Episode 25: The Bad News Bears: Irreverent GenX Classic: Part 2.

Welcome back to GenX Classic Sports, where we discuss vintage sports, athletes, games, and other memorable events from the sports world we grew up in, from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Today we finish our discussion of a GenX Classic Sports movie: Whether you saw it in the theater, on cable TV, or rented it from the local video store on a Friday night, The Bad News Bears wasn’t just a baseball movie—it was a cultural moment. It captured what it felt like to be a kid in the ‘70s: a little wild, a little rebellious, and totally unfiltered.

So grab your glove, crack open a cold one (maybe not a Budweiser in the dugout like Buttermaker), and let’s dig into what makes The Bad News Bears such a legendary piece of GenX sports cinema. From the unforgettable characters to the biting satire of youth sports, we’re covering all the bases.

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Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more nostalgia-packed content covering GenX retro sports, and the athletes who defined a generation. 

Production Credits:

Intro and outro music: Mason Enis

Narrator: Haylee Wolf

Copyright @ PineStreetProductions 2025. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.

Transcript

welcome sports fans to Gen X Classic Sports where we bring the nostalgia of our sportsfilled youth into the present
day grab your favorite retro jersey crack open a cold one and let's stroll down memory lane together welcome back
everybody to part two this is episode 25 part two of our Bad News Bears movie
discussion and we appreciate you tuning back in if you didn't hear part one go back on our normal channels and find it
and we'll resume that discussion now with the rest of the story about the Bad News Bears and all the trivia uh related
to the movie we appreciate you listening and please give us a like and subscribe
if you like what we do thanks so they're playing the Yankees and the pitcher for the Yankees kid with glasses is the son
of Coach Turner and um early in that game one of the Yankee
base runners uh Amanda's covering home for a because a ball got past the catcher she feels it behind him steps up
to the plate to tag a kid out at the plate and he spikes her like right in the chest right that creates basically a
little league bench clearing brawl yes and who who was the first one there
tanner tanner and what I thought was great is it's a
quick glimpse but Kelly reaches in and pulls Tanner out of the fray or pulls
somebody off of him or something and then they touches the kid yeah yeah and they have their little moment where they're walking away and you can tell
that everything's okay now and you know isn't that the way it is in sports i mean you can be you can be mad at each
other for what happens in the clubhouse or in the on the bench or in the game but nobody else can like the other team
still can't mess with your guys kind of like your family you talk about your family but nobody else can yeah that's
just the way sports work but you know when Kelly Leak and Tanner were walking away from that fight you know Tanner was
like you know I had that guy i had it taken care of and Kelly's like yeah I know and he's like I didn't need your
help and Kelly's like I know yeah exactly that dude was fixing to whiff on Tanner too yeah they they have their
moment and Tanner was going to get the snot beaten out of him if Kelly hadn't interrupted properly i know all right so
then one of my other favorite things in the movie happens cuz anybody ever played Little League had to chuckle at
this it gets to be kind of critical later in the game and Buttermaker has uh
Rudy Stein's about to go up to bat and what does what does Buttermaker tell
him to do he wants him to lean into the first inside pitch and take you know get hit by the ball so he can get on base
yeah and Rudy's Rudy's not wanting to do that he tells him to take one for the team and at no point did anyone watching
this movie ever think Rudy was one of the tough guys on the team anyway so no and and the way he acted you'd have
thought he'd got hit by a Nolan Ryan fast ball right right right so he does what he's told and he gets on and then u
I think Ingleberg um Ingleberg gets a big hit like a ground rule double or
something anyway Rudy ends up scoring and I have it that the Bears are leading
at some point two to one later Rudy Stein is back up at the plate in the
championship game and Buttermaker tells him to get hit again and he's like "No no Buttermaker it hurt
too bad it hurt too bad." And so he swings at a bad pitch and gets
a weak little ground out and Buttermaker uh you were talking about him a lot of
grown men putting their hands on Kid buttermaker tries to throw him through the dugout wall when he gets back in there basically yes he did yes i mean he
he took him and shoved him to the far end of the dugout to the bench right because he disobeyed him so you know you
think you're over Buttermaker being uber competitive about it suddenly and now we're right back where we were when he's
truly mad that Rudy did that and that they may not win because of it or whatever and I think it was subtle but I
think you can see on Walter Matau's face at that moment when it's over that when
when he's through shoving Rudy or whatever that he knows he screwed up then i mean I can't remember what made
me think that maybe it was a face he made but I think at that moment he knows
it's all gone too far it's all gone too far right and so
