

♪ >> The film production of "A League of Their Own" united the community.

>> In 1991, I was a junior in high school.

I was 16 years old, and there was a call out on the radio and newspaper repeatedly for several weeks leading up to Labor Day weekend.

They knew that they could get a lot of extras on Labor Day weekend with people being off work.

So we got up at the crack of dawn.

You were told to line up at a certain time, like 6:00 in the morning, with your hair in curlers and try your best to dress the 1940s era.

I spent a lot of my time just watching the action, not even necessarily trying to get into the movie.

And we were just there to fill the stadium and told when to shout, when to clap, and pretend that there's a ballgame going on.

I was so just entranced by everything that went together to make the movie.

It was so exciting to see how much work went into it.

♪ >> The structure was renamed League Stadium and has since become central to the fabric of Huntingburg.

>> We use it for tourism.

People come to visit, things of this kind.

Fortunately, we still use it for our high schools, which it's still their home field for their baseball season, as well as we have the Ohio Valley League Bombers here that play here on a regular basis.

>> The Bombers have done a fantastic job.

They average 1,000 to 1100 a night.

For a city this size, that's pretty good attendance.

They keep the theme up of the Peaches.

Their girls that work here, wear Peaches uniforms, and go around and put eye black on the boys and eye peach on the girls.

And they do a lot of things like that.

So they keep "A League of Their Own" going with that theme.

So that it's never too far away.

>> The kind of baseball we play is that we belong to a collegiate wooden bat league called the Ohio Valley League.

We are the only team in Indiana.

There's 12 to 11 teams all together, 10 of them in Kentucky, one in Tennessee, and one in Indiana.

We attract players because the fact that once a player plays here and goes back to his college or university, normally time, they say it's a great place to come play.

So we don't have to recruit a whole lot.

College, the coaches know what we do, how we help to develop the players.

We have a reputation that we help actually develop these players, and send them back as a better ballplayer when they go back to college.

♪ >> What our community is all about, it's trying to keep quality of life things in place, as well as to be able to give people information about the history of the town, the history of the stadium itself.

>> When you walk into the stadium, you get this feel you are back in the 1940s, early '50s.

Just the atmosphere that, you know what, come in.

Enjoy a ballgame.

Enjoy the entertainment.

And just kind of feel like it was back in the slower times.

>> I have talked to people all over the country, and, you know, they always say, where you from?

Oh, that's where the movie was done!

[ Chuckles ] >> ASHLEY: It's been a little bit since I've seen "A League of Their Own."

I have seen it.

I am a Hoosier.

I have seen it.

But I had no idea that it was actually filmed here in Indiana.

So that's a fun little Hoosier state fact!

You can learn more at dcbombers.com.

Up next, Producer Adam Carroll brings us to Lawrence County where a group of reenactors are keeping the Wild West alive.

♪ >> There's nothing like this.

It's so unique that you are not just going to find this anywhere.

It's a very special thing that we do, and it's very dear to my heart.

It's something you are not going to just find at a festival or something somewhere.

So when you do see it, you are very intrigued as to what it's all about, and you want to set and watch it.

I won't quit doing this until they tell me to quit.

[ Laughter ] >> And quit, she hasn't.

When Lagena's original group disbanded, she rallied around the members that wanted to stay and added to her ranks.

The Lost River Renegades were created, inspired by the 1880s western frontier.

Their reenactments, paired with period actor costumes and props, is the draw to this local group.

>> Some of us started our own group, called the Lost River Renegades.

Along with us and the people that we knew, we have become one big family.

>> My son and I were invited in by a friend of his that he went to school with.

Her name is Lagena.

That was 20-some years ago, and we've been hooked ever since.

>> We've had several requests from spectators wanting to join.

You have to prove yourself to be trustworthy, and that you know the safety issues.

>> Safety issues are the most important part of this reenactment group's concerns with new members.

New candidates are invited by current members and begin a sponsorship program.

The sponsorship program allows for each new individual a chance to prove their trustworthiness before they do any staging.

The most vital skill is the safety around guns and explosives.

Well, first of all, we -- we do use blanks.

We use real pistols and shotguns, but we do shoot blanks.

Everybody kind of checks their own, and then Randy goes around and checks everybody else, and he's our safety guy.

We have a safety person.

We have a security person that's gone through quite an extensive training.

>> We set the entire thing up, and now since we're trying to branch out, the town will be an addition to our show.

So you can have different stages of performances.

You can have just cowboys.

You can have cowboys town front.

Cowboys town front jail cell, you know, and we can customize it from there for what people want.

>> You know, I've been a fan of cowboys, and I'm kind of like that song Willie Nelson had, you know, "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys."

I have an autographed picture of Roy Rogers, that he sent to me when I was about 6 years old.

And you guys may or may not know who he is, but he was a cowboy hero.

He taught us to be honest and truthful, and, you know, not cheat anybody.

And, you know, that's -- I have been wanting to do something like this all my life probably, and finally got the opportunity.

>> It's just so much fun!

I mean, I love being with these people.

I look forward to being with them on the weekends that we're together.

My feeling when I wake up the morning knowing I have a show to do, it's almost like a kid at Christmas.

You know, I can't wait to get up, get ready and get there, because I want to see them and start doing our performances.

And we just want to keep this going.

We just have a fabulous time.

We think it's great history to present to people.

And the younger generations, they need to know what the history was.

And that's just what we want to do.

♪ ♪ [ Clock ticking ] ♪ >> Come on out, old man!

>> What are you doing in town?

I told you not to come back again!

♪ [ Gunshot ] ♪ [ Clock tolls ] [ Gunshots ] >> ASHLEY: These folks are so enthusiastic about what they do, and their community, it is contagious.

It almost makes me want to get out there and do some gunslinging with them.

I don't know if I would be very good at it, but I sure would try.

You can find out more information at lostriverrenegades.com.

And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

And before we say good-bye, I got a chance to get in a little batting practice with the team.

Let's check it out.

♪ >> All right, I'm ready.

>> So to begin to swing, you put your hands on the bat.

I like facing the logo to my face.

>> Okay.

>> You want to line these top knuckles right here.

Together.

Together.

>> There we go.

Okay.

>> So let's get in the box here.

>> All right.

Oh, you're right.

It will go right back at him.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!