Cru Jones Society

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: April 7, 1976
Box Office Total: $32,211,330
Team Featured: Bad News Bears

“I’m not going to talk about winning. I’m going to talk about losing. ‘Cause if you guys lose this game each and every one of you, you’re going to have to live with it.” - Coach Roy Turner.

“Listen Lupus, you didn’t come into this life just sit around on a dugout bench, did you? Get your ass out there and do the best you can.” – Coach Morris Buttermaker.

Reading the above quotes, which team would you rather be on? Now imagine you’re 10 years old, just a kid who wants to play ball, which team would you rather be on? Unfortunately for you, you now live in the age were everybody is required to play, and everyone gets a trophy for participating. But there was a time when children played baseball and hoped to win. This is a story of a time when youth sports had winners, racism was rampant, and children cursed at adults. This is The Bad News Bears.

Plot Synopsis:

In the mid-1970’s, teenagers and young adults were living out their fantasies of dancing all the time. The older generation, clearly pissed off with their current situations, turn to their kids to vicariously live out their failed dreams.

But when one child’s inability to live up to the hopes his dad has set and doesn’t make it on a team, the father, with other parents of misfits, file a class action law suit and force the league to allow another team.

Who better to coach a team of disregarded, oddball underdogs than a beer swilling, cigar smoking, pool-cleaner? Enter washed-up ball player Morris Buttermaker. Buttermaker is a lot like Jimmy Dugan as he takes the job mainly for cash and spends the first part of the season more shitfaced than a 21 year-old on St. Patrick’s Day. To really appreciate Buttermaker’s alcoholism you may need some perspective. He pours out some beer in order to make room in the can for whiskey, he never brings less than a twelver into the dugout, and he always has a full cooler in the backseat of his car which he draws from before going anywhere. Ah the 70’s, when drunk driving was taken light heartedly, so much so he even has a car full of children while he drives with a beer in hand and the movie only received a “PG” rating.

Buttermaker begins his new job with the only motive of getting paid. But as he watches the kids get slaughtered 26-0 in the top of the first, he starts to feel bad for them and decides to teach them how to be ballplayers. He teaches them that in order to win they have to play as a team. This proves to be a challenge as Tanner sees the team as, “a bunch of Jews, spics, niggers, pansies and a booger eating moron.” Buttermaker is able to get through to them as Tanner later stands up for the “booger eating moron.” As a side note, Microsoft Word recognizes racial epithets.

But as any movie like this would go, even though Buttermaker teaches the lesson, in the end he himself learns one. One we are taught constantly as children, and one that arises here as well, is that winning isn’t everything. Once he understands this, nothing is more important to him than making sure every kid gets to have fun and play. This is abundantly clear when one of the parents comes to complain about the move to put in Lupus, or the “booger eating moron.” Buttermaker retorts with this threat, “Now get back to the stands before I shave off half your mustache and shove it up your left nostril!” Yeah that guy shut up, and sat down. And like all good movie characters, we see how Buttermaker has grown and changed.

Treatment of Baseball/ Quality of Baseball Scenes:

This will be slightly different from other baseball movies since it involves extreme amateurs, e.g. children. The director has to be careful to keep the kids from becoming too good. We have to believe these misfits do not possess the skills to make it onto the other teams. To that end, it is done well. The kids all look like they understand what to do, and are trying to do it, but there are just a key fundamentals missing. The film made a point to fill us in on the errors, they were high, which is to be expected from children learning to play the game.

What’s nice about this movie are the scenes where Buttermaker is teaching the kids how to play better. He gives them specific key advice. He helps one kid with batting and tells him to plant his back leg. Teaching how to field ground balls he instructs them to put the left knee on the ground to allow your body to aid in stopping the ball. These are little things all ballplayers do that we may not necessarily notice every time they do it. Which I guess is the point.

There are also the little things coming across in some of the speeches. Buttermaker tells Ahmad he’s going to try batting him switch since he’s so fast having the few extra steps will help him beat out a bunt; or the speech when Ogilvie suggests pulling Amanda out of the game lest Buttermaker go all Dusty Baker and overpitch her arm.

I like the way baseball is played in the movie. The director was able to get some decent looking ball out of these kids. But since they were kids nobody was expecting major league caliber.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/Stifling Spouse?

There is a small romance hinted at between Amanda and the effeminate looking Kelly. Kelly is actually a pretty good subject to explore psychologically. He looks like a girl and has an androgynous name. So to overcompensate, he feels he has to prove his masculinity by acting tough; riding a Harley, smoking, and being a really good ball player. Really that is a whole different article.

Back to the romance, there is mention of them attending a Rolling Stones concert, and one short scene of her gripping tightly as they ride on his Harley, similar to the scene in Major League 2 sans the boring restaurant part. Other than these, the budding romance is not further shown or explored.

Aside from this there is the never fully developed “B” line story about Buttermaker and Amanda. There is the idea that she is his daughter, or at least he was married to her mother and was a father figure to her. Their relationship is never explained, and the credits give them different last names. Amanda has a desire for Buttermaker to be more in her life, but since their relationship is not adequately explained, this become a bit confusing. In the end he says they will spend more time together. Much like the budding romance between Amanda and Kelly, there are not a lot of scenes dealing with this sub story, so that’s nice.

Final Thoughts:

The Bad News Bears is a baseball movie that deals with baseball in one of its purest forms, little league. The ball playing scenes are handled well, and we don’t focus a lot on bullshit not related to baseball. Walter Matthau is himself, a surly old man who yells at people, mainly children, but we are shown his heart and we find him to be a character we can get on board with. Tanner steals the show with his short temper, folksy racism and over use of the word “Crud.” There’s heart, comedy, and in the end we learn a lesson. And even though it is a bunch of kids playing, we are treated to a fine outing at the ballpark.

Ruling from the Scorer: Two run double to the gap in right field.

See ya in the dugout…

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com