leading into this before the game even Toby Toby's the spokesperson on the team
you ever notice that anytime anybody needs to talk to Buttermaker Boiler Maker Butterfinger it's usually Toby
toby's like their PR guy but Toby tells Buttermaker before the game he's like "You know Amanda's arm is sore she
probably shouldn't even pitch today." And I think there was some dialogue about "Well why wouldn't she this is
what y'all want this is this what y'all want is to win this big game of course she's got to pitch that kind of thing
right yeah and it was it happened again during the game and Buttermaker said "Well yeah I know but she says she wants
to keep going which I don't believe that that you know I think he was lying anyway i mean on that when it came
because at this point like you said he wants to win right he's come full circle from not caring to now he wants to win
right and even even at the cost of you know injuring his young players of some
sort somehow and then he catches himself realizing that that's how far this has
all come he he realizes I mean you know the big theme of the movie is at that moment he realizes he's no better than
coach Turner in some ways right so I have it in my notes that it's three-2
Yankees winning in the fifth inning and that's when coach Turner
tells his son to walk Ingleberg they have this whole thing at the mound this
whole uh Was it Ingleberg that hit the ground ball hit uh Yes back to the
pitcher yes because Angleberg had Angleberg had doubled off hit a big double earlier in the game off of him
and then that then the next time he's up or later on when he that's when they had
to the dad Turner comes out to talk to his son on the mound right and wants him
to walk clearly they had Ingleberg and that that coach's son didn't like each other oh yeah they mouth each other all
the time yeah they mouththed each other a lot and so when he tells him to walk him the son's like "No I can I can strike him out." That's kind of what it
was every time Ingleberg come to play that he would call him Engle Puke or something like that the kid would and
Right and Ingleberg flipped him off a few times so yeah they're they they obviously didn't like each other or they
like talking trash to each other anyway right and so uh
it ends up that the the coach ends up slapping his kid on the mound in front
of everybody right knocked him down yeah and even even all the bad news the Bears
you know they were shocked and I think they really felt for that kid at that point they were on that kid side the
pitcher side before that they couldn't stand that boy but at that point they're like "Whoa your dad just just hit that's
a you know they crossed the line there." Did he slap him before or after Engleberg hits the weak roller out to
him and he just holds the ball and lets him score it was before that's the reason why That's the reason why you
held that ball that's right cuz uh well no remember well he was going to he come
out there and talked to him turner talked to his son said he wanted to walk Ingleberg and he said I think I can
strike him out and his dad said no you walk him well his dad goes back to the
dugout and then the next pitch goes right at Ingleberg's head and Engleberg has to duck well his dad gets mad he
goes back out to the mound and says you know accused him of throwing at Angleberg on purpose and the kid was
trying to say no no it got out of you know I lost control and before he could hardly get it out of his mouth his dad
slapped him real hard knocked him down said "Don't you lie to me." Right and then it's the same at bat that he hit
the Engleberg hit that slow roller back to him that's right that he And that's his revenge against dad is to let
Engleberg score he just holds the ball right so all right so they cut very quickly to Buttermaker taking all this
in because when he when he slaps his well when the when the whole thing plays out the kid just walks off the mound and
quits after right the pitcher the coach's son after all this goes down the
the run score the slap and everything he gets up he walks off the field by the
dugout and his mom is there waiting on him and they leave right and they make a very quick camera cut to Buttermaker and
he's taking all of this in and I think that's the second moment where he's like "Oops
I'm I screwed up." But he also thinks "God this guy really is insane across the field from me over here." You know
he slapped his own kid in front of everybody at that moment Buttermaker apparently has an epiphany and the
epiphany is that I got a bench full of kids over here amanda's armasaur and he
does wholesale substitutions he puts the Hispanic kids in who never play he takes
Amanda off the mound and puts Rudy in i only have one question about logic in this movie you know we love picking
movies apart if Amanda can't pitch why does Kelly Leak not pitch
the kids could throw it from you know I wondered that too and if you want to pick the movie apart the second time his
dad came to the mound how come he didn't pull the picture right so I mean surely that was a rule back then in the little
league i don't know yeah that's a good point buttermaker's epiphany is all these kids deserve to have fun and even
though it's the championship game and even though it's I guess basically tied at that point he puts the kids in there
to play and Whitewood the lawyer who started all this comes down there and harasses him about it and he said "You
hired me to let these kids have fun and play that's what we're doing." Cuz the guy is
