‘The Bad News Bears’ (1976) Wth Bill Simmons and Van Lathan
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Greetings, it's Mal. Call your banners because it's time to head back to Westeros for House of the Dragons Season 2. The Ringer's dragon riders will soar alongside you each week with a Harrenhal-sized slate of conversations. The dragon has three heads, and on Sunday nights immediately after Hot D concludes,

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Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald will sip the Arbor's finest vintage on the watch. Then on Tuesdays, Joanna and I will head to the bowels of a pleasure den for our House of R Deep dives. Then on Thursdays, Joe, Neil Miller and Dave Gonzalez will gather the Ravens for trial by content.

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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the Bill Simmons Podcast, where you can find Higher Learning and the Midnight Boys on the Ringerverse Podcast with Van Lathan, where you can find Van Lathan talking about The Bear with Charles Holmes on the Prestige TV Podcast. I might even pop on a couple of those podcasts.

At the end of June. I love the bear. What a great show. Hey, here's your rewatchable schedule for the summer. Just in case, in case you were curious, obviously we're going to keep doing Monday nights. This is the end of the sports movie theme month for the seventies, but we're going to have a lot of fun stuff coming this summer. And we're going to burn off all those rewatchables, 1999 podcast that we did in 2019 and,

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There you go. We also have the rewatchables, the Twitter feed. If you want to see anything, we might start tweeting a little more stuff out from that and the big picture movie feed as well for all your movie stuff coming up. The last episode of 70 sports movie month. Yet another classic me, Ben Lathan, bad news bears next.

It's Tatum O'Neill in her first motion picture since Paper Moon. She's a little older. I'm almost 12 and I'll be getting a bra soon. And ready to play the game by her rules. If I win, you play baseball for the Bears. And if I win, name it. Academy Award winner Walter Matthau. Academy Award winner Tatum O'Neill. The Bad News Bears. Rated PG.

All right, Van Lathan is here. We're going to talk about one of the great sports movies ever made, Bad News Bears, 1976 version. Producer Craig, who we'll get to later, asked him if he ever saw it, and he said...

I've seen the 2005 version with Billy Bob Thornton, and I immediately tried to jab a steak knife into my throat. But it was a butter knife, so I didn't really break the skin. But I was so bummed out. This is such a good movie. It scares me that people under 40 haven't seen it because it's too old.

Because in a lot of ways, I mean, there's some politically incorrect stuff, but in a lot of ways, it's perfect. It's like the perfect kids sports movie. And I can't believe how well it holds up 48 years later. What was your first reaction rewatching it? Well, first of all, Craig is just a delightful person. He's a delightful human being. I love being around Craig. Me too. But this is the only time that I actually was angry at him.

I wanted to kick him in his ass. Get the hell out of here, Craig. No, I mean, look, re-watching it as an adult, I hadn't seen it in a while. The movie is just absolutely delightful. It is so good. Like, bro, there were times in the movie, I'm like, low-key, I think as an adult, I'm watching it, and I'm not watching it from the lens of a kid or a younger man. There were times where I was about to cry. Like...

It'll be the movie. It's like, it's one of those weirdly, it's a perfect movie. It's a perfect little film. It really is. Yeah. And you know, I've seen that obviously I grew up with the movie, have seen it at every aspect and then went through all the youth sports stuff. And through that prism, what I saw as like a parent, um, and then you reapply that to the movie. This movie was so ahead of the game with so many things that was targeting. Right. But really use sports culture, um,

That was where it was the most ahead of the game. Because I don't even think anybody was even really thinking that way back then. Like, oh, where are we going with this? Are the parents starting to be out of control? And there's so many different little moments that just lay the groundwork. First of all,

First sports comedy that featured kids ever, right? Which seems crazy now because we've had, I mean, Sandlot, we did a million of these. First one that skewed the overbearing youth sports parent phenomenon because we all, I'm sure, who was your coach Turner in your life growing up? My dad. Your coach Turner? My dad.

My dad, for sure. I mean, my father had a much more loving way of doing it. He didn't smack you when you were on the mound? No, that would have never happened because he'd had somebody to answer to. But I used to do this annoying thing where he would hit the ball at me and I would flip my glove over. And it just grinded his gear so much. He's like, your glove is there. Just pick up the ball, son. And that's why he introduced me to the fungo bat.

And we're there with the fungal bat and you're just getting balls rocketed at you where you can't do it. So he was the guy that would always be that way. And he also had another thing he would do. He was just, he was weirdly critical of kids. Like it was the NBA or the NFL combine. He'd look at a kid and be like, he has no cast. He'll never be a ball player. He can't play for me. You know what I mean? So that, it was that for me. Yeah. I watched, obviously got into it with my daughter first because she was the older kid.

And knew this whole culture existed. And then once you're immersed in it, I mean, we had one game where somebody's kid wasn't playing and the dad was getting madder at matter, matter, matter. And all of a sudden the dad starts walking around to the other end of the field. And we think it's, we don't know what's going on. We were like, is he about to get in a fight? Uh,

yells at our coach and we're like, are they going to have a fist fight? This is like a nine-year-old girls soccer game. Yells at the coach, points at him because he's mad the kid's not playing and then goes over, grabs the kid and they leave the game and we never see them again on the field with us. And it was just like, it was like, oh, that was weird. But we're so immune to this crazy youth sports. There's been documentaries about it. There's been shows about it. This one really ties in and it's the Joey Turner meltdown

on the mound becomes the touch point for any dysfunctional athlete, coach thing, athlete, parent thing you ever saw in youth sports. You just think of Joey Turner, right? He was the first one. So many things are going wrong at that point. I also have some things to say about Joey's mom, by the way. Oh, you know what? I wrote down, I had her in a couple categories and I was like, Van's going to have some thoughts on this. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. But no, yeah, because...

there's a decision that gets made in this game. And, well, but a butter maker almost makes it. It,

The decision that's made is whether or not it's about the kids or whether or not it's about the adults. And that's the central decision about any of these youth sports, right? Because when you go out there and it's about the kids, it's about lessons. It's about getting better. It's about not quitting. It's about perseverance. It's about all of that stuff. When it's about the adults, that's when it's about winning and losing. Because what happens is when you get older, you realize that the world kind of is about winning and losing. Right?

Right. But when you're a kid, you're still trying to make people, and those are two different dynamics. And this game, thematically, is about whether or not it's about the kids or whether it's about winning or losing. The Yankees lost...

Because he made it about himself. The Bears won because they kept it about the kids. And that's the ultimate moment where that's litigated is when it's actually between father and son. And he decides to let them score just to spite his father. Yeah, the Yankees are about to win the final game.

And it's after the Joey has already left with the mom who I know we're going to talk about later. And that other parent comes up to the coach and was like, congratulations. And he's like, yeah, yeah, it's great. Meanwhile, his whole family's in shambles. He's like, yeah, yeah, the kid. Yeah, it's good. It's a great win by the kids. And it's just like, man, you will just, you'll win at any cost. But coach Turner is the best character in this movie because he's,

There's been a million Coach Turners over the last 50 years. The guy who's like, whatever his job is, it doesn't really matter in real life. This is the highlight of his week. It's the highlight of his day. Ordering these little 11-year-olds around, feeling like making it life or death for these kids, and it's really not. And then when you win, what do you ultimately win? You get a trophy. Basically, you didn't lose is the win. It's the fear of losing.

He's some dude in middle management somewhere who can't extract any wins out of his life. And he's really, this is what he's doing. These kids are the way he's going to show the world that he's a winner and it's always corrosive, right? It's his one chance. So we have that. We have a really interesting butter maker and Amanda relationship, like this father-daughter thing that...

You don't see a ton of movies go into, you know, it's like, he's not the dad. He's kind of the father figure a little bit, but not totally. And they have these real honest conversations that I just feel like as the years pass, you would just never have some of the scenes they have with these two. But it's, it's interesting to watch. You mentioned the concept of winning without winning the title, which is really the first time. Most times when they make these sports movies, the bad news bears win at the end.

Right. Like Kelly league scores. It's tie game. Then Engelbert comes up and hits the game winner. And now we're celebrating this movie was like, no, we're going to zag. We're zagging on that one, which a couple of sports movies have tried over the years. And you know, like Tim cup, Roy McAvoy hits it in the, uh, hits it in the water a bunch of times. And then he gets, he actually makes it and that becomes the wind. But for the most part, really tough one to land, uh,

when we're invested, Rocky did it basically the same year where he went, basically he wins by going the distance. But for the most part, color money, Paul Newman wins just because he's back. He's playing billiards again, but we don't actually see what happens. Do you like when sports movies zag like that? Um, almost never. See, that's how I feel. I just want like the happy ending. Yeah. Almost never. It's,

I think of it, I think of a league of their own where like it's another one. The peaches lose at the end. Like it almost never. It works here because they're kids and it works with Rocky because Rocky immediately calls out to Adrian and he's one love. Like you win something, right? You get something. But to me, when I didn't spend all of this time with you,

and we've done this whole, I need to see you win the championship, man. I need to leave on a high. But it works in this movie. It would be like at the end of Above the Rim, them not winning the shootout. Nah, I got to see them win the shootout. I got to see them win the tournament. It works here, though. Like, it's hard to do. It's hard to do because you have to deliver so many lessons that are outside of sports, and those lessons really have to stick.

When above the rim, they won the shootout and then they won the shootout. Then they won the shootout. Because nobody got shot. Right. They won the shootout without dying after the game. It was a double shootout win. Two instances of gun violence post the tournament. At first, you got Leon. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Tupac. And then Bird. Yeah. He gets shot at the end of it too. Yeah. The last lesson from this movie is a chain-smoking alcoholic is

can manage your child's little league team and take them to the finals, which I think was an important one. The bigger stuff, there's a lot of they would never make this movie again when you watch this movie for all the obvious reasons. But then also, this movie was the first one that basically is like, we're going to have a bunch of stereotypical kids in here, right? We're going to have the rebel kids.

