Baseball Season and Baseball Movies
People have their minds on baseball these days and many have their favorite baseball movies which usually involve films like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, The Natural or some other mainstream, inspirationally themed platitude, but my personal favorite, and in many ways underrated, is Bad News Bears, the 1976 version. A later version was remade in 2005 which is also enjoyable, but I must give my most favored status to the original with the unconquerable Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal.
Bad News Bears isn’t your typical inspirational, underdog story full of sentimentalism and dramatic victories, but rather it humorously and honestly reflects the failing dreams of suburban life.
The movie is about a local politician who sues a southern California little league for restricting the opportunity for all kids to play. Walter Matthau plays the role of Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic, washed up ex-minor leaguer who is “hired” (illegal to do) to manage the superfluous team called the Bears which is made up of a diverse group of unlikely players.
After a slow start, (they forfeit the first game because their opponents scored 26 runs without recording a single out), Buttermaker decides to work harder to turn the team around in unconventional ways and they eventually make a run at the championship to the dismay of the rest of the league.
The Baseball Myth
The writers and directors of the film decided to make it a cynical but honest approach to the myth of the proper but superficial world of suburban life, parental expectations and role models. It portrays subjects, attitudes and behaviors which are taboo even to talk about in today’s modern world of correctness and disingenuous, non-offensive behavior.
Buttermaker drinks constantly throughout the movie and encourages cheating, trash-talking and gives no inspirational speeches. The players are the prototypical, less advantaged, latch-key kids of the 1970’s who are probably being raised by older siblings with little adult supervision. They’re foul-mouthed misfits who make racist and irreverent comments even to the adults.
Parents Not Allowed
In today’s world, parents are intimately involved in their children’s activities, and one can’t find a practice or game where the youthful athletes, and the coach, are not under the watchful eyes of the parents close by. But in Bad News Bears, parents are conspicuously missing and some may find this unlikely and from the modern perspective, maybe so. But as a child of the 70’s, during my youth sports, it really was unusual to see parents at practice. This means in the movie, the players’ looked at their dubious coach as their main role model and father figure.
Symbolic Uniforms
Even the Bears’ uniforms were an unsightly reflection of the composition of the team with bad colors, wrinkles and ill-fitting while the other league teams had crisp, colorful, well fitted uniforms. The sponsors of most of the teams in the movie were the typical sporting goods stores and family restaurants but the only sponsor Buttermaker found was Chico Bail Bonds printed boldly and proudly on the back of the Bears jerseys.
Beer, not Champagne, Ending
The ending of the movie was also unconventional as the Bears found themselves in a championship match with the league favorites but there is no miracle win here. The Bears lost the game and instead of a “moral victory”, there was no rousing speech and no sporting handshakes with their opponents. No, the Bears pretty much told the other team to shove the trophy up their *$#@, and Buttermaker opens the beer cooler for them, another taboo.
At the time Bad News Bears angered little league coaches and parents and they petitioned to have the movie pulled from theaters. They felt it wasn’t satirical but slander and believed it gave little league baseball a bad rap and America’s youth a poor example, but the movie itself turned out to be one of the highest grossing films of 1976.
The creators of the film professed they were not inventing anything and did not intend it to be an inspirational sports movie. It was a mirror of society and experiences of the 1970s and a reflection of overbearing coaches and screaming parents.
So, what does all this have to do with why I draw what I draw? Part 2 next week.