EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, IS one of America’s biggest small towns, sitting on a bend in the Ohio River with a population of around 120,000. Its residents are a proud people.

They’re proud of their town’s resilience during the Ohio River flood of 1937 that covered 500 city blocks. They’re proud of the city’s role in World War II as a major manufacturing hub for aircraft and naval vessels.

They’re proud of their five-time College Division national champion University of Evansville men’s basketball team, and the program’s perseverance after a plane crash took the lives of the entire 1977 team.

Then there are the locals who became legends in their respective sports, like Bob Griese, Don Mattingly and, most recently, swimmer Lilly King. And we can’t even begin to get started on local high school basketball standouts throughout the years. This is Indiana, after all.

People from Evansville are proud of the high school they graduated from. They’re proud of whichever side of town, east or west, that they live on. The west side hosts the annual Fall Festival, one of the largest street festivals in the United States.

The east side was home to Roberts Stadium, which was host to the NCAA College Division (now Division II) men’s basketball national championship, as well as concerts by artists including Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and Taylor Swift, who kicked off her first major tour in Evansville in 2009.

But on Dec. 8, 1991, Roberts Stadium was host to a different kind of event. An estimated 300 people gathered in the parking lot to create a human billboard. A helicopter with photographers aboard went into the southern Indiana sky around 1:30 p.m. to capture the message, which was intended for the Queen of Pop, Madonna.

The people who showed up for the gathering lay on their backs and held up large cards. Madonna’s name was spelled out in white. Over it was a red circle with a line through it to show the crowd’s disapproval.

The inspiration for the protest was a line from a TV Guide interview in which Madonna — who spent 11½ weeks in Evansville making what would become the highest-grossing baseball film in history, “A League of Their Own” — compared the city (derogatorily) to Prague.

Before the demonstration, Evansville was just the small town in Indiana that served as the backdrop for some of the most significant movie scenes in one of history’s most popular sports films.

Afterward, it was thrust into the national spotlight, portrayed as the town that rebelled against one of the most famous people in the world.

THE FILMING OF “A League of Their Own,” the movie centered on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and ’50s, began in the summer of 1991. The movie, directed by Penny Marshall, would star Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz and, of course, Madonna.

Evansville, as well as spots around the Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky tristate area, was selected as a filming site. Scenes were also shot in Chicago and Cooperstown, New York. Evansville’s Bosse Field, the third-oldest professional baseball stadium in the United States, behind only Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, drew Columbia Pictures to the area. The company believed it to be the perfect setting for baseball scenes, while the rest of the town could easily be touched up to create a 1940s look.

It’s no small deal when a major Hollywood production comes to any town, and in proud Evansville, the chance for residents to show off their home to some of film and entertainment’s biggest stars was a dream opportunity.

The crew began to arrive in the area on Aug. 7, 1991, but one of the film’s leads already seemed less than overjoyed to be in town. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker said on “The Joan Rivers Show” that he asked Tom Hanks if he was excited to move the filming from Chicago to Evansville, to which he said Hanks replied, “Well, no. I’m sure Evansville is a nice town, but it’s certainly not going to have all the excitement Chicago has.”

Cynthia Cowen of Evansville wrote a letter to the editor of The Evansville Courier that was published a week after Hanks’ quote from Zwecker was made public. “I realize the quote upset some residents,” Cowen wrote. “But let’s face the fact that Evansville does not compare to Chicago and probably never will.” She suggested Evansville “should just try to be itself.”

That’s what Evansville did. Cast and crew members received a packet of things to do in town, with nightlife listings, restaurants and pubs, and, as Courier writer Eileen Dempsey noted, “a smattering of adult bookstores and a gay bar also were included.”

It wasn’t long before people in the area were interacting with some of Hollywood’s stars.

Lovitz ran into fans, signing autographs and taking pictures in New Harmony, Indiana. Hanks (who has since spoken fondly of his time in Evansville) was seen at a pawn shop purchasing a Fender 12-string guitar. He also found his way to popular local eateries such as House of Como and Wolf’s Bar-B-Q. Davis tried a chicken enchilada, beans and rice with a strawberry margarita at Hacienda on First Avenue. The restaurant paid the $11 bill for her, so she autographed the check and left a $5 tip for the server. Marshall was seen shopping at the Old Evansville Antique Mall, getting a variety of items such as quilts, spice jars and snowshoes, according to Dot Small, one of the owners.