actually complaining that the bench warmers are coming into the game cuz now he wants to win right this is the guy
who didn't have time for any of this stuff yes he didn't have time for any of it but he really wanted a team and now
that they have a team they're in a championship game and he's letting all the kids play in it the guy's got a
problem with it because he wants to win that badly right okay so Buttermaker
clears his bench and he puts Lupus Lupus puts Lupus in the outfield right field
he takes Amanda out of the game and puts Rudy in puts Amanda in left field he puts Amanda in left field because
because technically he makes the the substitutions first and then he goes and talks to Amanda and
said you know you're done pretty much we're going to let Rudy pitch and he tells Amanda tells Amanda to go to left
field because we don't have any more substitutions so you got to you got to go play left field and when Rudy
replaces when Rudy replaces Amanda the Yankees quickly score four runs and they go up
seven to three by my notes right sounds about right but and one of the greatest
things I didn't see coming ever the last out that they make before they
get to come up and hit is they hit a long fly ball to the fence almost over the fence and Lupus catches it right
lupus has his moment in the sun because he's the worst kid on the team and I'm not being mean saying that he's just the
worst kid on the team right and even he said that yeah even he admitted it but he catches that fly ball and it I I
looked at it close it looked like it was going over the fence he caught it right as it was going out basically and so
Lupus has his moment and that's great because everybody loves Lupus in this movie and you know go going back to to
Buttermaker changing his ways when he was making those wholesale substitutions
lupus was the last one on the bench and Lupus was like you know I don't know about you Buttermaker but I want to win
and I'm the worst player in the league you don't need to put me in and right Buttermaker has this you know says you
know Lupus you didn't come into this world just to sit on the bench the whole time and watch other people play did you
or something like that so Buttermaker has definitely changed but that's another example of that that's right
that's how he talks Lucas into going into the game yeah and that's good writing i mean there's not no big long
conversation about it but I mean there's three or four little quick moments and comments and a look in his face kind of
thing and you know Buttermaker's kind of back to where he he just tells him "Do the best you can." And that's all you
know that's all a coach coaching those kids should ever say go do the best you can that's right just for tech just to
explain how it ended kelly Lee comes up to bat the second pitcher that relieved
the coach Turner's kids pitching and they decide to walk him and the pitch
gets too close to him and he smacks one the bases are loaded at this time bases
are loaded because of walks and a mod gets a bunt single right uh lots of
weird stuff happens uh they get the bases loaded and Kelly leaks they're trying to walk him on purpose to give up
the run but sacrifice you know try not to have the grand slam and Kelly smacks one to the fence
end of the game bas or the end result is Kelly's trying to turn it into a inside the park homer he gets thrown out at the
plate and they lose by a run so by my math they lost seven to six in the bottom of the inning made their third
out at home plate probably about the worst feeling you can have in baseball other than striking out is sliding into
the home plate and losing your game at that moment right yes and that's probably a kid and Kelly if you're
looking that athletes mind he knows he has to do something i feel like he he
has you know it's either now or never for our team right if I don't score we're probably going to lose so if I you
know if I stand up at third nobody's going to hit behind me basically that's what I kind of think a kid in that
situation would think who's so much better than the rest of his teammates and it's a game that you know like it is
the situation he tried to do too much which happens to everybody yeah and he's
he's a compet you know on top of everything about his the jokes about his juvenile delinquency he's a competitor
too that's right exactly right uh Buttermaker knew that much uh so they
lose and of course the Yankees are celebrating but Maker gives all of his kids a beer each and tells them to whoop
it up and celebrate and they go out they go out for the trophy presentation i love this is hilarious they're all
drinking a They all have a beer in their hand even Whitewood after the game Whitewood comes back down to the dugout
and he's like "Hey why don't you chill with the beer with these kids?" And they just they zoom past him they go right
out on the field and what I thought was great was the trophy for the Bears is about a foot tall and the trophy for the
Yankees is about four and a half feet tall exactly one of them four post trophies it's huge yeah and they they
make some corny speech about hey we thought y'all were a bunch of losers but we really respect how you stuck it out
and came back and nearly beat us and all that and Lupus throws the trophy at him
you remember that he he chunks that second place trophy at him and tells them to stick it where the sun don't
shine basically that's Tanner that says that oh Tanner says it okay tanner says you can take your crummy apology and and
your trophy and stick it up your you know and then Lis throws the trophy yeah
