The Bad News Bears Gets More Disturbing—and Awesome—Every Year
How have you celebrated Major League Baseball's opening week, Daddy-O? I prepared for the season in the usual fashion—screaming at willfully ignorant L.A. Times sports columnists, and watching MLB Network's surprisingly enjoyable "Bleacher Feature" movie series, especially its rebroadcasts of that '70s latchkey classic, The Bad News Bears.
If you haven't seen The Bad News Bears, you really should (baseball fandom is not a pre-requisite). Short of that, enjoy the trailer below, which is currently being discussed with occasional alarm over at Reddit, under the subject-header:
"Jews, spics, niggers, and now a girl?" Actual line delivered by an 11 year-old in the 1976 Paramount trailer for "The Bad News Bears"
Ah, you're interested now, aren't you?
Before dismissing the discomfort at this as just another sign that kids nowadays are P.C. softies, it's worth remembering that, as I wrote in 2005 after viewing the neutered re-make starring Billy Bob Thornton, it could just be that America has moved on to a mostly better place:
We now live in a country where big moments on the professional baseball diamond are no longer automatically accompanied by thousands of half-drunk fans flooding the field to tackle the victors; where power black-outs are no longer guaranteed riots; where inflation is tamed, presidents aren't morose, and Little League is no longer the favorite dumping ground for latch-key parents.
Movies are reflections of their times, and one of the few perks of encroaching middle age is that we get to enjoy the shocked reactions when younger generations encounter the anachronistic rancidness of our childhood faves. Also, I can exclusively report that The Bad News Bears still totally holds up, though as the trailer hints at above, it is on the slow side compared to modern editing practices.
Hat tip to my former co-Little League team coach, Tony Pierce.
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That movie was huge with kids when I was a kid. Not entirely sure why, but I think it was because we weren’t supposed to see it.
The movie is especially great when you compare it to the usual schmaltz that passes for baseball movies. Yes, Field of Dreams and The Natural I am looking at you. Bad News Bears and Bull Durham are the A to Zed of great baseball movies.
The Natural was a superb novel. The movie might be the single worst adaption I’ve ever seen.
Worse than Dune?
Or Starship Troopers?
God help me, yes. Then again, I thought that Dune was a very overrated novel… The Natural was, IMO, a truly great American novel (not to be confused with the mediocre Roth book).
RAH was certainly spinning in his grave about Starship Troopers, but at least there was some gratuitous nudity. Speaking of RAH adaptions, The Puppet Masters was also certainly high on the suckage scale.
Dune was a very overrated novel
OUT. Now.
Oh wait, Im not supposed to respond to trolls.
Dune is overrated? Very overrated? Tell me, where did the Bene Gesserit witch touch you?
Tell me, where did the Bene Gesserit witch touch you?
In the box.
{rimshot}
Boy, go get me my gom jabbar. Quickly now!
Any novel that depends on more than three special words is a suck novel.
If it had been edited down to a short story, it might have been tolerable, but jesus, it defined the word “sprawl.”
And I should mention “as humorless as an Oberlin student and takes itself just as seriously.”
It’s a fucking epic. I suppose Homer took himself and his story too seriously, too?
Homer had a plot, a real story to tell. And some humor. He was blind. Wrote in Greek. Sooooo much cooler.
Now, I have to admit that the Coen Brothers’ adaption was terrific.
I don’t know what to say to someone who doesn’t like Dune.
Say, “Don’t feed the troll!”
And Stranger in a Strange Land was an epic, even sprawled a bit, but night and day better. No baseball, though.
Wait, Stranger in a Strange Land is better than Dune?
Your taste is all in your mouth. Now go ahead and tell me you drink Miller Lite and prove me wrong on that, even.
The last third of Stranger in a Strange Land is nigh unreadable.
Pretty much agree. It’s not a book I feel the need to re-read.
Stanger, Dune, STrooper, my three favorite books.
If it was four then I would of added “The Fall of Hyperion” Dan Simmons.
Hyperion is very good.
Miller Lite is like sex in a rowboat. I’m a Belgian ale kinda guy.
freaking close to water?
Good thing the doc isn’t hanging out with us anymore. You would surely face his wrath.
I’ve been in the hospital for the past eight days- all the docs have been getting their revenge on me.
I’m sure the doc has plans within plans within plans for dealing with this.
By will alone, I set my mind in motion…
RAH was certainly spinning in his grave about Starship Troopers, but at least there was some gratuitous nudity.
Most of the nudity was Dina Meyer who, while not un-attractive, didn’t hold a candle to Denise Richards (especially back then). And she was just about the only chick in the movie who never took her shirt off. Not even for a second. Though she made up for it in Wild Things.
Denise Richards isn’t that great (and she has nasty fake tits).
I’m with you. That little redhaired spinner, though… mmmmmmmm.
I’ll be in my bunk.
That’s why you and Juice are still in Infantry, while Loki and I are officers. An appreciation for the finer things in life.
ST is one of my all time favorite movies. There are few better gore movies than that one. And the cheese is so rancid I can smell it.