A local, Richard Harper, snapped a photo of Madonna as she arrived in town in a maroon Lincoln. His wife, Mary Jo, sent the photo to Madonna’s address in town, and within a week, it was returned, signed “For Richard, Love Madonna.”

Some found other ways to extend themselves to Madonna. A 47-year-old California man, Floyd “Sandy” Bucklin, left a message for her in the classifieds of the Courier for the duration of the filming.

MADONNA CICCONE: Meet me for coffee. 415-***-****.

The Rev. Stephen Schwambach, pastor of Bethel Temple, invited Madonna to his church through the Courier.

Filming took about three months, with the movie’s World Series scene set at Bosse Field and one of the most iconic lines in any sports film — “There’s no crying in baseball!” — captured at the smaller League Field in nearby Huntingburg, Indiana.

Those three months were a success, and it seemed like Evansville was happy with its taste of Hollywood.

IN THE NOV. 23, 1991, issue of TV Guide, MTV anchor Kurt Loder interviewed Madonna in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills, in part to discuss “MTV 10,” a one-hour musical special celebrating MTV’s first decade.

As Loder wrote, “For the past three months — it might as well have been three years — she was stranded in Evansville, Indiana, a place she will not be revisiting in this current lifetime. (‘I may as well have been in Prague,’ she says, by way of summing up the town’s attraction.)”

Madonna told Loder that she was excited in the beginning to learn to play baseball, “but when you have to do it over and over again, you lose interest. Unless you’re getting paid 12 million dollars to play baseball — then I could grow very interested.”

Loder noted that Madonna didn’t have MTV at the home in which she was staying. “For the first time in my life, I felt very disconnected,” she told him.

But not everyone agrees. Jeff Meece, who helped with props during the Evansville shoot, told the Evansville Press that because of conversations on the set, he believed that Madonna watched the “MTV Video Music Awards.” “It was generally acknowledged on the set the next day that she had watched the awards,” he claimed. “Obviously she had cable.”

The general manager of United Artists Cable of Evansville, Michael MacNeilly, personally visited the home Madonna stayed at in McCutchanville to check the house’s service. He claimed it was properly installed at the house, MTV and all. “We’re not a Podunk cable service,” he told the Courier. In fact, the real estate agent for the home, Jeri Garrison, had made cable installation a priority when Madonna decided to move in earlier than initially planned.

Madonna’s publicist at the time, Liz Rosenberg, said shortly afterward that her client’s comments had been exaggerated by Loder. “I’m sure she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” she said. “She’s a Midwest girl. In fact, she had a very good time in Evansville and made good friends.” But as soon as the quotes hit magazine shelves, WSTO-96 FM program director Barry Witherspoon began planning the Roberts Stadium parking lot stunt.

Before Madonna’s comments to TV Guide, Witherspoon was one of the thousands to be an extra for the film. He brought over 100 T-shirts from the station with him one day and asked the publicist there to pass them out and make sure all of the stars got one.

“You had all these big stars,” he recalled. “Being in radio, I never really had been a starstruck type person, because any big concert that came to Evansville, I would end up backstage, just hanging out with the groups and whoever it was, you know, Van Halen or Def Leppard or whatever. We all just kind of hung out and stuff.”

Witherspoon noticed that the stars of the movie would go behind the stadium in between shots. So, instead of sitting with the rest of the extras in his seat at the stadium, he sneaked back to see them. He recalled them sitting around hay bales, including one in the middle with a big fruit bowl.

“Well, my whole purpose for even doing this, for even going over there, wanting to be an extra, my goal was to get Tom Hanks to stop by the station and do an on-air stint with our morning show,” Witherspoon said.

Witherspoon told Deborah Fruin, who wrote a story titled “A Bad Day For Evansville” in the Madonna 92 magazine, “We had tried to get Madonna — in fact any of the stars — to come to the radio station for an hour, a minute, anything, but we had no luck. As far as I know the cast of ‘A League of Our (sic) Own’ only gave one group interview to a television station during their entire stay.”

He sat down on a hay bale, grabbed some fruit and asked Hanks about appearing on the radio station. Hanks’ reply? “Nah, better not do that.”

After that, Witherspoon said he got up to go sit on a park bench. As he sat there, Madonna was walking by to go to her trailer.