We have the crazy shit talker, Tanner. We have the super nerd. We have the booger eater. We have the black kid. We have the two Mexicans. We have the fat kid. We have the smug douches, the smug douche coaches kid. They're just hitting all the basic stereotypes, but it actually works. And it was so interesting when they did the remake, they were so sensitive about not doing it that way, right? They went like, they went the super diver. They had a kid in a fucking wheelchair. You know, they were trying to hit everything and,

And it just didn't have the same tone. It was too self-aware. This movie was not self-aware at all. They're like, we're in a fucking Little League team in Southern California. That's it. That's all the thought we're putting. So who would have? Oh, they'll have a fat kid. And they go through it. There's an innocence to that that I just don't think you wouldn't think that way anymore, right? For better and worse. In a lot of cases, better. But in this case, it's like, yeah, this is kind of how you have to do a movie like this, right? Yeah.

The difference is I get the feeling that, and I'm not familiar with the screenwriters of this movie necessarily, but I get the feeling that this movie was actually, the story was told with actually real inspiration. And you can always tell. Meaning if you've been around a Little League dugout or if you've been to Little League and you've seen the makeup of the teams and how the kids treat each other, then you're not trying to create the team.

You're just basing it based upon the culture that you are observing. And that's where you lose movies like this. That's where you lose them. You lose them in trying to fit a bunch of people together with your little archetypes and make a bigger point. If this movie isn't about the story, then it just doesn't work.

Like you, you'd have to ask yourself, does each of those kids really exist? They do. How would they act? Write it down. And then you have a movie that spans the test of time. And really with all of these other films is essentially just being remade, right?

It's just being remade as Little Giants. It's just being remade as The Sandlot, to a lesser degree as The Sandlot. Rookie of the Year, Mighty Ducks. Rookie of the Year. It just goes on and on. The movie's just being remade, but it's because in its inception, the original film is so pure to the story that it's telling. There are a lot of things in here that when you look at it, like where is her mom?

She's just hanging out with buttermilk. You know what I mean? We don't have a scene with her. Where are Kelly Leak's parents? Do they exist? He's drinking, riding a Harley. He's 12 years old.

Yeah, smoking cigs. Smoking cigs, ripping them. You know, the whole deal, but like it works and it's so cliche, but harkens back to a time when we were more freewheeling and life was about life. But it's true though. As much as you would say the politically incorrect stuff is in this movie, it feels easier to watch than the other stuff that's forced, man. It just does. It does. It does.

Yeah, you have, there's a scene. It's funny, like what's the most shocking moment of this? And you would think it was some of Tanner's lines. It's actually watching the coach in a convertible, drinking a beer, driving 10 kids without seatbelts. Three of them are sitting on the back of the car and they're just cruising 40 miles an hour to go to his house. And you're like, oh my God, it's shocking. But there's a lot of stuff like that. But honestly, that's what the 70s were like.

This movie was completely realistic for what it was like to probably coach some random little league team in 1976. This is what happened. There were kids that had no supervision at all. They're 12 year old smoking. There's little league managers on the bench, just fucking drinking. And you know, at the, in the last scene, the kids are pouring beer on each other, which seems inconceivable now, not inconceivable in the seventies because there were no rules in the seventies.

Not inconceivable. When I was growing up, I remember this exact same league. We used to play out home, which was my dad's hometown. And we would put eight kids in the back of my father's truck, flatbed truck. We'd drive over the bridge with it. Like we'd be in the back of the truck just going to the games, like all of us together, eight kids in a flatbed truck. Yeah.

And when we would get there, we would win. The adults out there, they didn't act like kids because kids were around. They acted like adults and we were kids. So there was drinking and smoking and all that stuff. It's just kind of the way that it was. We were a little bit more calloused over. Now I'm looking at the movie. I'm thinking, God damn, bro.

Buttermaker is going fucking hard, bro. Buttermaker got the, he got the beer, but then it looked like he poured some whiskey in that motherfucker. Oh, he did. And Kelly Lee saw it. Kelly Lee comes over to light a cigarette. He's 12. Light a cigarette. I'm like, what the hell is going on? But like I said, different time and the movie works. And not at one point that I, that, and watching this that I go, oh man, this is too much. This movie is aged poorly. Not one time. Not one time.

I can't wait for Craig's reaction at the end of this. Walter Matthau plays Buttermaker, who for me, I don't know if this is a definite opinion, but it is for me. I have him as the goat of the likable curmudgeon hall of fame. We've had a lot of likable curmudgeons over the years, including people like Greg Popovich. But Matthau was just the best at it, where just super grumpy,

And that was basically what he did over and over again in different movies as like the grumpy acerbic, but you kind of liked him and he seemed genuine. And even if he could be a dick, he could kind of get away with it. He, uh, he had a really great career. He made 10 movies with Jack Lemmon.

He won a Tony Award in 65 for the odd couple play that Neil Simon wrote that then made into a famous movie that became a TV show. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 66 for The Fortune Cookie. He had two Best Actor nominations in 71 and 75. Had a great career. And I'm sure he didn't think this was...

the long lasting movie he ever made, but it turned out it was. Cause I think it's this or odd couple is the movies that he made that lasted longest. But I actually think bad news bears will last probably longer than the odd couple would be. Yeah. Because he broke new ground.

Right? The movie was something that hadn't been done before and he became an archetype. And anytime you become like an archetype, you know, if you're John Wayne and it's the searchers and you're the archetype of the American cowboy or whatever, like whenever you become something like that, that's the role that like lives forever for you. If you're Luke Skywalker, if you're Indiana Jones, like whatever, those are the roles that live the longest. I remember

like to your lovable commercial situation around the same time that I'm starting to watch this movie. I can't remember when the first time I saw bad news bears, I'm not even gonna try. But I do remember the first time that I started to see him as a younger actor, like, you know, he's in cactus flower and some other movies like that, that I really dug. And I'm like, Oh, this same charm that he had as butter maker is in the rest of these roles too, because that guy in cactus flower, you should hate that guy.

who's with this younger woman, the whole nine, like you should hate that guy, but you just can't because he's got like onscreen charm that you can't deny. You know what I mean? It's funny. And this happens sometimes when we talk about this a lot, especially in new movies, 70s or 80s. There's no version of him now. They tried. 2024 Walter Matthau doesn't exist because he would have basically, I think he's probably a character actor now. You know, he becomes like Richard Jenkins.

Where he's just in all these different movies, but you wouldn't want to lead the movie. You couldn't put him on a poster. In 1976, you could. They were like, fuck it. This movie stars Walter Matthau. So I'd say this. I'd say when I say they tried, I mean, it kind of was Billy Bob, right?

He was kind of the guy that they thought was that. You know, you have movies like Bad Santa that... Oh, that's a good point. You're right. So that ties into the remake almost. Yeah, that's why they did it. That takes a character that's just like... I mean, because of the times, Bad Santa has to be like...

over the top with all of it. It's hysterical. And then he still ends up having a heart of gold. His relationship with the kid and the whole nine and everything like that. Then when they remake this movie, they go, okay. I think Bad Santa's after that. I can't remember. But when they remake this movie, they go, okay, the guy that's this version of Walter Matthau now is Billy Bob Thorne. But for some reason, it just doesn't work. Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones had pieces of this, but Tommy Lee Jones could also have been the guy

Bad saying it was 2003. 2003. Tommy Lee Jones could also be the guy who's chasing the fugitive, right? I don't think that's Walter Matthau. Walter Matthau is the guy who's in charge of the police in the tunnel where there's a hostage situation, but he's in headquarters just like making jokes. He's not chasing Harrison Ford down to a waterfall or anything like that. He's awesome in this movie. It's a really complex performance and-

Michael Ritchie directed this, who is one of my favorite 70s directors. He did Downhill Racer. He's 69 for Downhill Racer, but The Candidate. Downhill Racer and The Candidate are just great, great, great. They're so old. 69. I think The Candidate was 71. And those movies are awesome to watch now. I would highly recommend them. Bad News Bears, he did Semi-Tough. In the 80s, he did Fletch. He did Wildcats. Mmm. He did The Golden Child. Mmm.

oh wow and he did digstown wow oh wow okay that's a pretty great top eight right but digstown i know you love digstown yeah digstown man look whatever you talk about james woods whatever digstown digstown is in the van latham hall of fame i know it is we'll do it at some point yeah but his his 70s movies and you could really feel it with uh

downhill racer in the candidate too. He's just good at putting people in situations and just kind of letting that, not, not like overpowering it, but just, just setting up scenes and having good characters and closeups of people and letting things breathe. And he does the best version of this. Cause there's a couple of couple of scenes in this where he just kind of lets it breathe in the right ways. He's not like going for anything super funny.

You know, he's like some of the Tatum O'Neill Math House scenes. They're a little longer than you would expect them to be. And you're watching an 11 year old girl act with like this fucking drunk middle-aged dude. But they're, they're good scenes. They're like well-written and well-acted. I have this written down. He had,

a shit ton of trust in her. Yeah. Because in some of the scenes between her and butter maker, particularly the first scene that she's in, we don't even know who she is. Like we have no clue, like what's going on, like where he's going to her and her performance in that. And you know, her and Jackie O'Haley are just like miles ahead of the rest of the kids that are acting in the movie. There's just freaks in terms of being able to act. But yeah,

he's like her little idiosyncrasies the way she's looking at him her confidence in the role the entire thing if that doesn't work right there then like a large portion of the movie just kind of falls out the middle of it falls out right well we saw it happen we saw it happen the remake because the person who played the amanda character in the remake was not tatum o'neill tatum o'neill

I should have mentioned this. We did a best little kid actor performance a while ago. We talked about Dakota Fanning and man on fire and the girl from little miss sunshine, all this stuff. And I forgot to mention how incredible she is in this movie. She'd already won an Oscar for paper, paper moon for best supporting actress.

She's fantastic in this. And what ended up happening is in the seventies, she became the crush of every boy and every like 13 to 15 year old teenager. She's, this was an iconic role because everybody saw this movie. Everybody was in love with her.

