The Bad News Bears

In the ultra-competitive world of California little league baseball, Morris Buttermaker, a former minor league pitcher whose career ended in disgrace, takes on the job of coaching the Bears, a youth team that loses constantly. The players are a scruffy, unruly group, with little apparent hope of competing against the polished, disciplined squads their opponents field. Buttermaker is at first uninterested and inclined to give up, but with the arrival of a couple of new players, including a talented girl pitcher and a local troublemaker, the Bears begin to win games and climb toward contention, forcing their coach and their parents to reconsider what the season is really about.

Michael Ritchie directed the film, the fourth of the fifteen features listed in his filmography, following Prime Cut and preceding Semi-Tough. Bill Lancaster wrote the screenplay, and Stanley R. Jaffe produced it for Paramount. Walter Matthau plays Buttermaker, with Tatum O'Neal as Amanda Whurlitzer, Vic Morrow as Roy Turner, and Jackie Earle Haley as Kelly Leak among the thirty-one credited performers. Made for about nine million dollars, it took in roughly thirty-two million worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 7.3 rating from around twenty-seven thousand votes, and on TMDB a 6.9 from some three hundred and fifty. Its critics' score of 7.9 from thirty-four reviews is notably higher than the audience ratings.