Editor’s note: This story first published Aug. 20, 2025, on evansvilleliving.com and is an extended version of the story appearing in November/December 2025 Evansville Living.
Evansville is a second home to ESPN reporter, commentator, and host Harry Lyles Jr., and he was eager to take on a story about the city’s brush with Madonna way back during the filming of “A League of Their Own.”
Let’s set the scene: In the Nov. 23, 1991, issue of TV Guide, the singer spoke with MTV anchor Kurt Loder about her time in Evansville the previous summer, when baseball scenes in the 1992 movie were shot at Bosse Field. The piece’s incriminating line was Madonna’s summation of her time in the River City: “I may as well have been in Prague,” Loder quoted the Material Girl as saying.
The ensuing eruption in Evansville included anti-Madonna letters to the city’s two daily newspapers, waves of hostile on-air conversation, and — perhaps most famously — a human billboard protest Dec. 7, 1991, when about 300 city defenders spelled out “Madonna” with a circle/slash through her name in the Roberts Municipal Stadium parking lot. The resulting aerial photograph was seen nationally.
Why would this interest an ESPN reporter in 2025? Lyles was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, but is well-versed in Evansville and all its lore. His father graduated from F.J. Reitz High School and the University of Southern Indiana, and his grandfather was the first Black member of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation board. Lyles also is a direct descendant of Joshua Lyles, who in the late 1840s established Lyles Station, the Gibson County community that was one of Indiana’s early Black rural settlements.
“Naturally, I have spent a lot of time in Evansville, so much that when friends and family are like, ‘When are you coming back?’ they say, ‘When are you coming home?’” Lyles says.
He thought the Madonna-Evansville brouhaha was a story worth revisiting — “I’ve been wanting to do it for years,” Lyles, 33, told Evansville Living. His ESPN editors agreed. Lyles says that the more calls he made and research he did on the 1991 events, the more convinced he became about the story’s merit. His retrospective appeared Aug. 18 on ESPN.com; he dove into the piece before his fall schedule has him covering college football for the network.
His piece recalls some of the local histrionics stemming from Madonna’s attributed comments to Loder. In addition to the parking lot protest organized by longtime radio station WSTO Hot 96, it mentions a July 1992 fundraising picnic at Burdette Park to benefit the Special Olympics. Cheekily dubbed the “Evansville-Prague Summer Olympics,” the picnic sent invites to the Czech embassy in Washington, D.C., and Madonna. The singer didn’t reply, but Lyles noted the embassy sent regrets on behalf of then-Czechoslovakian President Václav Havel.
Lyles’ piece describes some of the local reaction to Madonna’s published TV Guide comment as “manufactured outrage that turned into national press.” It points out that the singer “got along fine” with people in Evansville during her time here, including then-USI baseball coach Gary Redman, who taught baseball fundamentals to her and the other Hollywood stars in “A League of Their Own.” Madonna, Redman told Lyles, “couldn’t have been any sweeter” to him and his family.
“She wasn’t as unpleasant as people made her out to be,” Lyles adds. “She donated to the local AIDS group. Different things like that. She had an experience with a blind fan and went out of his way to make him comfortable.”
To Lyles, the episode was an example of how “unfairly Madonna was covered at her peak. It was filled with misogyny and sexism. To me, the story shows how poorly we can treat female celebrities at times,” he says. “That’s not to say she’s beyond criticism. But I went through every Evansville Courier and Evansville Press story at the time, and there were a lot of articles that were about dragging her name into something that had nothing to do with her. If you took offense at what she said, OK, but there is a line, and that line was often crossed.”
Longtime Evansville sports reporter and current Evansville Living contributor Gordon Engelhardt told Lyles that, looking back, the controversy stemming from Madonna’s comments was “overdone” and “overblown.” Bill Bussing, owner of the Evansville Otters Frontier League baseball team that’s played in Bosse Field since 1995, says Madonna would be welcomed back to Evansville and “we don’t bear grudges here.”
Lyles, who says his must-visit list on trips to Evansville includes Lic’s Deli & Ice Cream and Steve’s Una Pizza on Washington Avenue, concludes his ESPN piece by saying “opportunity” was at the root of the Madonna-Evansville story.
“A local radio station saw an opportunity to take advantage of its proximity to the biggest star on the planet,” he writes. “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.”
Lyles notes to Evansville Living that the rise of his own journalism career is tied to Evansville — specifically, the University of Evansville men’s basketball team’s upset of then-No. 1 Kentucky on Nov. 12, 2019, on the Wildcats’ home court at Rupp Arena in Lexington. Lyles, working for SB Nation at the time, was at UE’s practices prior to the game, and he rode with the Aces to and from Rupp Arena. Lyles says his coverage of the game, which included viral celebration footage in UE’s locker room, led to his hire by ESPN.
“It was life-changing,” Lyles says. He has a framed UE jersey and the Courier & Press front page from the morning after the game hanging in his home.