And she really, it was a little like Lindsay Lohan in the mid 2000s coming off Mean Girls where you're like, oh, anything's possible for this person. And much like Lindsay Lohan had a lot of issues. And, you know, especially in the 70s, her dad was a crazy Hollywood guy. I don't think he was the parent of the year. And, you know, she had little darlings with Christy McNichol. But by the time we got to the mid 80s, like the moment kind of came and went. But you watch her in this movie, you're like, this is somebody that,

if you just stop this movie in 1976 and say what happened to this person what do you think her career was you would have said oh my god she must have been amazing and it just didn't turn out that way this was kind of the peak which you know sometimes that happens with hollywood but it's a bummer because i agree with you i think she's fantastic in this movie great little actress her dad was too busy

snaking Lee Majors for his woman. Right. A classic story. Yeah, he stole Farrah Fawcett from Lee Majors, the $6 million man. Man, shout out to Lee Majors. I think they might... Is Lee Majors still with us? I'm not sure, but I think... I think he is. Okay, but the other two I think are going on in, but... Well, you know that story, right? Yeah, Lee Majors was with Farrah Fawcett. He was married to her. He was married to her.

is leaving to go shoot something or something like that. He left the country to shoot a movie. Tells Ryan O'Neal, the best looking guy in the world, hang out with my wife while I'm gone. And Ryan O'Neal takes his wife. He does the Vincent Vega with Mia Wallace. He's like, hey, can you take my wife out? I'm going to be out in the country. And Ryan O'Neal's like, yeah, I actually will take your wife out. I'm going to keep taking her out. And Lee Majors comes back and

That's a wrap for the Lee Majors' Farrah marriage. They were together forever. But yeah, so when you watch the movie...

The interesting thing about butter maker's character and about the movie itself is there are not very many Eureka moments where you go, okay, now things have changed. The story just progresses. Yeah. It progresses to the point that he cares about the team. Then it progresses to the point to where he's over competitive about it. And then very subtly,

He looks and he goes, I'm going too far. Very subtly. No huge orchestra note to, oh my God, look at that. Just very subtly everything happens as if they trust the audience to understand what they're trying to say rather than beating the audience over the head with it.

Right. You don't have the character looking at him and giving some monologue about, you've got to understand. It's a great point. The 70s were a lot more show than tell. And I think that's why these movies have lived on really well. The only time you notice the light bulb go off with him was when he goes to see Ahmad because Ahmad takes his jersey off, he's in the tree, and he's trying to...

kind of connect with Ahmad and starts to feel bad, like, oh shit, I'm actually, I'm the coach of these kids. Maybe I should actually give a shit about them and try to inspire them instead of just show up on the sidelines and grab my checks and drink some beers. And that's, other than that, they don't really have any moments like that where you see the light bulb going off, which I agree with you. I like Tatum O'Neill said in 2016,

The film had such an impact on boys. Guys my age are always saying you were my first love. Quentin Tarantino told me I was the first fan letter he'd ever written. I was flattered. When I knew Jason Patrick in the 90s, he asked if I still had the Bears uniform and would I put it on. I was like, are you fucking kidding? That was when I was 11 years old. But that's like, yeah, that's the kind of impact she was having on people in her age. This movie had a $9 million budget.

It made $43 million. It was the 10th biggest 1976 movie. Rocky was first, 117 million. It was the only triple figure movie. So in 76, because we talked about when we did The Longest Yard, The Longest Yard's first modern sports movie. 76 happens. Rocky's the biggest movie in the world. Bad News Bears is in top 10. And now we're off with the sports movie boom. Like this is it. 76, now we're making...

Roger Ebert, three stars. Called it an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society. I personally was surprised they didn't get a three and a half out of Rog. Yeah.

I'm sure he would do that over again. Anyway, now it's time for today's most rewatchable scene brought to you by Sonic. Speaking of things you'll want to see, or in this case, eat over and over, the new Sonic Groovy Fries are a must. They're hot, crispy, designed to hold more sauce.

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It's not most rewatchable, but I wanted to shout out the opening credits because it's rare that you start a movie, set in the scene of where we are, and you get to meet pretty much every major character in the movie. We get to meet Buttermaker. We get the premise of what's about to happen. We meet Toby. We meet Kelly Lake, the Jackie Earl Haley character. We meet the Yankees coach. All in like four minutes, you get to see him drinking a beer and putting liquor in it, which is like,

Number one sign you're an alcoholic. It's like, the beer's not enough. I need to put some hard liquor in my beer. And it just lays out everything really smartly. So I wanted to mention that. But most rewatchable. First practice. Has the first practice of a band of misfits in any sport ever not been a watchable scene? I think it's worked 100 times out of 100. When I started watching this movie, I was thinking about the little reference, but

formative classic necessary roughness.

Oh, yeah. Scott Bakula, Sinbad, Jason Bateman. Yeah. Kathy Ireland. Kathy Ireland. I thought about, oh, my Lord. Yeah. That was a moment in time. I thought about their first practice because I literally have it written down. I was like, every time you get all your guys together for the first time and they go out and you see just how terrible these people are at their sport, it just sets up the entire rest of the movie.

And it's been ripped off from 1976 on ever since. Because if we're going to build the ragtag band of underdogs...

And we're going to have them persevere in the end. We got to see rock bottom initially. Hey, Engelbert, there's chocolate all over this ball. Probably the highlight. The first baseball game that they have where they just get annihilated by the Yankees is hilarious. This is when Tanner goes to a whole other level and he's just screwing up. And then finally one of the Yankees is running by and he whips his glove at him. And then Coach Turner tries to get them to drop out and...

It's just a lot of laughs. Tanner, who I forgot to talk about before we went into the rewatchable scenes. I can't emphasize what a superstar this kid was in the mid-70s. It was so weird to all of us that he didn't become like Macaulay Culkin. Because he, Tatum O'Neill starred in the movie and Mathau, but Tanner was like the breakout character.

Oh my God. There'd never been a little kid like that ever in a movie. Like in this way, the little kids had always been like the sentimental or whatever. This kid's like, he's saying crazy shit. He's super funny. He's getting in fights with everybody. And you would have just assumed he was going to have this massive career, but he didn't. He was in bad news bears and breaking training. And, um, I think he was out of acting by the end of the seventies, but you know what I thought I would have predicted anything for him.

As we're doing this, I'm watching tons and tons of like old 70s and 80s TV shows. Yeah. Yeah. And so they basically wrote a little Archie Bunker.

No question. You're right. They basically wrote a little Archie Bunker, right? Who, if this is 76, that's around the time that that show is probably like in every, but they wrote a little Archie Bunker. They wrote a little character that says all of those things, but still kind of has like archie

a heart of gold and will stick up for the little guy and everybody. Cause you know, Archie Bunker still had George Jefferson coming over to his house and all of that. They basically wrote that character as a little dude. And, and every single scene where it's not being carried by Tatum O'Neill or, I mean, Kelly Lee better talks, everybody else. He's the reason to watch the movie. Yeah. Another rewatchable scene, the bears try to quit and they mentioned, uh,

Tanner fought the seventh grade. And he's like, who in the seventh grade? And he's like, Tanner fought the seventh grade. That's why he's got the black eye. But butter maker has the key quote here. Cause he starts to realize like, all right, I have some decency in my, in my bones. I can't let these kids quit. And he has the quote. I can understand how you guys feel. I haven't been much of a manager or much of anything else for that matter. And I'm sorry, but this quitting thing, it's a hard habit to break. Once you start quitting,

You're a damn good bunch of boys. Probably deserved a lot better than me. It looks like we're stuck with each other. Jimmy, grab a bat. Engelbrey, get your gear on, get behind home plate. What for? We need to practice. I'm a winter span in the team. We took a vote. God damn it! Nobody's vote counts around here but mine. Get your gear on and get your fat ass behind a plate before I kick it up there. This quitting thing is a hard habit to break once you start.

which is the theme of the movie. Actually, now Buttermaker's doing some coaching. Now he's doing some life lessons. And you get the feeling right there that he quit.

Right. Oh, definitely. They don't give you any real backstory into butter maker. At first they tell you play for the Yankees and he tells you a little bit that he played in the minor leagues and you get the fit, the sense that he was pretty good. I mean, he had two, four 80. All right. It's very good. Yeah. But it doesn't really, you don't really get into like what happened, but you get the sense that at some point he quit, which is why he doesn't want to see the kids go down that road. Yep.

I have the air hockey game between Kelly and Amanda followed by her telling butter maker she lost and him screaming at her in the car. You probably lost on purpose. You probably liked the little baboon. That whole sequence is great. What's that? Nothing. What's eight o'clock Friday night?

I lost that game, so I gotta go to the Rolling Stone concert with the creep. That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. Eleven-year-old girls don't go out on dates. Of course they do. Where you been? Well, they don't go out with people like that. Boy, you take the cake. First you blow the game, then you get roped into a date with an ex-con. You're like a chimney. I'm sick of it. Start the car and let's go. Probably lost on purpose. You're probably like the little baboon. Blow it out of your bunghole.

Let me tell you something. The shot of her walking out of the arcade, this long shot of defeated, it's just hilarious to me. You know she lost. She gets in there. They had a whole plan, but Kelly was too good. Now she's got to go to the Rolling Stones. By the way, what a huge penalty. What a penalty. You get to go see the Stones in LA in 1976. Jesus.

You're going with a 12-year-old delinquent, but you get to go. On a Harley. Two more. The Kelly League doing everything game. You know, we learned some hero ball lessons that apply to even sports now in 2024. It's not too fun to just watch somebody do everything. So you're Russell Westbrook on the 2017 Thunder.

Give some for the other guys. Yeah, let the other guys have it, though. But I got to be honest with you. That little part right there is the truest part to youth sports. Youth sports, you're right. Because there's always a dog out there. Yeah. And you're always tempted. We had a guy on our squad.

in 93 named Will. I could play, but Will was something else. And the thing was, when we got down, it was just like, do we give Will the ball and let Will just get us back into the game? But it's just, that's not how the other kids, that's not what they came out there for. It was just crazy. I was all with it. I was like, let Will score. It's so funny, especially when you get older. I mean, pickup basketball is the number one for this, where if it's pickup basketball and guys are waiting...

you throw your team values away. You throw the selflessness of the 2024 Celtics away. And you're just like, I just want to stay in the court. I want to keep playing. Jacoby and I, when we used to play at USC all the time, and we would strategically pick these dudes that we knew could keep us on the court. There were a couple that weren't that much fun to play with. But we were like, oh, we'll get that guy. We'll play for like three hours. And it's fine. I'll just stand over there and I'll shoot my 18 footer. If he's triple teamed, he'll throw it to me. But we just want to keep playing. Right.