okay all right so Lupus did throw it okay yeah but Tanner's the one that Tanner got his last line of the movie in
wouldn't have been a complete movie without that line for Tanner exactly um I thought it was great too that the
Yankees even though they were the Yankees their sponsor on the back of their shirt was Denny's yes and of
course everybody knows that the sponsor for the Bears was Chico's bail bonds
bale is in B A I L bail Bonds right and that is kind of a visual thing they're
showing the opening ceremonies and they're just panning the teams as they're lined up on the baselines and
the national anthems being played by the band and all that and you see the back of all these jerseys with Denny's and
this and that on and they pan by the bears Chico's bail bonds and their motto
is we get your feet back on the street so
so that's the story of it and that's us picking it apart practically scene by scene of what we like about it but there
is so much and I know we're at an hour nearly right now but there's so much trivia i want to go through some of it
kind of quickly with you because um first of all first of all the guy who
wrote this movie's name is Bill Lancaster and Bill Lancaster is the son
of Bert Lancaster oh wow and Bill Lancaster also wrote a movie
called The Thing which most horror movie fans love it's Kurt Russell it's I think
it's a remake of an even older movie called The Thing i think I'm right about that but anyway Kurt Russell's in it
this version written by Bill Lancaster really famous among its fans for being
back in the late 70s early 80s um the director of this is a guy named Michael Richie
and he directed some movies that I'm pretty fond of one of them is he also
directed Walter Matau in a movie about five or six years later around 81 he
directed Walter Matthau in a movie that not many people have seen but it's actually quite funny it's Walter Matau
Robin Williams and Jerry Reed and it's a movie called The Survivors
and this is the same it's it's the same director Robin Williams moves to one of those paramilitary
uh camps to learn how to be a survivor type yeah and Walter Matau is his friend
and Jerry Reid is the bad guy and Jerry Reid tries to kill them both and the they all end up at this camp up in the
mountains together it's a comedy it's a comedy but there's their lives are really in danger kind of thing oh god
and then the same director directed Fletch with Chvy Chase yeah
good movie he he directed Fletch Lives the sequel with Chvy Chase he directed
Wildcats with Goldie Han which is a high school football movie right he directed The Golden Child with Eddie
Murphy which was not that great of a movie but it's a 80s movie and he g he
directed Semiough with Bert Reynolds and Chris Kristofferson as professional
football players one of my favorite football movies from the 70s is Semiough
and um that it and North Dallas 40 were kind of similar movies
and uh that so that's the director um and the writer now let me throw a
little other few other little nuggets at you uh this was found from August 4th 1975
until October 13th 1975 and you can go out um on Google and look
it up if you want but if you listen to us on YouTube you can see it for yourself i'll put pictures up i've got a
recent picture of the ballpark and it's it's a little more modernized now but it's still sitting in the same spot you
can recognize it easily once I post the pictures of what that park looks like now but it's the same ballpark still
sitting in the same spot it's in Chadzsworth Los Angeles up in
the valley and uh they've made some improvements but you can still tell it's the same park amanda Woritzer Tatum
O'Neal she was actually 11 when she filmed this i think she was the youngest
person to ever win an Oscar uh for a best supporting actress I think a year
or two before this and a movie called Paper Moon so she was a bonafide actress
walter Matthal was paid $750,000 for this movie and Tatum O'Neal was paid
$350,000 for this movie and then they both got a a cut of the I got I have a
note here from the internet that says that at different points in the movie Buttermakers Drinking Budweiser Miller
Schlitz Peps Blue Ribbon Lucky Logger Mickey's
Big Mouth and Kors those are the couple of those I haven't even heard of
no I haven't either apparently uh apparently in a weird way this is so odd
to me if anybody knows who Bert Lancast Bert Lancaster is the actor um he
doesn't strike me as this kind of dude in real life but his son wrote this movie and his son based Buttermaker on
Bert Lancaster in a way which is really odd because that's not his personality whatsoever I would think i don't know i
don't know that he ever played a role like that sound well he didn't but his son said this is this is based on his
dad being his own youth league coach so the actor Bert Reynolds out or Bert Lancaster out there coaching kids and
then he just kind of you know uh I guess made it funnier also
they ended up making two sequels to this and you this and you had some uh you have trivia about the two sequels and
one of the characters will you tell everybody that for me yeah the uh the actor that played Ingleberg in the in
the movie uh Bad News Bears Breaking Training and the one where they went to Japan i don't know the exact title the
actor that played Ingleberg was named Jeff Star and uh we had some family my
dad's family was from southern Illinois and we were up there visiting one summer and my sister was in a Sunday school
