The Bad News Bears

The Bad News Bears is a 1976 film about a Little League Baseball team that is considered among the greatest baseball films of all time. It was remade in 2005 under the title Bad News Bears, although the remake had little success.

The film stars Walter Matthau as Morris Buttermaker, a former minor league player who is now down on his luck - he works as a swimming pool cleaner - and has a bit of a drinking problem. He is pressed into taking over as the coach of a local Little League team which can only be described as a sad-sack bunch of misfits. To improve the team's fortunes, he recruits the daughter of a former girlfriend, Amanda Whurlitzer (played by Tatum O'Neal), a pitcher with a golden arm. She in turns convinces budding juvenile delinquent Kelly Leak (played by Jackie Earle Haley), the best athlete in the neighborhood, to join the team, which jells together into a very good group of players.

In the climatic scene, the Bears, whose sponsor is a Bail Bond firm, play the very exclusive Yankees, who also happen to be a bunch of bullies. The Bears would probably have won the game, except they decide that all of their players should have a chance to play, and not just their stars, and they end up losing by a single run as Leak is thrown out at home to end the contest. Still, the camaraderie they have built in the process is a greater prize than the "stinkin' trophy" which the Yankees end up with.

The film was praised for its excellent performances, especially by the child actors (the two leads went on to successful careers), and its irreverent attitude typical of the post-Vietnam War 1970s. It was quite successful, sprouting a couple of sequels - The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and The Bad News bears Go to Japan (1978) - with diminishing returns. It was also adapted into a television sitcom in 1979, which ran for 26 episodes on CBS.

The film is set in southern California and was filmed on location in Chatsworth, CA.

Related Sites

• The Bad News Bears on IMDB