And that was basically butter maker with Kelly Lake. Like I just want to make the finals. Kelly, can you catch everything? And then, then he sees the way it affects the rest of the kids. But once again, those are the little, just a great written scene right there. Yeah, that's good. And then Kelly hits the game winner. There's only two kids greeting him at home plate. I have a lot of thoughts about the positions that I can't wait to pick knits with this movie. A final game.

which you'd split into three sections. And this is obviously the most rewatchable part of the movie is the Yankees versus the bears. The final game. We have a base brawl, legitimate base brawl. Nobody kicked out. It's clearing. Yep. We have an Engelbert versus Joey Turner rivalry that nobody knew we had an Engelbert. It's just fucking hitting bombs. He's like Josh Gibson. She's cranking, cranking line drives.

We have Turner hitting his kid, which is like one of the most shocking quiet in the theater movie. Oh my God. Can you imagine if that happened now? If somebody did that? You try to hit him, didn't you? Try to hit him.

Bro. That dude would be, that dude, that would be filmed. Your life's over. Everything. Do you understand? Hold on now. Everything is done. You, you're going to lose your job. Lose your job. You lose your job. You lose your marriage. You're getting divorced. Like that moment right there where you smack your kid in front of everyone after that goes viral. Somebody's videotaping that. Yeah. You're on CNN, law firms, Gloria Allred. Your whole shit is fucked.

And then Joey holds the ball as Engelbert's running around the bases, which is fucking funny. You could make an argument that should have just been the ending of the movie. The bears win. They win the title because Joey's holding the ball. So you got that section. Then you have the butter maker having the realization. I've just got to play everybody, which is his own rewatchable scene. I'm going to play everybody in the team. It's the whole point is everybody plays and we get the lupus catch Timmy lupus.

A legitimate chill scene. Bruh. Because in sports movies, you need chill scenes. That's a chill scene. That's the moment where I was watching a movie.

And I wasn't expecting to like get emotional. Yeah. Yeah. That's the movie where I was like, oh man. Cause that kid, like he's the, at the bottom of the cleats, the gum on the bottom of the other kids cleats for the entire movie. And he made a real snag. Like he snags one over the fence and you just feel so happy for him. And the rest of the kids is fantastic. It's the most, it's one of the most ripped off tropes from this movie.

Going forward, having the worst kid on the team somehow thrust into the game or somehow making a key play. Like Hoosiers did this, probably the best with Ollie, right? Everybody fouls out and Ollie has to go in.

And it's like, don't stay away from the ball. I'll answer, put in the two big free throws. It's redone kind of in parenthood a little bit too. It's redone in everything. They, people have ripped that off for 50 years. I was watching a movie, you know, sometimes you leave the channel on, on cable. You still have cable, right? Yeah. You leave the channel on and then you turn it on the next day and there's some movie on. So there's some basketball movie on, I don't even know what the name of it was, but Andrew Dice Clay was the coach.

And then he had some young disgraced star who took over the team because Andrew Dice Clay had health problems. And I'm like, what the fuck is this movie? It's some basketball movie. Andrew Dice Clay? Yeah. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It's a movie that came out in the last two years. And it's the classic, it has all the classic misfits. Of course, there's the kid who's overweight, who doesn't want to be put in the game.

And guess who hits the three to win it at the end? Who? The overweight kid who didn't want to be put in the game 45 minutes in. Yeah, who didn't want to play. The movie's called Warrior Strong. It came out last year. Warrior Strong. It's with Jordan Johnson Hines. I never heard of none of these people. You might have to watch it. It's terrible. But my point is that we're going to keep ripping that off forever. All right. And then...

The actual most rewatchable moment bears down seven, three little rally. Yeah. Ogilvy down. Oh, two gets a walk. Somebody else gets on base. Then Miguel gets a walk. Now Kelly leak is up and they're trying to intentionally walk them again.

Kelly Lake does the reach over. Yeah. And it looks like he's going to get the inside the park grand slam thrown out at the plate. But that leads to the trophy. By the way, Kelly was totally safe. I was going to do this for picking Nance. I thought he was safe. I thought the ump was in the bag for the Yankees. Yeah. Kelly beat that throw. Yeah, he did. Clearly beat that throw. Hey, Yankees, you can take your apology and your trophy and shove them straight up your ass.

This made people actually clap in the theater, just so you know. 1976. This was like a...

Rocky lasting through the 15th round kind of moment. I have the entire game as most rewatchable. I'm not even going to separate the sequences. If you had to pinpoint it, I would probably go Joey Turner holding the ball. What do you have? Yeah. So that game is the most rewatchable scene, of course, because it's like the entire payoff of the entire movie. But I will say my favorite scene in the movie is the 42 errors.

Oh, the 26-0 Yankee beating? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Where he tells him that Hank Aaron made 42 errors. Oh, with Ahmad. With Ahmad. That's my favorite scene in the movie, though, because lying to parents

Or to tell a lesson on an unsuspecting kid that now believes in your bullshit, to me, is something that is so, like, minted from my childhood. Now, people say, oh, you got to take your kids to therapy and do all that stuff. All that stuff's good. But look, the kid looks up to Hank Aaron. Just tell him that Hank Aaron was worse than him at nine. And he'll believe that he could one day be Hank Aaron again.

That scene to me was so precious. It's also, it's very odd. You have a kid with no clothes on sitting in the top of a tree. You have to climb up there to talk to him. Buttermaker doesn't even think about it. He just goes right into it. He just knows exactly what to say. It's kind of like it puts it in your mind that Buttermaker one day is going to be able to figure out what he's doing with the kids. The fact that he knew exactly what to say. Yeah, that's a good call.

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which is perfect for the new groovy sauce. It's creamy with just the right amount of kick and so tasty. You'll never want to stop eating these. Get any size groovy fries for $1 today. Offer valid for a limited time. Live free, eat Sonic. All right, what's aged the best? I'm going to start here. One of my favorite sports movie sequels ever. This is the rare sports movie that has a sequel that I really like, Bad News Bears of Breaking Training.

where they have to go to the Astrodome. And they don't have any parent supervision. So Kelly Leake, who is supposed to be 13, but looks like 18 as he's doing it, has to drive the boys in a van from California to Houston. Hijinks ensue.

really strong sequel. And this is one of the rare cases where you could watch this movie and Amazon suggests like, would you also like to watch Padnos Bears of Breaking Training next? Like it does that little countdown. Like, yes, I actually would. That sounds great. So it's very similar to Rocky, Rocky II or, you know, very, very rarely does the sports movie sequel happen.

seem to follow up naturally what do you have for what's aged the best because i have a bunch so i have a bunch of them too but you know it's funny i saw breaking training first i don't remember when i saw the bad news bears but i saw breaking training first kids playing best baseball in the asher dome oh my god didn't go back in um so i had lying the kids to parent them yeah is is a age the best man i tell you what kentucky fried chicken in the big bucket

I'm so, I had that written down. Why did it look so good? Why did it look so good? Kentucky fried chicken in the big bucket aged really, really well. Do you think it's because it was called Kentucky fried chicken in

Made it sound more delicious. I just don't think an acronym KFC is as delicious sounding I mean you actually saw the Kentucky Fried Chicken it made you want to eat the chicken and also it's before the rise of Popeyes Kentucky Fried Chicken was the delicious chicken then and now Popeyes is delicious chicken Although when you want to change it up Kentucky Fried Chicken still hits when you want to change it up when you want to change it up It still hits

Um, those two scenes, uh, Kelly leaks entire deal. Yeah. Let's talk about him. Like Kelly leak as the rebel misfit. Who's really good at sports, but just can't, doesn't have enough structure for, for, for him to be like playing with the rest of the kids. You know, what's cool about it. I think he was 14, Jackie Earl Haley when he filmed this, but he looks 12.

They don't do the thing where the kid looks too old to be the part. Like he really does seem like he's the age of the other kids. He's wearing that, that kind of very seventies jacket. He's got, it's not just a moped. He's got like a fucking motorcycle. It's a motorcycle. Yeah. It's a bike. He's smoking, but it actually looks like he knows how to smoke.

It looks like he knows how to do it lighter. They had the air hockey scene in the arcade. It's clear that he's just got the hand-eye coordination. If there was a pool scene, he could have beat somebody in pool. He's just a cool troublemaker kid. And we've seen that type of character get ripped off so many times in movies like this. And I think he's the best version of it. He's the most realistic...

Like I don't want my son to be friends with that kid. I don't want my daughter to date that kid, but I kind of respect them. Yeah. I know. I know. It's like, it's a little like John Bednar and the breakfast club. It's like that, that guy's going to have a fucked up adult life, but he is kind of cool. I got to give it to him. Right. He's the kid that's already battle tested and war torn at that age. Um,

So when you put him in a situation with the rest of the kids, he's just like head and shoulders above them at like everything. Yeah, it seems like he's 20. But you know that in the 60s, that same character would have went to Vietnam and got killed.

You know what I mean? You know that it's going to end up going bad for him. Or in the Vietnam movie, he's the coolest one in the platoon, but then he dies at like the 50 minute mark. Exactly right. He's the first one going. He also looks so much like Steve Nash that it's disorienting. Jack Errol Haley back then. Yeah.

I had what's aged the best. Chris Barnes as Tanner. Macaulay Culkin crossed with Bill Burr would be my analogy. Yeah. I absolutely loved Ahmad Abdul-Rahim. Especially when I was a kid, I loved that character. Those characters weren't on TV shows that much, right? You had JJ's brother in Good Times, Michael. You had the What's Happening Guys character.

You had Boom Boom Washington, but it wasn't like we had a million black kid characters back then. But I liked his backstory about, I'm the worst athlete of all my brothers. I just wanted my own thing. I love the fact that he loved Hank Aaron. It kind of roots it in the 70s. Like, yeah, of course he loves Hank Aaron. I thought he was funny. I like when he does the bunt in the end. He's good in the sequel too. I always liked that actor. Apparently he's a DJ now.

