The 1976 version of The Bad News Bears, about a little league baseball team with a lazy, drunken ex-baseball player turned coach, who doesn’t care about coaching was filmed in the 1970s. The movie was filmed in a city close to Las Vegas. It stars Walter Matthau as Coach Buttermaker and Tatum O’Neal as the young girl, Amanda, whom he upset when he stopped dating her mother. Buttermaker doesn’t know the first thing about coaching, so when the kids explain they should have sponsors for their team Matthau’s character gets the team sponsored by Chico’s Las Vegas bail bonds, which is funny because most of the kids don’t even know what a Las Vegas bail bond is. The near-Las Vegas set, the cast, and the story make this film one of the best comedies of all time.
At the commencement of the comedy, the coach, a drunk, ex-baseball player turns to coaching a little league baseball team. During their first practice, Coach Buttermaker realizes how difficult coaching may be, since many of the boys don’t even know how to play. Also, many of the boys are not even close to athletic . At first, Coach Buttermaker cares a very slightly about the kids and he seems to care very little about how the team does in their games. All he really wants to do is drink his booze and smoke his cigarettes. He does not care one bit whether or not the Bears win or lose.
As the film continues , Buttermaker begins to actually care about the kids and he starts getting irritated when the coach of the Yankees team gives the Bears a hard time. In an attempt to make his team better, Buttermaker invites his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, Tatum O’Neal’s, character, Amanda, to play for the team, since she is supposed to be a great pitcher. Buttermaker also decides to recruit a troublemaker boy named Kelly, who is a great batter . Buttermaker also actually starts coaching the kids, instead of sitting in the dug-out drinking his beer and smoking his cigarettes.
With the help of Amanda, Kelly and their Coach Buttermaker, the team begins to win their games and they make it to the finals of the little league tournament. However, after their star pitcher, Amanda, gets injured, the team ends up losing the Yankees in the final, but Buttermaker decides to teach the kids a valuable lesson. Buttermaker tells the boys and Amanda that it doesn’t matter that they lost as long as they played the best they could. It is at this point that Buttermaker finally realizes the meaning of being a good coach and the kids learn the importance of giving something your best effort. The ending scene of the film shows the Bears starting a fight with the boys on the Yankees team and a threat that the Bears will beat them and win the league in the next season.
The film is one of the most memorable flicks of all time because of its’ humor and how it portrays the extremes at which parents will go to have their children’s teams win in sports. A newer version of this film was made in 2005, but it was just not the same as the original.