class with that guy Jeff Starr and it was after it had to be the late I think those movies come out in 78 or 79s this
had to be the early 80s it was after those movies anyway so man but she didn't know who he was he had to tell
somebody else told her who it was but I thought that was pretty cool that's probably my closest ever being near you know somebody famous and that's that's
very cool yes and uh that's that's the only trivia then and then the other
thing I thought I think I told you was that if people think it's kind of odd in the 70s that girls were in playing
little league and the area I was I'm from in the in the 70s playing I was
probably eight or nine at the time and that league and it was a bigger town than what I ended up growing up in but
they had a pretty goodiz complex there was a girl in that league i don't know much about her i don't remember playing
against her i just knew there was a girl in that league which was kind of you know for a boy a boy playing a quote
unquote boys game that was kind of something to remember so it's not you know I don't know if people ever doubted
that a p a girl could be a good pitcher in little league uh there's a there was
a definitely a girl in a league in a league in a baseball league that I know of in the 70s that's really cool
yeah it makes you wonder what kind of accessibility there was for things like either slow or fast pitch softball or
you know what the deal was behind a girl wanting to do that which I'm fine with there's not I'm not complaining just
makes you wonder was there a lack of softball and that kind of thing i don't know it may have it may have been more
than that in that league because I'm I'm only talking about the eight or nine year old people i don't know and I don't
know if I don't know how available fast pitch softball was for girls back then i don't
know when that became a thing for girls i don't either i know men were playing my dad was playing at that time or had
just stopped playing by the mid70s so I know there were several men's leagues
around fast pitch softball leagues so but I don't Yeah so I don't think it was
uncommon for a girl to be playing baseball in the 70s you know definitely nowadays it's not uncommon but you know
some people may some people may doubt that you know the validity of that but it it actually happened
that's really that is interesting because it does make you kind of historical about wondering how many
girls actually participated even back then you know in the first first part of
this movie the guy talks about the lawsuit to allow girls to play and so it
may have been a common thing out in LA i don't know could have been so I don't know so apparently they made this for
very little money and it was a huge hit compared to what they kind of expected
which I find really cool it was a top grossing one of the top grossing movies of 76 which is good because Walter Matau
and uh Tatum O'Neal got paid because they got part of the profit um the guy
who played Kelly Leak's name was Jackie his name is Jackie Her Earl Haley he's
the only cast member from the first movie that showed up in the the two sequels and I didn't know that yeah I
had no idea i do remember the Bad News Bears in Breaking Training because they went to the Houston Astrodome to play
and Kelly Leak Kelly Leak drives them in like a orange uh shag carpeted van and takes the whole
team in this van cross country and his dad is who coaches the team when he finds him in Houston at some tournament
thing they played in amanda calls Buttermaker Boiler Maker many times throughout the movie right sort of end
with a couple of notes about the actor a couple of actors so Walter Matau is one
of my favorites he was born in 1920 we go back to the Bert Lancaster thing again walter Matau's uh I believe his
movie debut was in a movie that uh Bert Lancaster
was also in so that's a that's a cool I think he was the Kuckian um and uh
that's a cool little footnote he played Oscar Madison of course in the Odd Couple uh movie and he played the Odd
Couple in the Odd Couple on Broadway he was the original uh Oscar Madison the
messy sports writer um played by Jack Kugman on television later right he won
uh got it somewhere he won an Oscar for one of his roles was it in Grumpy Old
Man no it wasn't Grumpy Old Man okay yeah he won the Academy Award for
best supporting actor in a movie called The Fortune Cookie in 1966 oh okay and
he won a Tony Award for being in The Odd Couple so this dude that's a double
threat man that's a that's a rare guy or a rare rare person in Hollywood to win
the top prize on Broadway and uh in the movies that that's that's not a normal thing at all he was a dramatic actor and
sometimes even a bad guy early in his career but what I really want to point out is since we're so uh supportive of
the military in every way that we can be is Walter Matthau was a radio man and
gunner on a consolidated B24 Liberator bomber in World War II and the US Army
Air Force and with the Eighth Air Force in England and he and Jimmy Stewart were
both a part of the same 453rd bombardment group in World War II
interesting and his main job as it turns out was he flew air missions over Europe during the
Battle of the Bulge that was his major contribution to it was air support in different ways for the Battle of the
Bulge which was one of the worst battles of the World War of World War II
and he left the military as a staff sergeant before he came home and went into acting so I wanted to point that
out um yeah he he def I found it he played a
bad guy in the Kuckian against Bert Lancaster and Bert's son then wrote this