Okay. And in a lot of other movies, the black kid would have been the standout athlete, right? Even in The Longest Yard, they got to go get the black. The black kid would have been the standout athlete. But the fact that it's almost like, I don't want to go too far, but it's like revolutionary a little bit or really...

interesting to turn that perception on itself like my brothers are great athletes baseball is my last chance to be a great athlete right and to have it out there it gives his character a little weight he's out there he a little muslim talking about he about to hit it out there to allah's cool little character man yeah i liked him and i loved engelbert is so fucking funny in this movie

Every moment with Engelbert is a home run, literally. When he's in the ballet scene, when the ballet scene, when they're just watching through the window, he's eating the Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's just so fucking funny. Okay, so we missed that scene for most rewatchable scene. That scene is hilarious.

Yeah, I should have put that in. I actually had it in What's Aged the Best. Because that scene is hilarious. Number one, that scene is all the kids being exactly who they are. He's got the chicken, right? Kelly Leakes hitting on adult women. Kelly Leakes says, I'm hitting 814. I'm on the bears. You like baseball? No.

I want the bears. You like baseball? She's trying to be a little woman, basically, and she's so embarrassed by these guys. She's getting mad at them. It is a great scene. I should have put that in. Also, for Engelbert, he leads the butter maker's best line, which was when they're all hanging out by the pool, and he says, don't jump in, Engelbert. You'll flood the valley. Engelbert, of all the characters that...

went on to be remade in other movies, Engelbert, to me, is exactly your boy from the Sandlot. It's like, it's almost, and I love the Sandlot. I love that movie so much. But the Sandlot is almost like my Bad News Bears. It's like my age. But Engelbert is exactly your boy from the Sandlot. And it's funny, in the sequel, it's a different Engelbert

They didn't get the same actor. Interesting. And the Engelbert in the sequel is kind of fatter and funnier, and they play up the fat stuff way more. This Engelbert's more like fat kid, but not fat enough to be like a fucking kick-ass player on the team and talks a bunch of shit. Right. He's like the biggest shit talker on the entire team. Morwood stage the best. I love mid-70s Los Angeles just as a location. We've talked about this in other movies. Just...

You know, just not a ton going on. You just go down to the ball field an hour early because what else were you going to do? There's a great Jack Davis poster for this movie. This was the era of Jack Davis posters, including my favorite whenever, Fast Break. But the one for this is a good one. You know, there's a lawsuit here that's ahead of its time. That's the premise of the movie. That the reason the team exists is because all of these kids that weren't good enough to make other Little League teams...

the parents sued to form their own team. And I was like, ah, that's very like, you could see the real sports investigation 30 years from now on HBO with Brian Gumbel like, huh, the kids are

They sued to have their own Little League team? But in 1976, kind of groundbreaking. Very cosmopolitan, too. Very L.A. Even the fact that some of this movie, you know, he's talking to the guy and you're in City Hall and the whole night. Very L.A. Very L.A. Very cosmopolitan. Very coastal. More what's aged the best. Chico's Bail Bonds?

actually existed in real life that's a real place yeah so how did chico manage to get his business into i don't know they just said fuck it and they brought him in there coach turner's intentional walk strategy kind of ahead of its time yeah playing the advanced metrics my first baseman is lonely yeah igloos of canned beer has aged the best i like igloos of beer in your car

Just that whole era. Nobody would have an igloo like that now and not care if there was that. You would have to buy this awesome version of that at Dick's Sporting Goods. This is like a $5 igloo. He just threw some beer. I don't even think the igloo kept the beers cold, but that was the 70s.

80s too. Going fishing, igloo, full of not just beer, but like those little Vienna sausages that would then turn to gelatin once they had been in there too long. Right. And give you like salmonella. Right. You're just disgusting. You know what else I like?

Beer tops that rip off and don't pop like that, that just reminds me of home. Those beers were big. Those were like 24-ounce beers. Yeah. We mentioned for what's aged the best, cramming 10 kids into a convertible with a drunk guy driving. Just tremendous stuff.

Roy Turner coaching the Yankees being an overbearing asshole. I just love this. The Red Sox. Oh, by the way, that to me is the most underlined. That is the thing that's aged the best in this movie besides the movie.

Because there are so many more youth leagues now. Yeah. The parents take it, at least it seems like it. We're not talking about bringing the orange slices no more. We're talking about parents that go out and go on coachup.com and get private coaches for their kids to teach them how to play soccer and then freak the fuck out when they don't win on Saturday evening. It's a serious fucking deal now.

butter maker i like that they actually use beer in this movie he drinks cores lucky lager mickey's big mouth paps blue ribbon schlitz kingers miller highlife and budweiser they use seven beers nowadays they'd probably like make up a beer tatum o'neill's pitching impressive

Like she can throw it. Legitimately impressive. Like she can actually throw it. I have a question went down, written down. Did they go to a stunt double? I don't think that they did. Like she can really throw it. They used a couple times they used a stunt double, but they said for the most part, she did it. She trained for several weeks and did the bulk of the throwing. So the theme music, Carmen by, I'm going to screw it up, George's Bizette.

Bizet? Whatever. I'm bad with French names. But they used Carmen for this, which I think became a huge part of the movie. The Joey Engelbert rivalry we mentioned. And the last What's Aged the Best I have, Ogilvy. Kind of ahead of Bill James with baseball stats. Ogilvy saw the future, right? Numbers. It's not just about what the eye test tells you.

Here's some hardcore stats for you, butter maker. This was 1976. Bill James hadn't even done a baseball abstract yet. Did Ogilvy, was Ogilvy the real money ball?

get back to bed they the when you look at the bad news bears there was a lot of sabermetrics going on in there yeah they're talking about base runners like getting on base and the whole nine on base ogilvy draws a walk because he knows he's 25 years ahead of money ball he's like i just a single is as good as a walk i'm getting on there so i don't know put in a gigantic shift

an aggressively obnoxious shift for that one player. Right. Yeah. Great shot Gord or a word. I liked the end shot as it pan with the kids are celebrating and it pans back to see the field. I thought it was,

was really good. I like the opening shot. I like the opening shot. And the opening shot. Yeah, it ties together. The Den of Thieves Benihana Award for Scene Stealing Location. Ironically, the Little League field. Okay. I really like it. And so they filmed Bad News Bears and Chatsworth.

Which is where Sierra Canyon is, by the way. That became more famous for that. And then where's that part you were talking about with the Bad News Bears field? Apparently that's where the screenwriter...

learned how to play little league and you said that's that's near the 405 that's right off the 405 like in westwood ish area like right across from fox in la you can see it from when you're driving down to 405 so the screenwriter is bill lancaster son of burt lancaster the famous actor and that's where he played and that's where he got a lot of the ideas uh the kid cuddy pursuit of happiness word for best needle drop kelly leaks first homer

where he takes the batting practice, hits it, and then it turns into the game and the opera music kicks in and it's just like, oh yeah, here we go. And he's just, Kelly Lee got so much swag. Yeah. Every time he takes his trot, his helmet is off. Yeah, he's like Ricky Henderson. It's unbelievable. Ricky Henderson got all of his ideas from Kelly Lee. What's up with Kelly Lee after he hits a home run? The players on the Yankees high five him as he goes around the field. Was that a thing back in the day?

Yeah, that might have been a 70s Little League thing. Everyone was just so excited for everyone else's success in the 70s and 80s. Then it became way more cutthroat. The Big Kahuna Burger were best use of food and drink. I mean, all the butter makers drinking, but probably the best use of food was Tanner ramming the burrito in a Joey Turner's face.

You owe me 30 cents. That's my favorite line from the movie. Tanner is talking shit the entire fight. You owe me 30 cents for that burrito. It's my favorite line in the whole movie. The Butcher's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. I don't like when butter makers mean to Amanda. I think it goes too far. I even felt this way in the 70s when he's basically like, he throws the drink at her.

When they're in the dugout. And he's like, why do you think I didn't look you up for two years? I wouldn't have waited. Like, it's just like, dude, that's an 11 year old girl. What are you doing? Buttermaker. It's really hard to,

It's really hard to recover from that. It's almost too mean. And I know he's not like the greatest character in the world, but that was like, man, this is like harsh. I just, that's the one scene that didn't sit right with me. City council dad to me is the weak link of the film. Let's hear it. He bothers the shit out of me. It's he's the weak link of the movie, not because he's played poorly, but because he's played so well, so well. So cynical, uh,

insincere weirdo politician guy that has this all of this doesn't seem real at all he just makes my skin crawl every time I see him on the field he's so true to life hmm

What's aged the worst? We mentioned this earlier, but the impact of having Tatum O'Neill in this movie was a way bigger deal in 1976 than it would be if you didn't know anything about the movie. Like this was the biggest child actor in the world, basically pitching in a baseball movie, which is the other piece of this, which the impact of a girl pitching in Little League was so out of nowhere in 1976 versus now. I don't think people would bat an eyelash, but like a girl pitcher? Yeah.

Which seemed nuts in 1976 as a gimmick for a movie. And now not the same. The language. Yeah. You know what? To be honest with you, I almost don't want to talk about it. I don't either. I'm moving on. Yeah. It's 1976. It's part of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the movie. No mercy rule for the Little League games. That is the thing that aged the worst by far. It's 26 to nothing and they're like, you want to quit? In the top of the first...

Like in the top of the first, I don't think the bears got to bat in that game. No, they did not. Like in the top or first, like that game's over. They might've created the mercy rule because of this movie. Yeah. They must've let that game's over. It's seven, eight is seven runs. It's seven runs in the game's over. I thought it was 10, but whatever. Um, not stopping a little league game after a base brawl.

It's the championship game. In 2024, if there was a fight on the field, not only is the game stopped, but there would be like a seven-week investigation and the third team would be handed the title. Here's what's aged the worst. Walter Matthau is 56 when he filmed this movie, which is two years older than me. Kill me. Yeah. Just shoot me in the head. But here's the deal, though. Here's the deal. I look great? That's... I mean...

I am in good shape. Yeah. But here's the deal. Just a 1975, 40 year old. I'm 44. A 1975, 40 year old. Like it's just totally. Yeah, that's true. That's like you're 67. Yeah, you're right. Totally fucking different. Yeah, it's fair.

