The Bad News Bears (1976)

 

Off-List: The Bad News Bears

The first off-List movie of 1976 comes highly recommended. “The Bad News Bears” is indeed the kind of movie that can make you forget for a moment the crappy things going on in the world.

Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), a bum and former baseball almost-star, is hired to coach a team of 11-12 year old children. These are children nobody else wanted on their teams, outcasts for various reasons. Buttemaker is a drunk cynic as only Matthau could do it, he likes the money but makes no real effort. In their first game they are wiped out.

Buttermaker, who is coming to like the children, wakes up and starts making an effort, getting two talented children to play for his team, former girlfriend’s daughter Amanda (Tatum O’Neal) and bad boy Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley), and actually teach the children some baseball. Suddenly they start winning games.

The crisis of the movie happens when Buttermaker and his rival Roy Turner (Vic Morrow), coach of the rival Yankees team, get to think that winning is more important than the children. It has to almost fall apart before he realizes their intrinsic value as children rather than as ball players.

How can I not like a movie with Walter Matthau? I love everything he did, and his sheer presence is enough to lift otherwise mediocre films. This is also the case here and this is not a mediocre film to begin with, if for no other reason than there are a lot of children here acting, mostly like children would, unfiltered and un-idealized. Also, I will always love a story of misfits lifting themselves out of misery. Always have. Nobody is useless and winning is in itself pointless.

There are many such stories around and where this one is distinctly different is that <SPOILER!!!> they do not win the big trophy in the end. What matters is what they won as children. Confidence and a sense of belonging. For a child that is immensely more valuable than a silly trophy <END SPOILER>.

My main problem with the movie is that this sport itself is a complete mystery for me. I do not know the rules for baseball, never played it, never watched a game. In Denmark it is non-existent. I had no idea what the children were doing on the field, if it was good or bad, what was at stake or any of the tactical dispositions. I could only read from the expressions of players and coach if something was good or bad and was otherwise nonplussed by the whole thing. It gave me a feeling that the movie was speaking past me, expecting me to know a lot of things, which it therefore took for granted. Well, I suppose it is my own fault, but it does explain why I have generally avoided sports movies about sports I do not understand.

The second problem, which actually turned out to be the entire point of the movie, was that I was getting increasingly upset and frustrated with the attitudes of the adults and indeed the format of this tournament. It was all about winning. Weaker players had to be sidelined, success was “bought” by getting external star players and the teams are run as a professional entity with no room for the second best. In my own childhood I was crap at sports, but I did play along and being part of a team, win or lose, is fun, but it is not fun being humiliated. Leave that to the adults.

So much more gratifying was it when I realized that this was, at least mostly, the agenda of the movie. It was the adults, the winning-is-everything and kick-the-weak-when-they-are-lying-down attitude that was exposed as ridiculous. Seeing Lupus and Rudi being valued and included was extremely heartwarming.

Happy to say that you can watch “The Bad News Bears” despite knowing nothing of baseball. It says a lot about what matters to children and that is the important part. And that it features Walter Matthau.

Recommended.