movie later on all right so now we have to talk a little bit about
Vic Morrow do you know the Vic Morrow story i don't think I do so Vic Morrow
who played the other coach he was the same he was a TV actor and a
movie star or movie actor he kind of bounced back and forth like a lot of people uh especially in the supporting
roles he's the father of a of a current actress named Jennifer Jason Lee who's famous for our generation for being in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High and then from the last 15 years or so the main
thing I remember her in is uh Quinton Tarantino's Western The Hateful Eight she's in that as well but Big Morrow is
her dad and Big Morrow was on a really popular TV show at one time called
Combat and that was a World War II um show it
was a fictional show set during World War II and he played Sergeant Sanders or
Saunders in Combat and that was a big show for like six years on ABC
but what he's mostly known for and I'm not I'm I'm definitely not making fun in any way shape or form he also guest
starred on things like Hawaii 5O and Mloud and Manx all these TV shows but
unfortunately it's the way he died that's become such a big uh footnote in
Hollywood history and I remember this um in 1982 they were
making a movie version and it ended up coming out but they made a movie version of the TV show The Twilight Zone and I
think uh it was one of those deals where they took three or four episodes and shot
little miniature uh versions of those and combined them all into a couple hour movie so they
just move from one story to the next there's four or five of them that make up this movie from the TV show he was in
one where he's a guy that they're kind of like karma is punishing him by making
him jump through time and be punished for all of his evil deeds by being like
uh punished in different time frames throughout lives i mean it's a strange plot but one of the storylines was him
being back in Vietnam and he's a uh in this sequence he's escaping
this village with two kids while they're filming this helicopter hovering above
and he and he's supposed to get these two kids out of this village running underneath this helicopter
and the helicopter uh apparently some pyrochnics accidentally hit the helicopter
and it tilted and die and and died and went down and killed him and the two
kids right in the middle of that scene oh wow and that's was a big big deal cuz
he was only uh maybe 50 when this happened he was I mean he was a viable
TV and movie actor he wasn't an A-lister I would say but he's showed up in the supporting roles back and forth in
movies and TV so he was still making a living as an actor and um it killed him
and the the director who was on site for that was a guy named John Landis who's a very famous director and still is and
John Landis ended up getting sued and it ended up going into court and all this kind of stuff the kids' families got
sued i mean got money vic Morrow's daughters got some money not as much as
they probably should have they got like 850,000 a piece but I don't know in 80s dollars what that means but it went on
the the lawsuit and the trial they ended up it was a trial they tried this director and maybe some other people
associated with the movie for manslaughter or murder i can't really see um it ended up going on and on and
on uh they were charged with involuntary manslaughter but ultimately after a
10-month trial all the Hollywood people uh were acquitted but there was a money
settlement probably in civil court uh there was a money settlement for the kids of the and the parents of the young
children and then the children of Big Morrow so it's one of the more famous
accidents and deaths uh in Hollywood history because it happened in the middle of filming the movie ended up
coming out as well and I don't remember I didn't go research that far but I don't know if they kept that I I don't
know what they did with his part of the movie I don't know if they cut it out completely I I don't know but yeah so that was that was the the end
unfortunately of of Vic Morrow but he bizarre yeah he was he he was born oh
and there's one other thing we always try to show that all roads lead through Arkansas or Louisiana when we do these
things right and I just found this by pure accident i mean I'm just glancing
through the cast list so the guy let me get it let me get it
pulled up because I don't want to mess it up the guy who played Toby Whitewood's dad the lawyer who started
all of this by hiring Butter Maker his name was Bob Whitewood the actor's name
is Ben Piaza and Ben Piaza was born in Little Rock Arkansas abby dog how about that
um he was born in Little Rock in 1933 he was in the Blues Brothers uh Rocky 5 The
Mask Matlock Dynasty Moonlighting Dallas The Facts of Life Family Ties Kagny and
Lacy he was in a whole lot of stuff and as a pure western fan for some people
out there he he got his start acting in westerns and the first movie he was in was with Gary Cooper so you got Walter
Matau's first movie being with Bert Lancaster and you got Ben Piaza's first movie being with uh Gary Cooper pretty
good company to keep you know back in those days absolutely and Whitewood unfortunately he passed away uh at like
49 years old I think uh but he was born in Little Rock so just happened upon
that the lasting legacy of The Bad News Bears to me is that it's kind of timeless because as I'm watching it I'm
thinking about how youth sports how nuts youth sports are now and it's almost