Hey, another one. Sage, the worst little league pitching overuse in the seventies where you can just have Amanda pitch every game for 15 games. And there were no rules. Now it's like, you can only throw six innings a week or they didn't have that shit in 1976. No, I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, okay, well, so they're throwing her once a week, which is the reason why they're doing this. They have a little league on Saturdays and no, they're not because they're

They play a game and he goes on Friday, we got to play this team. So yeah, no, they're playing three, four times a week. She's pitching on short rest every single time. It's like Cy Young 280 innings a week. So Kelly on that last play, which we think he was safe anyway, head first slide. He's safe by probably two feet. Even the slide that he does. Not a great slide. Kelly's such a good athlete. I just feel like I just think he should have scored on that play.

I hate to kill Kelly Leak, who batted 850 with 35 homers during the season. But Kelly, get it done, man. Maybe he was safe. I don't know. The TV series failed, and I'm not sure how or why. It had all the makings of that's a TV series that should have been on for 10 years, but they just couldn't. It's harder than you think, though, right? Yeah.

I guess we haven't really had a ton of success converting movies to TV. They tried to do it all the time in the 70s and 80s, and now they've just stopped. Well, the last, okay, so, I mean, obviously, Clueless fucking failed. There's a lot of them that failed, but Friday Night Lights apparently worked. Friday Night Lights was the one winner. Yeah, and it was basically done by the same guy who tried to make the TV series similar to the movie but different.

And that's an anomaly, right? Normally it's just, Parenthood was another one that worked, but that was- I never watched it. Parenthood was good. You'd like Parenthood. Was it? Yeah, it gets in your feelings. Another one's aged to worse. Brandon Cruz, who played Joey Turner, was a pretty famous child actor because he was in Bill Bixby's TV show, The Courtship of Eddie's Father. He was the little kid. Oh, The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Yeah. So it was kind of a big deal that he was in the movie. Now nobody would care.

The Bears' ages in order of actors' ages when they filmed this movie. Timmy Lupus was six. Six years old? Yeah. Miguel was eight. Tanner was 10. Ahmed was 12. Amanda was 12. Engelbert was 12. Ogilvy was 13. And Toby, Kelly, and Rudy Stein were all 14.

So no, like, egregious ones. But Rudy Stein does seem like he's, like, a sophomore in high school. See, the thing with Rudy Stein is, like, one of my nits to pick is Rudy Stein. Rudy Stein just should have been a better athlete. He's fucking gigantic. Right. Like, Rudy Stein. The ball should have been jumping off his bat. Yeah, Rudy Stein should have been, like, cranking him. Like, Rudy Stein looked like he kicked the shit out of Kelly Lee. Great call.

I have one more. What's the worst? But did you have any? No, no. Okay. I mean, I mentioned them all. The guy who played coach Turner, Vic Morrow. He was the guy that died filming the twilight zone. Six years later, Jennifer Jason Lee's dad. Yeah. It's tough. Cause you see him and he was a really good, that guy back then. And then he became known for the twilight zone thing. Let's take a break and then we'll hit the rest of the awards.

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The Ruffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge Overacting Award. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. Give me all you got. Give me all you got. I treated you like a son. You fucking stabbed me in the heart. Fuck you. Fuck you. Tanner's fighting is so bad. I just, as much as I like Tanner, terrible athlete. Like, let's be honest, terrible shortstop.

And then the fighting, like little kids like that, those little Spitfire kids, because my son was like that. When my son would get mad and we would have fights and then he would get really mad, they're just throwing like haymakers, right? They're like, it becomes like Corrales Castillo, where they're just throwing bombs. They're trying to hit you in the balls. It was almost like they didn't teach Tanner how to little kid fight. And all the fighting scenes with him are terrible. Tanner's a grappler.

It almost feels like he gets in so many fights that it's harm reduction. You ever meet somebody... Oh, he's just trying to get through the fight without actually getting hurt. The Tanner's thing is he just wants to mush you with the burrito. That's what he really wants to do. And then whatever happens after that is him just trying to not let you whoop his motherfucking ass. Trying to hold on. Was there a better title for this movie? No. No, hell no.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Did you have one? Cause I have one. Give it to me. This movie was ground zero for the Yankees turning into the biggest villain in sports. No bear, bear with me. I get it. It's an observation that I was going to ask you about. People love the Yankees cause they love Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle retires in 1968. Steinbrenner takes over in the seventies.

One of the first annoying owners that we've ever had. This movie comes out. Yankees are the villain. 76. The next year is the 77 Yankees. They get Reggie Jackson. They win the world series. Reggie Jackson's feuding with Billy Martin. Billy Martin's feuding with Steinbrenner. All of a sudden they become the biggest baseball. They become the big bad Yankees and we're off, but it kind of starts with this movie. I was going to ask you about this in my entire lifetime.

I never remember the Yankees as the good guys ever. Right. It starts here in 1976. It might not even be a hot take. And so when I'm looking at this, the Yankees are the bad guys. Cool. And by the time we get to the nineties, the Yankees just start buying up the entire league. Yeah. By the time I really get into baseball, it's fucked the Yankees. It's always been fucked the Yankees. And so I go along with it. The Yankees are the bad guys and the Brad news bear. Bad news bears. I was wondering like,

Were the Yankees always the bad guys? Like, what the fuck goes up with that? Like, that's my thing. I don't remember the Yankees being a good guy. Like, imagine if the White Sox had been the villains. The movie doesn't work the same way. Right. It kind of works that they were the Yankees. Casting what ifs. Walter Matthau was the third choice. Oh. Turned down the movie, including Warren Beatty turned it down. I can see that. Steve McQueen turned it down. Steve McQueen.

Warren Beatty would have been weird because he was such a horn dog. You just wouldn't have bought any of the scenes with him and Tate him on the other. It would have been too uncomfortable. Steve McQueen, I can't imagine as like an alcoholic, washed up little league manager. He was too cool. Both of those guys are so dashing. Yeah. Warren Beatty, I guess, could have worked if he's supposed to be like down on his little ball player. But both of those guys are so dashing, though. It kind of will kind of take you out of the movie a little bit.

Jodie Foster was cast as Amanda and dropped out to play Iris in Taxi Driver. That makes total sense. She would have been great. And then Christy McNichol, who was a big star at the time in the show Family, was offered the role of Amanda and then they changed their minds and got Tatum O'Neill instead.

And they ended up in little darlings together. Jodie Foster, honestly is the career that people probably thought Tatum O'Neill was going to go on to have after paper moon and all of that stuff. No question. The Van Lathan award. Did this movie need more black people? No. Best that guy and Dion waiters both go to Vic Morrow's coach Turner. I think he's not in it quite enough. So you can give him Dion, um,

If he's in it too much, then it's probably Joey Turner. Yeah. Who's only in a couple scenes. And it's just like the perfect kind of douchebag fink. You just want to like punch him in the face. Everything about him. Recasting couch director or city. I don't know if I would touch this movie. Would you? I don't think so either. It's a very LA coded movie.

The star maps, the time of year, all of that stuff. The valley. The valley, all of that stuff. Tony wrote more of Chris Collinsworth for the director's commentary. I actually think it's Collinsworth for this one. Do you? Oh, Ogilvy. He's just so ahead of the game, Mike. I just love what he's doing here. The stats. Half-assed internet research.

This is a great one. In the movie, neither of the Aguilar brothers could speak English, which they carried over to break in training. In real life, the two actors didn't know how to speak Spanish, but they cast them because they liked the actors. So then they had to teach them some Spanish. So when they did the Spanish, that would work. Matthau got 750 grand and 10% of the theatrics of the box office. So he balled out. He balled out. Tatum O'Neill, 350 grand.

And a percentage of the profits as well. So both of them did well. And then we mentioned how Bill Lancaster wrote the movie, who's Burt's son. And apparently he based the movie on his dad. So I don't know if his dad, Burt Lancaster, in real life was the greatest hang of all time. But he has three movies that he wrote on his IMDb. He wrote this. He wrote Bad News Bears Go to Japan, which is one of the five worst sports movies ever made, ever. And then he wrote The Thing.

which is a beloved movie. A great movie. So it's one of the all-time two for threes anyone's ever had. It's like Homer, triple, strikeout on three pitches to the worst pitcher in the league. Bears three is so bad. My son loves the Bad News Bears, especially when he was younger. We watched both of them and he loved breaking. He actually liked breaking training more, but he loved both of them. And then we were going to watch breaking training one night, which he'd already seen five times.

And he's like, let's watch, let's watch the Japan one. I want to see it. And I was like, Ben, you don't want to see it. And he's like, no, I want to see it. Cause I liked the other two. I know I'm going to like it. I'm like, Ben, you're not going to like it. It's one of the worst sports movies ever made. It's like, no, no, no. I just want it. So we ended up, we rent it and I'm so mad at him and we watch it and it's awful. And we finished the movie and he's like, that movie was terrible. Why didn't you tell me how bad it was? And I was like, we argued about it for 10 minutes.

So I vaguely remember it. Does Kelly Leak fall in love with a girl in Japan? He sure does. No, he does. Yeah, so I vaguely, vaguely remember the movie. They only keep a couple kids from the first two movies. It is an absolute out and out atrocity. Apex Mountain. Walter Matthau, I think it's the odd couple. Yeah, probably so.

Tatum O'Neal probably winning an Oscar for Paper Moon, which gave her all the career juice for this. You think it's this? I think it's this. I think like her most, obviously the biggest moment in her career. This is always my question about Apex Mountain. The biggest moment in her career is definitely Paper Moon, right? The biggest moment of Tatum O'Neal as an actress is

is this. Like, this is a... I love that we're now 340 movies in and we still don't know what Apex Mountain is. I always thought it was the apex of your career...

Kind of options, everything where you're just at the peak of your powers. And now it could be like, all right, coming off this, I can do anything. So then it would be paper moon, but still, it would be paper moon. Yeah. If you ask people what they remember, Tatum, this is her career highlight. There's no question. Cause paper moon, nobody's seen that movie. And even though that was an awesome movie, the 1975 Harley Davidson Z 90, I'm going to say apex mountain. That was Kelly league spike catfish Hunter references. Oh,

It's like a legitimate catfish hunter drop. Yeah. Jackie Earl Haley, who we had, we covered in Breaking Away. I actually think Bad News Bears and Breaking Training is his apex mountain. They really build the movie around him and finding his dad. He gets to drive a van. I think he's better. But he came back and was like, after years and years. They needed little children. Yeah. Become a big character actor. A legit fucking big character actor. So yeah. Yeah. Air hockey? Has there ever been a more pivotal air hockey movie scene?