Story? Acting? RAH? Who gives a fuck. Give me gratuitous violence and nudity and high quality gore effects and you have an instant b-movie classic.
S-u-c-k-e-d.
Starship Troopers the book and Starship Troopers the movie only have one thing in commong – the title. I liked both for different reasons.
Dune is a great novel AND a great movie.
What is this, piss me off day?
AND a great movie
That is some high quality trolling there.
Dune is when I finally learned to stop watching movies made from books I loved.
I tried to read the book and it sucked so hard I stopped. Then the movie came out and I figured I’d give it a try. It sucked so hard I went back to the book to verify it was as bad as I remembered. I forced myself to read it cover to cover and yep, it sucked.
Yeah, Dune blows. Tedious read.
Thank you, sir.
Same with any of that Tolkien bullshit.
There’s always a few lunatics out in the tails of the distribution. As long as you don’t think Terry Brooks is a great writer.
Good thing this thread is winding down. You might escape alive.
Do you realize where you are?
Lake Forest Hospital. I mean, really, what more can they do to me?
OK now your are really Trolling.
“Yeah, Dune blows. Tedious read.”
Did you find it a *dry* book?
On a more serious note: I have a couple more names to add to my “People I Need To Kill” list.
Ya? Well you favorite book and your favorite band both suck!
I actually liked the movie. In the theater. The edited-for-television version absolutely sucks though.
Easily worse than Dune, and I say that as some who left the theater with a blown out eardrum for sitting beside the speaker while watching Dune. The Natural feasted on the balls of Tiajuanas most well hung donkey.
Of the 4 or 5 RAH books I read, I liked ST the least. Very disappointed. Do I have to turn in some sort of card now? (I should mention I already knew it was nothing like the movie, so I wasn’t looking for that.)
I noticed you didnt even bother to consider For the Love of the Game.
I liked FoD okay, but I never got The Natural.
And Eight Men Out the book is much better than the movie. (Duh)
My childhood had a spate of children baseball movies: Angels in the Outfield, Rookie of the Year, and the Sandlot.
I once spent an eternity in a doctor’s office waiting room, unable to swallow because of strep throat and mildly hallucinating from a high fever, while Angels in the Outfield played on the waiting room’s TV. It may have been the most hellish of all the hells I’ve had to endure.
I was on a 747 flying over or near a typhoon in between Japan and Malaysia, ritually preparing for death in total terror, while watching Beverly Hills Ninja and some volcano movie.
The Sandlot is cute.
It was a great movie
The Sandlot is a great flick. Very quotable.
You’re killing me, Smalls!
For-ev-er.
I love Lupus.
It’s not lupus!
Had a huge kid crush on Tatum O’Neal because of that movie. It was sorta an Animal House for preteens.
She was even cute when she grew up. When she was married to John Macenroe she was still nice looking. Sadly drugs have now taken their toll.
John Macenroe
Sometimes your spelling makes it nearly impossible to figure out who you are referring to. That one took me a bit to figure out.
Yeah, that was a really tough one to figure out.
Well it is not like her ex husband was a world famous tennis player or anything.
Yeah, but I had forgotten that fact, and was trying to figure out what frenchy actor she had married.
Once I figured it out, I remembered that she had married him.
Then I doubt you would have recognized John Mcenroe either. I just added an extra “a” in the “Mc”. It wasn’t that far off.
a or no, capitalizing the E would have helped a lot.
But without the a, I would have realized you were just miscapitalizing a scottish name.
I have going for something like ma-sin-ru
I have going
joez law.
C’mon John, that was sarc.
I know. So was mine.
Proof that Kelly knew what he was talking about when he said “There’s nice ass at the field!”
Hahaha that line always kills me…
“You can fuck her in the ass. You can come on her face.”
Oh, wait, that was Jodie Foster. Never mind.
Movies of today only seem faster because of all the editing. In fact, a lot of them have severely overlong running times.
A lot of truly classic movies from back in the day could fit into a 75-minute time slot on TCM, and I’m not just talking about B movies. Marie Dressler won an Oscar for Min and Bill, which runs I think all of 68 minutes. She Done Him Wrong with Mae West and Cary Grant is even shorter.
Wallace Beery. Wrestling picture. What do you need, a roadmap?
Im not sure how much its happened in the movies, but in tv, there is more dialogue per minute than in the past. Talking is done MUCH faster.
Especially if it’s an Aaron Sorkin joint. I remembered enjoying Sports Night during its original run, but when I tried to watch it on Netflix recently, I couldn’t keep up. It was too fast and tried way too hard to be “witty” for me.
Give me Ron Swanson and Tammy II any day.
My wife was a fan of Gilmore Girls, which was an extreme offender in this regards. I told her it was like they were trying to fit an hour and a half show into an hour time slot. Also, I didn’t care for the show.
I will only watch Justified from the DVR. 2 or 3 times each show, I have to rewind a couple of minutes of dialog to figure out what they’re saying. Brilliant dialog: quick, sharp, witty, and frequently one person right on top of the other. But hard for near-elderly ears to sort out.
“5 adults in the middle of Kentucky and nobody has a cigarette lighter?”
The scene in the principal’s office is some of the best dialog ever put on film/tape.