100% because of the parents and coaches yes to me and this is kind of a puts
that a little bit under a magnified glass and you think well it's 50 years
ago but parents were already or coaches at least who were parents were all you know
here they are being depicted as being uber competitive when it doesn't accomplish anything for the kids
themselves it's really about them you know Vic Morrow's character it's all about him wanting to win that bad right
right and then Buttermaker makes that turn and it becomes all about him wanting to win
that bat and then Buttermaker at least figures out over the course of one game that it's really about the kids and the
other guy never does figure that out so that's very that's still a thing in
society it is see the the way I see that uh Turner won the championship but he
lost a son i mean yeah you know think about it that kid if it's real life that kid is never playing ball again and he's
definitely not going to have it's going to be a long time before he does anything with his dad yeah he just ruined a relationship and possibly
ruined his marriage i mean well I was going to say what about the the mom i mean the mom can't be happy with that
right and uh so that's still timely that's a timely issue to this day um but you know
even the technical aspects of here you are pitching Amanda and her arm sore why would you do that to an 11-year-old you
know that kind of stuff why would a kid spike another kid in the chest coming
into home i mean you know the competitor in me says "So what?" But at 11 I don't
I don't know if I was thinking that way at 11 i mean I really don't so it's true um true but there's a there's just so
much about it that you know and people are sitting there going "Well you know they made us they made a re redo of it."
And they did and it was with another guy that we really like Billy Bob Thornton and I'll tell you the problem i had with
that movie because it was very similar i mean it was you know it was a remake it was same character for Buttermaker
a little bit more vulgar but Bill and Billy Bob Thornton did a great job as another Buttermaker the problem I had
with that sequel was that nobody cared anything about those kids the actors and
the characters completely forgettable there's nothing to root for in that movie because you don't give a crap
about the kids that they're written so poorly and they're acted by kids that
don't have enough personality i don't know if it's the actor's faults but there was nothing about those kids that
stood out in that movie it was all about Greg Conir playing Coach Turner and
Billy Bob playing Buttermaker they did a fine job and their parts were better
written but the kids in that movie who cares in this movie you love Tanner
you know you love Rudy you love even his even though he's somewhat of a mystery
you love Kelly Leak for some reasons you know you love Amanda in that newer movie that that's not the case for any single
character in the movie and I and I firmly believe that's why it failed as a kind of being memorable i mean you love
Ingleberg in this and I mean there's just so much to like about the different characters in this you know Ahmad gets
upset and strips down to his underwear and climbs up in a tree after the first game right that's right that's right and
why did he do that because of all the errors but he also has he's putting pressure on himself
because his brothers were supposedly great athletes you know that's right switch hitters captains on all their
teams whatever teams they played on great athletes and he's the worst athlete there is and he told Buttermaker
he's he's not good at any sport he listed all of them he's not good at any of them and his brothers were good at all of them so he's putting all this
internal pressure on himself and he made a ton of errors in that first game and and wasn't there something in there
about if I can't play as well as them or Hank Aaron I don't deserve to wear the uniform and that's why he stripped it
off and climbed a tree that's what he said yeah so I mean I think it was there
was a lot said about the kids with a very little writing i mean they showed it so you understood each kid had their
own characteristics right and and and in the newer movie I didn't get that at all i just just I
mean so that's why I didn't like the second one i liked Billy Bob in it fine but I didn't like the kids in it at all
so I don't remember much about the second movie so it must not have been that good to me either the the scene of
him passing out on the mound was just as good and funny and in fact in the in the Billy Bob one I think they end up
robbing him of his billfold and then leaving him there oh okay something like that but well anyway there's no better
character or actor to play a Buttermaker than Billy Bob that's true and you know had someone really put the thought into
making a true maybe a sequel to it or something and setting it back then and having him just play the I think it
could have worked but not a complete remake of the same story no but yeah if anybody can pull that off it's certainly
Billy Bob absolutely and and I read one time that he he said his dad was a coach and so he played coaches as often as he
could to tribute as a tribute to his dad so Okay but yeah so I'm glad you spoke
up and said you like this movie so I didn't have to do this whole thing by myself but
it's kind of a I don't know if you can call it a classic but it is kind of a classic just because it's it's a it's a
lot of oneliners in there that are funny and like you said the characters i mean who doesn't like Tanner i mean to a lot