Not that I can think of. There was one in The Toy, which is a movie that I love, but it probably doesn't compare to this one. I love The Toy, even though people hate The Toy. Yeah, people hate The Toy. Yeah. Kids sports movies. Yes. I think yes, too. And Little League Baseball. The apex mound of Little League Baseball. Yeah. Carmen? Yes. I'm saying yes. The 1964 Cadillac DeVille Convertible. Mm-hmm.

Completely inappropriate Archie Bunker little kid characters? Absolutely. Pizza Hut in movies? Oh, that's Pizza Hut, yes. A lot of Pizza Hut in this. I think Pizza Hut used to be so good. You guys don't remember the era. Pizza Hut looks lovely in this movie. What happened to Pizza Hut?

Pizza Hut used to be such a treat, guys. I swear to God, man. Pizza Hut was good. It stopped in like 92 when they went super fast foodie, but it used to be so awesome to go to Pizza Hut, man. Little kids pouring beer on each other, no question. Oh, this will be fun. Cruz or Hanks? I'm going to say Hanks because he basically played this part in League of Their Own. You know, it's always, this answer is Hanks too often.

Well, that's why we had the category. We were pigeonholing Cruz a little bit more. I think there's a version of Tom Cruise who could pull this off. I'm going to zag here. It's probably, I mean, Hanks is like teed up for it, but I would be interested to see Tom Cruise as the washout ex-baseball player. Now we have to go to Craig for the tiebreaker. Craig, what's the tiebreaker? It's Hanks. Of course it is. Hanks is now up 7-6. Wow. Hanks is crushing it.

The Racehorse Rock Band wrestler fantasy team name. It's either Buttermakers or Chico's Bail Bonds. I've actually been in fantasy leagues with people who named their team Chico's Bail Bonds. So there you go. All right, pick a Nets. I can't wait for this.

Well, what's your biggest pick in it? I'll let you go first. Kelly scored. That's the biggest picking it to me. I watched it back. Like Kalika got annoyed. He slow mode it. Yeah. I watched it back a bunch of times and I was like, tell me if he scored here. She goes, man, could you go walk the dog? Who cares? Both needs to go outside.

Your freeze frame slow motioning. I'm watching it over and over again. Kelly scored and that changes the whole movie because now the movie is also about the fact that Vic Morrow's character paid the umps off before the movie for some favorable calls. Which, by the way, the umps were

assholes in this movie. Yeah, they were. They're reffing kids games like fucking Angel Hernandez is out there. Yeah. The whole time the shit is going on, but that's my biggest picking it is that he scored. It's a good one. It doesn't compare with this. Give it up. How does Kelly Leak not pitch at all for this team? What are they doing? What is butter maker doing? The best athlete always pitches at age 11 and 12. Always. Yeah. Well, how is Rudy Stein pitching over Kelly Leak?

What are they doing? If you'd have brought Kelly, I guess if you'd have brought Kelly. Bring him in for the sixth inning and throw some gas. But then you lose your center fielder. Fine. He's going to strike everyone out. Yeah. Rudy comes in. He's got that Calvin Chiraldi body. It's just rough. Also, while we're picking nits on the lineups, you're batting Rudy between Kelly leak and Engelberg. Yeah. What's the point of that? Put Engelberg right behind Kelly leak.

I want my best two back-to-back. Or put Engelberg in front of Kelly League. Do we know what the Bears lineup was? Yeah, I think the 3-4-5 was Kelly, Rudy Stein, Engelberg. But really, it should have been just Kelly League leads off the game so he can bat as many times as possible. Engelberg second, Rudy Stein third, and you do it that way. Because you want Kelly to bat as many times as possible. And more lineup.

I'm sorry, you can't put Ahmed in right field. He wanted to be like Hank Aaron. That's fine, but you can be like Hank Aaron and play left field where people actually hit the ball. Nobody hits the ball in right field. But he wanted to be like Hank Aaron, so he wanted to play right field. You're going to tell him, like, after you did that whole Hank Aaron bullshit, now you're going to say, like, go out to left field. Now you want to be like Hank Aaron.

No, what you do is you lie to him. You put him in center field and you say, people don't know this, but Hank Aaron, he dreamed of being center field like Willie Mays and his coach was racist to put him in right field. Oh, I love that. Yeah, you do that. Because the move is you put Ahmed in center field. You put Kelly at shortstop.

Where 99.9% of the time, the best athlete, 11 or 12, he plays shortstop and pitches. That's how this goes. You don't put that kid in center field. And then you put Kaner at second base. One of the worst defenders in the league at shortstop. As your shortstop. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, butter maker. I have two other Kelly League nitpicks.

So the first baseball game of the year, Kelly league shows up with his motorcycle and drives on the field and drives around and kicks up dirt. Yeah. And then kind of panics and just drives into the wall. What was the point of that? No clue. And Philly seems like he could have broken his leg. I didn't like that at all. Also, the thing is they hate Kelly. Kelly has vandalized the field during the game, the whole nine. And then they,

They put Kelly on the Bears and nobody has a problem with it. He can just join the league. I had that as well. He should have been banned from the league. And then Kelly Lake, are we sure he wouldn't have been a bigger day-to-day chemistry problem? Like, was this a Kyrie type thing where he found some sort of inner peace and learned from his mistakes or...

I just feel like he was such a head case. And then he joins the team and he's like, now I'm good. I'm no longer a head case. I think the thing is they were scared of him, but they didn't really know him. So that they didn't really know Kelly Leak. I think that was the thing. Well, you know what they knew? The kid who drove the motorcycle on the field during the first baseball game and got arrested by cops. And also about Kelly Leak,

is if everybody knows what a dope-ass athlete Kelly Leak is, how come the Yankees haven't tried to put Kelly Leak on there already? You think Vic Mora would have took a flyer on Kelly Leak, you know? This episode is brought to you by Twizzlers. We didn't have a ton of candy at the movies when I was growing up. Obviously, we had popcorn, then we had some of the basics, but...

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Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, Evil Laughing, Ramon Raymond, or Philip Baker Hall? Sam Jackson as Buttermaker is interesting though. Maybe that's what they should have done with the 05 movie. Yeah. Sam Jackson as Buttermaker is interesting to me. That's interesting. I thought about that. Yeah.

We don't have Chris here to be like with Wayne Jenkins. God damn Kelly leak. We don't have that this time. Just one Oscar. Who gets it? Who would you give it to? Buttermaker. Okay. I think screenplays up there too. Probably an answerable questions. What was Kelly leaks family? Like family life, like in your opinion, um, think about it. He's 12 years old and he drives around the city, uh,

on a motorcycle. No helmets, but we didn't have helmets back then. Nobody cared about helmets. I think dad... He's smoking cigarettes already. Ripping cigs. Dad is probably in... So there's two options, right? One is that he's from the rough and tumble part of town or whatever. The second one is like a Dylan Walsh type of situation.

to where Kelly League also has some... Dylan McKay? Excuse me, Dylan McKay. A Dylan McKay situation to where Kelly League actually has some money because he's got a motorbike, right? So you think his dad was a disgraced...

Inside traitor who's in jail but was a millionaire. But got super bread, worked for the mob or something. Or Kelly Leake is like Jesse James Hollywood or something like that in the Valley with the whole nine alpha dog situation. But there's something seedy there. But he comes from some resources. He always has enough money for six. Always has enough money to put gas in his Harley. But it doesn't seem like he got no job.

My instinct is one parent family. And I don't know, one of the parents is just working all the time and there's no second parent. So there's no supervision at all because the parents never home. But I agree with you. There's probably some money in there or it's just like one of those seven, seven kid families. Yeah.

Where the parents are just underwater. And it's like, Kelly is like the mistake kid. All the other kids are, you know, 13 and up. And Kelly, they're just like, ah, we can't save that one. Let's concentrate on the other six. Let's let Kelly do what Kelly does. Yeah, let Kelly just as long as it isn't kill somebody, it's fine. Kelly Leak, another unanswerable question. One of the great names...

movie characters you can remember like if Kelly Leak was in the NBA draft right now I'd be like oh he Kelly Leak clearly has to go number one I wouldn't even know what position he was it's like that name is so cool it's a great sports name Kelly is a great first name and Leak is a great last name it's just an elite name it's like Jimmy Chitwood we've had some great Paul Crew like the name really really helps and in this case really really helps

Did Joey Turner get a championship ring? What happened after? Did the teammates vote on his championship share? What happened after? Yeah, that's important to know because he quit on them. He's definitely not on that team again. Yeah. I'm going to tell you. This is where I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

I don't know how I missed this the first 15 million times I watched it. I had it in this category. The question not answered, bro, was when did Van realize he was attracted to Coach Turner's wife?

She got some work, baby. That's prime 70s. That's prime 70s milk right there. That's the way when you think of the 70s and you like, she looked good. She was mad. She walked away. I'm like, she got a little body there. She be doing her aerobics or whatever's going on in 76. She had some, I was feeling it the entire time. Really, even early on when she first meets Buttermaker and she gives him the directions. I'm like, oh, that's his wife?

She got that whole flower girl thing going. I'm fucking with it. She had the half shirt and the bell-bottom pants, which, by the way, are completely in now. Yeah. That's what a lot of people are wearing. So that's why I was like, she's kind of circled all the way back. And to be honest with you, just I can't miss I'm a sexy motherfucker outfit. Just like that right there. Just I can't miss I'm a sexy motherfucker outfit. Go ahead, mama.

I'm with it. You knew I was with it. You watched it and you were like, Van's going to be with it. I know. You knew it. That's why I put it here. I put it near the end when we get a little wacky. Two more for me on answerables. Did Buttermaker invent baseball free agency?

Because this is happening in the late 70s, basically. Buttermaker inherits the team. He's like, you know what? We need a pitcher. Goes out and grabs Amanda. You know who's at Kelly League? He's available. Grabs him, too. Puts together his own big three with those two and Engelbert. He's doing a lot of the breadcrumbs for a lot of where professional sports would go. And then the obvious one is Ogilvy. Did he eventually become a GM in a Major League Baseball team? Did he...