“I just looked up and said, ‘Hey, did you get that T-shirt I sent over to you?'” he recalled. “And she didn’t even turn her head. She just kind of looked out of the corner of her eye as she walked past me and just said, ‘Oh, is that you?’ I know it’s no big deal to give her a T-shirt, but it was just kind of, I don’t know, kind of rubbed me the wrong way.”

Witherspoon told the story on air the next day for the station’s morning show. And when the TV Guide interview came out, Witherspoon got the station involved further by organizing the parking lot stunt.

“I could have cared less what she said about Evansville myself, and I think the rest of the staff did too. But, Madonna was a big player on our station. We played everything she had done and played the snot out of it. She was a superstar, and that was the height of her superstardom really.

“So I just looked at it as — I looked at everything as a promotional opportunity for the radio station.”

Witherspoon showed up first, a few hours early, to make sure he chalked out the message in the parking lot for people to follow. “I had to get that right, because, you know, we end up doing it wrong, it looks stupid on us.” The turnout wasn’t as large as Witherspoon had hoped, so he had those in attendance lie on their backs to fill all the space. Many also wore T-shirts designed by a local graphic design artist that had a caricature of Madonna inside a map of Indiana that read, “Serving Time in Prague, Ind.”

Witherspoon got a hold of a helicopter pilot out of Henderson, Kentucky, and offered him free advertising if he would fly over the parking lot during the protest. One of Witherspoon’s jocks and a photographer from the Courier went up in the helicopter and took photos of the message along with a camera crew for the syndicated tabloid-style television show “Hard Copy.”

“I would be surprised if there was a whole lot of people that really gave a crap [about her comments], maybe thousands, but there was several hundred thousand people around. We tried to make it more than it was, just so that we could get some publicity out of it.”

That image turned the tiny, local slight into a national story.

“Entertainment Tonight” ended up doing a segment on Madonna and Evansville. Arsenio Hall, whose late-night TV show had millions of viewers, had Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell on and asked how they liked Indiana.

O’Donnell joked that Madonna was planning on buying a house in Evansville. Hall followed up and asked about the protest, to which Madonna replied, “They thought I threw shade on them.” She shrugged and said, “What are you gonna do? They only had one drag bar there!”

Despite some manufactured outrage that turned into national press, some locals were upset enough to keep their complaints in the local papers for weeks.

“I will probably see the movie when it opens only because I want to see our beautiful countryside and the local people that appear throughout. As far as I’m concerned, Madonna is not welcome to return to Evansville for the premiere of this movie or for any other reason.” – Melody Burbage, Henderson, Ky.

“Golly, gee, aw shucks, I’m just sick you weren’t happier here in Evanspatch these past few months.” – Gretchen Schroeder, Evansville

“Will The Evansville Courier pour a bit more ink through the machinery regarding Madonna’s criticism of Evansville? Who really cares what she says? … Her lack of class is evident in the simple fact that, after all the hospitality extended her by area businesses, she possesses not even the grace to say, ‘Thanks for the stay, Evansville.'” – Christine Fuchs, Evansville

There was one feud-related event held before things simmered down, though this one at least benefited a good cause.

Organizers, including Rick O’Daniel, created a fundraising picnic to benefit the Special Olympics, calling it the “Evansville-Prague Summer Olympics.” Announced in June 1992, invitations were extended to the Czech embassy in Washington to attend the event, which was set for July 4 from noon to 5 p.m. at Burdette Park.

Madonna was invited as well, specifically to “carry the Olympic torch through town and to light the Olympic barbecue grill,” O’Daniel told the Courier.

Although Madonna didn’t officially decline an invitation, the Czechoslovakian director of foreign policy sent the organizers of the event a letter. It informed them that President Vaclav Havel could not attend as “he must be in Czechoslovakia for the presidential elections in the first weeks of July.”

As the Courier’s Eileen Dempsey pointed out, “All things considered, Havel may have had more fun in Evansville. He lost his re-election bid Friday.”

WHILE SOME EVANSVILLE residents didn’t have glowing reviews of Madonna, she got along just fine with other people in town.

Such as University of Southern Indiana baseball coach Gary Redman, who taught baseball fundamentals to the actors. “Her first day there she was in left field just shagging fly balls,” Redman recalled. His young sons, Josh and Jace, were out there as well. “I found out pretty quickly that she absolutely loves kids. … She took right to them, and was just as nice as could be to them, played ball with them. When there was downtime she’d want to do things with them.”