of people he's the favorite character in that movie well and speaking of the kids like that you know I think what it is is
we all know one of each of those kids right right you're right and and I you
know I think that's why it clicked and and the writer was good enough that he expressed them to the audience in very
short scenes by their actions and and whatever and they were all distinctly different kids and you notice some of
them just fade into the background after the initial the initial scene when he
finds out the Hispanic kids don't even speak uh English right they hardly ever
show back up again until the very you know so they were strategic about how they did it but the main four or five
kids you really really really knew what they were all about which is what made
it so cool I think yes yes but yeah Walter Matau is the man he is such a good actor he's so funny so funny uh
there's somewhere in my notes that said he lost uh millions of dollars gambling sports
gambling over his career he was a major player in sports gambling oh wow yeah he
loved the ponies and he loved gambling on baseball and stuff like that
well he play he did a good job as a washed up baseball player he he Yeah
yeah and he had he told some good stories you know you know alleged stories you know about striking out Ted
Williams supposedly in in spring training and all that stuff that's a little backstory out there shows a
little history of himself you know of his character anyway that's right yeah i mean with just very little dialogue he I
mean the whole point is if you at any point if you pitched against Ted Williams you somehow probably deserve to
be there whether it was an a spring training exhibition game or not right yeah that's right and uh you know they
they kind of if you talk about good writing they kind of hit on his history
before he even said a whole lot because when he's been you know introduced himself to the team and the bleachers
there you know Ingerberg gets in his face and it's like my dad some about you you know don't doesn't remember you
pitching for the Yankees and you never threw a throw a no hitter for him and all this stuff and so there's already
these rumors about him going around of his baseball days and then he sets his
you know sets it straight he never threw a no hitter and stuff like that so you
know to me that was good like you said you we've discussed this before you can't give a whole bunch of history in a
movie it's not like a book where you can take pages you know and and explain history well you you do it in a scene or
two or you know and that's kind of how they set his back his backstory
yeah and you know what we've talked about this before but one of the things I find interesting too is you know most people our age if you really think about
and I've talked to people that didn't just grow up with us there's been other people say this from different parts of the country if you grew up in uh our era
most of your coaches were either former uh college athletes or Vietnam vets or
both you know what I mean true and they were some of them were rough dudes you know
and if you will really think about the way both of those coaches talked to their players it was like they didn't
care they didn't there were no feelings spared whatsoever from either coach you're right i mean Buttermaker tells uh
Ingleberg during that whole meeting he's like you know sit down and shut the hell
up is what he basically tells him or shut the hell up and take the field it was something like that but he he told
him in that one scene "Well now we're going to quit after that big loss and he's you know you know you know
Angleberg get your fat ass back on the field and get before I before I kick it and all this." Yeah and he starts
threatening to whip all of them and then they go out and go take the field and and and what's interesting is that back
then I think no one thought a thing about that now it could go either way either you'd either be embraced for
doing it or you'd be run out of town probably run out of town the kids were mouthy too let's you know let's not forget that oh yeah i don't think any
when I was coming up anybody on my team would have been talking to a coach like that and not still standing that's right
ingleberg and Ingleberg and Tanner especially were the worst right and they had a lot of mouthing back to to
Buttermaker of course he was kind of a hard person to respect in the beginning you know because he's a drunk and so but
yeah they did a lot of mouthing back to him too which kind of funny in a way
yeah I agree yeah it's I I always think about that because um you know do you
think a Vietnam vet cares about your feelings in the middle of a two a days practice
and neither is neither is he going to listen to your mouth either so Right or a guy that played at some you know fill
in the blank college program in the 70s and he's out there in the 80s coaching he doesn't care that you're tired right
exactly and he doesn't care about your feelings at all right no exactly yeah all right well I appreciate I'm gonna
kill the recording here in just a second but hang on for just a minute but yeah I appreciate you helping me brother and uh Yes sir you know our two compadres we'll
we'll catch them on another one and I do appreciate we got two episodes out of this so I'm
happy yes so I'm going to stop the recording right there thank you for joining us on Gen X Classic Sports where
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