Did he start working for Bill James in 1981? Put together the 90s Braves run. Right. Ogilvy became the GM of the 90s Braves. It was his idea to build around pitching. Right. They won 15 division championships in a row. Last thing I'll say, Kelly Leak's throw. Is Kelly Leak's throw the best, damn, he got a good arm throw thing?

Oh, when he's not even on the team yet, but he throws the ball back? Yeah, he's like Roberto Clemente. I think of the throws that I've seen. There's that throw. There's the throw that the system makes in a league of their own.

where she throws the ball and then she goes, oh my gosh, she got a good arm, but they wouldn't let them play. And then there's, of course, the throw at the end of Jerry Maguire, which... One of the worst throws ever. Right. It's Kelly Leak's like, damn, he can really throw. Is that the best he's got talent? We just need to harness it, throw that we've seen? It's a really important point because for these movies to work, you really have to believe that Kelly Leak

is a fucking amazing athlete. And just with the one throw, you're like, oh, they got to get this. Doesn't there, remember the Titans throw when the guy shows up and launches the ball?

Oh, that's right. With the pretty boy character. Yeah. And by the way, when I saw, because what's his name? Kip, whatever his name is. Kip Pardue. Kip Pardue played in real life. When the first time I saw that movie, go back and watch that scene. He picks that ball up. And when he flips the ball over to grab the seams, automatically I went, he played QB.

Like he, he picked in real life. He flips the ball to find the seams and he throws it. I'm like, that guy's not an actor. I didn't like he, he played QB, but he actually did play QB in real life. Best double feature choice. Bad news bears to the Indian reds. What an air word would happen the next day. We have answers on that. Yes. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? It's a good question. Um, I've always wanted, since I was a kid and I first saw it, saw the movie, I always wanted Kelly's bike.

I had Kelly's bike as well. The Jersey would also be fun. Coach Finstock award, best life lesson. This quitting thing. It's a hard habit to break once you start. Yep. I have a lesson. And then, uh, who won the movie for you? This will be interesting. The bears. Come on. Who won the movie? The bear. No, the bears won the movie. I'm serious. The team, the bears. No Walter Matthau. I think it's Walter Matthau, but I also would have accepted a Tatum O'Neill case.

Because I think this is a really hard part. Yeah. She's doing a lot and it's

If she doesn't work, the movie doesn't work. She kind of takes it over when she comes into the movie. She's just really good. Every scene, she's good. Yeah, she's believable as a player. She's believable at her scenes with Mathau are really good. I just think she's really good. All right, can't wait for this. Producer Craig, who'd never seen this movie, we told him nothing, although I guess he saw the remake.

which is pretty shot for shot, I should say. Like they really didn't do a lot with the remake. With that said, this movie is so much better than the remake. It's so much better. Buttermaker is so much less of a cartoon in this movie than the Billy Bob Thornton version. He's so much more likable. And he just like the relationships with the kids are so much stronger. The kids themselves are just way better.

I've never seen a kid look sadder in a movie than Lupus getting bullied at the snack shack. Yeah. That is the saddest face of a child I have ever seen in my life. And I was like, felt vindicated when Tanner shoved the burrito in that kid's face.

Yeah. I think the coach Turner stuff though, is the most like realistic part of the movie. The baseball is the weirdest parent kid coach sport, in my opinion, because there's so much downtime. It's so easy to get mad at the kid. It's, it's a quiet sport. You can like easily yell at a kid from the, from the bleachers. I actually, that I played literally baseball growing up and I had the weird coaches. I had the elbow is sore, but they're going to pitch you when you don't want to pitch thing. Um,

I just thought all that was, was like very spot on, even though it was a little bit scary because that's how it was like that. Even when I was playing in like 2005, you know what it is about baseball? The sport requires so much coaching that every parent that does it thinks that they're an expert.

Like every parent that does it has, they're going to tell you how to get down on it. They're going to tell you how to shift your weight. Keep your eye on the ball. It's the easiest sport to like to fake coach having not been good at it. To fake. Absolutely. Yep. Have not, have never been able to get a base hit in your life, but to tell somebody where their hands need to be when they're coming through the zone. A hundred percent. Craig, give us your thoughts on Kelly Leak.

And Tatum O'Neill as Amanda. I've actually seen Paper Moon, so I knew that she was going to be amazing in it. And she's like the best child actor I've ever seen. The Kelly Leak thing, I was thinking about this. That whole character is super unrealistic to me. Was that... I know they build up... They do this trope a lot in movies where it's like...

the delinquent outcast is actually great at the sport. I've never experienced that in my life. Maybe I'm being too anecdotal, but like, I feel like the burnout is never good at sports. This kid is like smoking. He weighs like 80 pounds. Why would he be good at sports? None of those kids are ever good at like the pothead behind the school and high school. None of those kids are athletic and they sucked in PE. Your take van.

That's a pretty good take. So I'll be honest with you. I had, you know, I went probably my high school might've had different demographics than, than yours. And so in middle school and high school, those dudes were always dogs. And like, like the guys that just would, they come up there, they come out there, they'd be playing in jean shorts.

And you'll be like, hey, bro, why don't you just go to class so you can come help us win some games? And they wouldn't, they just wouldn't do it. I just felt like those kids would never be interested enough. Like if they didn't try at school, they wouldn't be interested enough to go try it at a sport. Like that was just not what they were into. But that's all we did in the neighborhood. All we did in the neighborhood was play ball.

all we did but i i mean we're two generations apart i'm like 15 years older than you maybe 20 or something like that so yeah it might have changed but like all we did was play ball but then we played ball and then went to school and then they didn't yeah so it was at least a couple of like yeah just like the druggy kids that skipped class like those kids were never the ones you picked in pe they were never good i'd like this take craig um did you know what was going to happen at the end

Well, I had seen the, I've seen the remakes. Oh, I don't remember what happened in the remake. It's the same thing. Same exact thing with like a less politically correct or a more politically correct. Yeah. I think it's like, yeah, it's the same thing where he's like called out of the plate. They might be shaking non-alcoholic beer. I can't remember. One of the things that made me sad about the remake is there was just no reason for the, I just don't think anything should ever be remade again.

if the original is still 100% watchable. And I think this movie is 100% watchable. I 100% agree. Like, I feel like the first half of Longest Yard is a little stiff and doesn't really hold up. Yeah, no question. I think this whole movie, you could throw it on now. I mean, it's not that different from like The Sandlot in terms of like how well-paced it is, how it moves. I think it's right there. I think when...

The idea of the movie came out. It was like, they're going to do a Bad News Bears remake with Billy Bob Thornton. Richard Linklater directed it. Richard Linklater, right? And Billy Bob was some steam. He was really successful at that point. When they first decided to do it, I thought, oh, what a good idea. And then I thought it couldn't miss. And then when it missed, I was like, oh, I see why it didn't work.

Just because like, and that was in the era of that too. Like that was around the time of the longest yard, I think. No, the remakes. Yeah. No, the longest yard remake was the same year. That was when they just started remaking all the shit that worked in the seventies and eighties. Yeah. Didn't work.

I have one question. When did insults stop sounding like middle school Mad Libs? Is that a movie trope because they can't swear? During the big game at the end of this movie, butter makers calling Coach Turner a puss head.

And that's such a thing in these old movies. And I'm like, and he's like, shave off your mustache and I'll shove it up your left nostril. It's like, nobody talks like nowadays people just be like, you're a piece of shit. Yeah. Fuck you. Like, did people actually have those types of like lame creative insults in the seventies? Or is that strictly a movie trope? No, I think they did. I think people just talked and people talked and acted differently back then. People were more well read. So an insult, no,

Now in like the Twitter era, an insult is just like, fuck you, Craig, you suck. And back then it was some sort of carefully crafted insult that would cut into your soul. It's so ridiculous. Everything is so well thought out. Every insult is well written. Craig, do you think this is the best kids movie ever for sports?

Or would you go Sandlot? It's probably Sandlot for me just because of like when I grew up and it, you know, everything that you see usually as a kid is your favorite for a reason because you saw it when you were a kid. Yeah. I think the one thing with Sandlot is, and there's a couple movies that are like this. Sandlot has a nice mystical aspect to it. Yeah. It has that and it's kind of rooted. Yeah. But it's rooted into this timeless era. You don't, it doesn't even really matter what year Sandlot is in.

Whereas Bad News Bears is so clearly mid-70s. But Sandlot is a movie, it's told from... Sandlot is... This movie is a kid's movie

For adults more so, Sandlot is told from the perspective of the kid. The movie just feels younger. It feels more youthful. It's almost like a different type of movie. This is told from the kids are kind of just in this. I don't know if I consider Bad News Bears to even be a kid's movie. It was a movie for adults that kids really wanted to watch, even though they knew they probably shouldn't watch it.

What is this movie rated? It would have been R now. I'm sure it wasn't back then, right? No, it was PG because back then you PG, but there'd be crazy shit in PG movies. That's why they added the PG 13. Craig, last question.

How many times was Mrs. Turner on the screen before you realized Van was going to make that a talking point in the pod? Was it initially or was it when the turnaround wide shot of her? The jeans scene. You know what I'm talking about? When I saw the jeans scene, I was like, this will be discussed. I clocked it. I clocked it. Maybe that's a new category. Van, the Van is definitely going to bring this up a word.

For the Coach Turner, Mrs. Turner's Jeans Award for Van will definitely bring this up. All right. This podcast was produced by Craig Korobach. Thanks to Jack Sanders as well. Thanks to Van Lathan. Good to see you as always. Always. You can hear him on the Midnight Boys on the Ringiverse pod. You can hear him on Higher Learning. You'll hear him on Prestige TV. This is the end of 70 sports movie month.

Yeah, and this is the end of 70s. But we have some really good stuff coming this summer. And as I mentioned at the top, going to be banging out two a week for the next eight weeks because we're burning through. We taped all these rewatchables, 1999 pods from like five, six years ago. And we got to get rid of those. A lot of good ones. Some of them. Yeah, a lot of good ones coming up. So thanks, guys. Good to see you. Peace, guys.