D’Arcy Carden talks thrills of 'A League of Their Own' on Celebrity Sluggers
Adrian Garro
@adriangarro“A dream come true in a way that is hard to even describe.” That’s how actor/comedian D’Arcy Carden (known for playing Janet on “The Good Place” and Natalie Greer on HBO’s “Barry”) explained her excitement about being a part of “A League of Their Own,” the new streaming series from showrunner/star Abbi Jacobson reimagining Penny Marshall’s classic 1992 baseball movie. The debut season landed on Amazon Prime Video today, Aug. 12.
In celebration of the show’s premiere, Carden was the featured guest on the third episode of Celebrity Sluggers, a new series from MLB Originals that finds notable celebrities/entertainers sharing a bit about themselves, their projects and their personalities while facing off against a pitching machine offering up fastballs of varying velocities.
Carden, a product of the Bay Area, brought her own cleats to the set (!) and donned a customized kelly green Oakland A’s jersey for the occasion, during which she formed an instant chemistry with Celebrity Sluggers host Hannah Stocking. The two cracked jokes, bonded over their shared Greek heritage, pumped each other up and remained as focused as ever on the task at hand: clubbing dingers and talking about “A League of Their Own,” in which Carden plays a character named Greta.
As Carden explains during one of the sit-down portions with Stocking, Jacobson wrote the role of Greta with her in mind, and called her to essentially pitch the project herself.
“I loved it so much, and the very next day she left a little baseball glove on my doorstep. And that was the way she offered me the role."
Given the enthusiasm with which Carden spoke of her time on the show, it was immediately apparent she couldn’t get enough of the experience.
“Because I played sports, because I played softball growing up,” she added, “and I loved the movie … to get to be in that show, it was like too many things that I liked, all in one. So I sort of, like, dreamed my way through it.”
Carden’s A’s fandom showed through and through -- so when she smashed an actual home run over the fence, she even taught Stocking how to recreate the “Bash Bros.” celebration made famous by imposing Oakland sluggers Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco.
“My dad got season tickets and we would go all the time,” she said, recalling an early trip to Spring Training with her family that became a special memory. Other key memories dating back to Carden’s childhood involved Dave Henderson running the track near her elementary school and frequent sightings of Dennis Eckersley at a local diner.
“This is the team that my family loves, and they get to be in the World Series? It was really cool, and my love for a baseball team has never eclipsed that. It was such a special time. I loved all of those guys so much, they were such superheroes. It was such a cool time to love baseball in the late 1980s, early ‘90s.”
During her chats with Stocking, Carden fielded a series of questions running the gamut of baseball topics: favorite ballpark foods, a hilarious pop quiz asking her to identify whether a provided name was, in fact, a real baseball player (shout-out to Richard Cheese, Jr.).
Upcoming episodes of Celebrity Sluggers will feature actor Aubrey Plaza (“Spin Me Around,” “Little Demon” and the upcoming “Emily the Criminal,” social media star Charli D’Amelio and actor Xolo Maridueña (of the Netflix series “Cobra Kai”).
Following each episode, MLB will make a donation to Stand Up To Cancer in the name of the participating Celebrity Slugger. It’s the latest program from MLB Originals, a content slate of series and longform features around baseball stories on and off-the-field, including the acclaimed mic’d up series PLAY LOUD.