Redman recalled overhearing a story Madonna told about jogging one morning in McCutchanville. “She had to go to the bathroom, really bad. So I think [she and her bodyguards] went to somebody’s house and knocked on the door and said, ‘This is Madonna. I gotta go to the bathroom.’ And she said how embarrassing that was.”

For Madonna’s birthday, Redman’s wife, Geralyn, and their sons bought balloons and baseball cards for her. “She couldn’t have been any sweeter to us, myself, my two boys,” he said.

Off the diamond, a trip to Sho-Bar, a former strip joint turned gay nightclub on Franklin Street, was one of the most widely reported highlights of Madonna’s stay in Evansville.

Patrick Higgs, a local who had taken time off from his DJ job at another bar to work every day on the movie set, went to Sho-Bar the night of Sept. 7 excited. He had spent the day filming a scene with Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell and wanted to tell his friends all about it. When he walked in, one of the owners wanted to speak with him. The bar’s DJ got into an argument with one of the other owners and quit. So they hired Higgs.

Madonna, in a black spaghetti-strap dress and a black tam, showed up that same night and paid the $3 cover charge for herself and a group of 10 others. She stood at the bar for about an hour but didn’t drink. She was very health-conscious, locals came to learn.

Eventually, someone from the group went over to owner Shawn Nix and asked if she could have a table. Of course Nix made room for her despite a packed house. Before making her exit that night, the bar had Madonna sign her name on the wall in fluorescent paint.

At a news conference for the film the next day, the cast and crew took questions from local media. Madonna was complimentary of the corn and root beer floats she’d had. As the session was closing, a reporter quipped to Madonna, “See you at Sho-Bar.” She replied with a smile, “See you at Sho-Bar.”

“Sho-Bar suddenly became the Madonna watch place,” Higgs said. “So she never came back.” That wasn’t a huge issue. Business there boomed anyway.

Alan Lee, a sportscaster at WEHT-Ch. 25, had a “Blond Ambition Scoreboard” named after Madonna’s tour as a regular feature of his nightly sportscasts since she arrived in town. Part of the bit was that Lee also wouldn’t shave until Madonna called him.

Eventually, after helping the crew get the extras needed for the World Series shoot, Lee’s phone rang at 5:22 one morning. It was Madonna. The two had a brief conversation about the filming and her time in Evansville.

“Looking back on that, there was never really any real controversy that was going on,” Lee said. “We had fun when they were here. She had fun that we know of. I think the overall impression to me would have been, this was a very positive experience for Evansville.”

HAVING “A LEAGUE of Their Own” filmed in Evansville was a significant moment in time for the city and its residents. An estimated 33,000 tristaters were extras in the film, it pumped $10 million into the local economy and it helped bring attention to Bosse Field, which had been tenantless after the Evansville Triplets of Triple-A left for Nashville following the 1984 season.

“I don’t think you can exaggerate the impact this movie still has on the community,” said Bill Bussing, the owner of the Frontier League’s Evansville Otters. “Gosh, I might be at the ballpark in November or December on a Saturday afternoon working, and people will come with tourists because they want to see the ballpark.

“Even in the offseason, who would expect that anybody would be there on Saturday? But they come anyway, and I let them in, and they walk around. Some kids say, ‘This is the best day of my life,’ because they’ve seen the movie so many times they can recite the lines from certain scenes.”

Major League Baseball has explored the idea of playing a game at Bosse Field in recent years, though there are no concrete plans to do so. If a game were to be played in Evansville, there’s no question that if there were “A League of Their Own” ties, the entire cast, including Madonna, would be welcomed back.

“I thought it was overdone,” said Gordon Engelhardt, who worked nearly four decades at the now Courier & Press. “I think the media was, you know, as we are members of the media, we were looking for a story, and I think it was overblown.”

“We don’t bear grudges here,” Bussing said. “I think she would be welcomed here if she’d be willing to come back.”

Opportunity is what pushed everyone. A local radio station saw an opportunity to take advantage of its proximity to the biggest star on the planet. National media did the same after the parking lot stunt.

But most importantly, Evansville got the opportunity to mix with Hollywood, and that’s how many residents remember the experience. It’s one more thing the town can be proud of.