The Bad News Bears (1976)

Just in time for Opening Day 2026, we are revisiting this beloved baseball comedy from fifty years ago starring Oscar-winners Walter Matthau (The Fortune Cookie, The Odd Couple, The Taking of Pelham 123) and Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon, Little Darlings) as Coach Buttermaker and aspiring star player Amanda respectively.  Of course, their team is the titular Bears which is rag-tag group of mostly inexperienced Southern California kids playing Little League baseball.  And this team has one major competitor in their league who not only dominates them but bullies them - that team is the venal Coach Turner played by the late, great Emmy-nominee Vic Morrow who co-starred in many popular TV shows around this time including Combat, Charlie's Angels, and Police Story.  The baseball team is filled with characters including Kelly Leak (Oscar-nominee Jackie Earle Haley), Ogilvie (Alfred Lutter III), Tanner (Chris Barnes) and Ahmad (Erin Blunt)....and their acumen on the field or at bat might vary but one thing they have in common is that they ALL want to have fun! :) What results from their first tumultuous season together is baseball, smoking, drinking, profanity, and maybe even....TEAMWORK? 

Host & Editor: Geoff Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon 

Transcript

THE BAD NEWS BEARS - 1975

Directed by Michael Ritchie

Starring Walter Matthau, Tatum O’Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Alfred Lutter, Chris Barnes, Erin Blunt, Gary Lee Cavagnaro, Jaime Escobedo, Scott Firestone, Brett Marx, David Pollock, Quinn Smith, David Stambaugh, Brandon Cruz, and Jackie Earle Haley

Genre: Sports Comedy (Audio clip)

I barely remember seeing this when I was younger except for the late, great Oscar-winner Walter Matthau's eternally rumpled face....but rewatching this again recently, there it is in all of its scraggly glory and I'm still charmed by it! He was just seemingly born to be a shaggy dog protagonist like Coach Buttermaker and seeing just subtle variations in his perpetually exhausted face as the story for this mostly standard sports underdog comedy takes different turns REALLY sells it about as well anything else. 

Tatum O'Neal (who had won an Oscar just a couple of years prior at the age of TEN) playing Amanda is definitely one of the standouts as is future Oscar-nominee Jackie Earle as the chain-smoking, motorcycle-driving Kelly....who also happens to be one hell of a hitter. ;) The semi father-daughter relationship between Buttermaker and Amanda is likely the emotional core of the movie - they have the most touching scenes together.  And yet the best performance overall MIGHT be from the late, great Vic Morrow as the opposing Coach Turner of the Yankees. (Audio clip) 

Playing the earliest version – which I can think of – of Kreese from The Karate Kid though with more subtlety, Morrow's doing a lot of effective stuff in the third act with his performance which doesn't appear to be effectively laid out in the screenplay. (Which is probably the weakest part of this movie....or it could be the editing?) Just a messy movie at points….I had similar issues with previous episode Slap Shot too. (Audio clip) 

Beyond that this is just a fun movie featuring profane children, entertaining baseball, a genuinely seasoned, talented actor leading the charge and probably its not-so-secret weapon....THE MUSIC which I’ll get to in JUST a bit.  Overall this movie just works in the same way that Slap Shot would the following year....you can't really be 100% sure of where it's going and it DOES meander at points, but it just ends on a pitch-perfect note. (Audio clip) 

Best Needledrop (best song cue or score used throughout runtime of film): 

Now let’s get to the NOT-SO-SECRET WEAPON for this movie: that lively, rousing score from Pittsburgh’s OWN Jerry Fielding using much of the music from George Bizet's opera Carmen. It adds such joy and energy to the action on-screen, it just becomes infectious! Especially when used over montages of the kids finding their way through the season….(Audio clip) 

Honestly since this movie came out literally a year after I was born, I'm pretty sure that whenever I heard that classical piece, I just assumed that it was "The Bad News Bears" theme. It's almost the same with how Beethoven's 9th Symphony is more commonly referred to at "Hans Gruber's Theme from Die Hard." 😄 Well not quite….but you get the idea.  Also crazy to think that such joyous music derived from an operatic tragedy but it just works – this track is commonly referred to as “Carmen: No 1 Prelude.” (Audio clip) 

Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie):

Ok I am going to have to split this category into two and here’s why: with a raucous sports comedy like this, you need to have at least ONE moment of triumph to get you going.  Yes it’s already been spoiled: the Bears LOSE the big game at the end and that’s ok but they DO also become better players and a better team over the course of the season.  And this is BEST exemplified when late in the movie during the top of the 6th AND final inning, Timmy Lupus makes a catch over the outfield wall – his FIRST one – and that prevents the Bears from being completely blown out, hey it’s a good moment! (Audio clip)  

As previously mentioned, there ARE some very good moments of acting throughout this film and one such EXPERTLY moment occurs between two Oscar-winning actor roughly halfway through…..Matthau’s Buttermaker and O’Neal’s Amanda roughly half-way through.  It’s actually quite the sad scene when you think about it – basically a breakdown in the relationship between a girl and a father figure which she looks up to, it’s tough to watch but also definitely necessary for both characters.  (Audio clip) 

The actual dialogue uttered between them is straightforward and honestly ON PAPER nothing we haven’t seen before and/or since in movies like this featuring complicated relationships between adults and children….but at the very end of this scene, it’s truly disarming to see a few tears running down BOTH of their faces after Amanda has walked away form the dugout while Buttermaker nurses yet another beer.  How can you NOT be moved by this? (Audio clip) 

Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film): 

And now here’s the reason which I’m doing these categories slightly out of order.  I would like to give a special shout-out to the then-kid actor who played the shaggy haired blonde Lupus….Park Ridge, IL’s own Quinn Smith who of course is now an adult.  This guy only has seven credits on his IMDB but WOW did he pull off some plum roles while he was a young lad: he not only would co-star in the Bad News Bear sequel a couple of years later but later this year, he would appear in future episode The Omen as a possessed kid….COOL…. then a few years later in ET: The Extra Terrestrial as one of the kids I believe trick-or-treating alongside Elliott and our titular creature….PRETTY cool too…..but then he would ALSO play the credited “Flagpole Bully Student” in A Christmas Story in ’83.  That’s FOUR iconic movies for such a short career, impressive! (Audio clip) 

MVP (person or people most responsible for the success of this film):

The late great Michael Ritchie directed this and since then, he also helmed good comedies for both boxing (Doggstown) and football (Wildcats) - he helps give this movie an anarchic yet also kind of relaxed tone. It almost feels as if we're just hanging out with this little league Bears team lead by Matthau's Coach Buttermaker for most of the runtime....and even though I did find most of these kids to come off like entitled little s%&t-weasels off the bat, I just couldn't help but feel for them and even eventually like them.  As tempted as I am to give this to Matthau for his unassailably natural performance, it still takes a special type of filmmaker to take charge of a rambunctious group of mostly non-professional kid actors and spin it into a cohesive, entertaining movie.  For pulling that off, the MVP is Michael Ritchie.

Final Rating: 4 stars out of 5 

Are there several dated elements of this film which might put off modern day family audiences?  You bet….drunk driving, ethnic slurs among children, underage kids smoking….hell how about just all of the DAY DRINKING done by our main protagonist while managing kids no less??  I get it but like previous episode Saturday Night Fever – one of my all-time favorites – it was reflecting the time and we can enjoy it while STILL reminding ourselves that we have and/or SHOULD be evolving from such behavior.  Beyond that, this film was simply ground-breaking for kids moves AND sports movies: without the breakout success of the ‘Bears, there IS no Goonies, Mighty Ducks, Sandlot, Cool Runnings, Varsity Blues, previous episode Major League, and even a couple of underrated gems from the early 2000’s, Hardball and Whip It.  Happy 50th Anniversary to one of the most influential sports movies of all time!

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And that ends another WAIT TIL NEXT YEAR review!