I also really liked last night’s finale.
A truly great ending
No spoilers! I haven’t watched the finale yet!
Watch it soon.
Howard Hawks would probably beg to differ. Watch His Girl Friday, for example.
Television basically killed B-Movies at the mid-major studios (anything under 7 reels). There were still a few operators willing to make them into the 70’s, but when there was a short renaissance in the 80’s the major studios bought them up and threw money at those producers to make those types of films into 90+ minute (aka 20-minutes too long at higher ticket prices) features.
Maybe streaming will force movies to be “right-sized”; right now the impetus is still to sell tickets for a feature-length movie and DVD’s.
Sorry, but movies in the 70s were, at their best, much better than what we have today. It was a golden era in a lot of respects.
It was the sweet spot. Things opened up so they were allowed to do sex and violence in a way that older movies could not. But it was still new so sex and violence and effects had not yet crowded out good movie making.
It was before marketing took over everything, so they thought they had to made entertaining and/or good movies to get an audience. For a while, story and character were king.
It’s up there with the unedited version of Blazing Saddles for pure un-PC bliss.
I know right. I watched Blazing Saddles the other day and was thinking the same types of people that were promoting pushing the envelope with that movie would today be screaming “they went too far!” and “Racist!!!”
I know right. I watched Blazing Saddles the other day and was thinking the same types of people that were promoting pushing the envelope with that movie would today be screaming “they went too far!” and “Racist!!!”
Where’d the white women at?
That is my freakin favorite line in the whole damn movie. And there are lots!
Yes. Side note, never watch Blazing Saddles on TV.
Or Showgirls.
That was on HBO this morning as I was eating breakfast. God is it bad. And damn did Elizabeth Berkley have a nice rack.
Of the Saved by the Bell women, she is the one I least wanted to see naked.
She is not particularly pretty. But she did have a nice body and very perky boobs.
That was my first thought, Blake.
Movies are reflections of their times, and one of the few perks of encroaching middle age is that we get to enjoy the shocked reactions when younger generations encounter the anachronistic rancidness of our childhood faves.
Greatest baseball movies ever? My nomination: It Happens Every Spring (Ray Milland).
While not an Academy Award winner, I’m a big fan of The Sandlot.
Me too
^THIS^
Ahhh nostalgia.
They remade this, didn’t they?
What a great movie. I remember begging my parents to take we to that when I was 9. My mom was utterly shocked, my Dad feigned being utterly shocked. Buttermaker’s variety of beers made me even more proud of my beer can collection.
Watched it again a year ago. My reaction was it was sad to see how chicken-shit the nation has become. I swear that is the reason we send troops and drones everywhere – in an attempt to show everyone how non-chicken shit we are. Do we even let kids collect beer cans anymore?
I have a coworker who has a daughter who is 15. She is a very nice smart girl who is pretty serious about French. I met her at a work forced fun event. So I asked her if she had seen the French movie Amelie. I suggested that she should see it. It is a good movie and I am told the French is pretty challenging in it.
I don’t know if you have seen this movie. But it is a quirky romance story about a woman living in Paris. It is kind of thing I would think a typical smart 15 year old girl would like. She saw it and her parents were shocked that the movie had people talking about sex and one scene where you heard sex. Not nudity, not violence, not showing sex, just one sort of comical scene that alludes to a woman having sex. It was apparently just so inappropriate.
Yeah, we have lost our fucking minds.
It will be interesting to see how all these little snowflakes will deal with the real world when they grow up.
Maybe everything will be fine, but from my perspective, they certainly are pussies. Maybe the government will eliminate adversity in the future and they won’t have any issues.
My guess and my hope is that kids haven’t changed and that it is the adults who have gone insane. Hopefully that girl watched the movie and liked it and thinks her parents are morons.
It happened in a generation too… when my niece was 9 years old, I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit with her. When my sister found out, she came up to me yelling about how that movie isn’t for kids, and there’s too much adult humor in it.
I then asked her if she remembered seeing it in the theater, how old she was when she saw it in the theater (my sister saw it when she was about 9), and if she caught any of the adult humor then.
To her credit, once she put the pieces together, she dropped it.
There are some quick shots of sex in the opening montage, isn’t there?
Still, my parents took me to see it when I was 14, and we all had a good time. (also took me to the Big Lebowski when that came out, and I would have been 11 at the time)
There is you are right. I forgot about that. But they never show any nudity. I have a huge thing for Audrey Toutou. I would have remembered any nudity.
There are a couple of brief glimpses of nudity. But not of Audrey.
Jeebus – I watched The Last American Virgin on HBO when I was 9ish. My Ma was buying me romance novels form the drugstore when I was 12. WTF are these namby-pamby parents trying to hide? A 15-year-old should know at least the mechanics of sex, and if she doesn’t, I’ll bet she winds up pregnant by some Frenchie in her first week of whatever exchange program she does in high school.
people talking about sex and one scene where you heard sex.
So her parents never told her about sex or have sex in the house? Anyone who didn’t hear their parents have sex when they were young is the child of an unhappy relationship.
Parents and public schools are more uptight now than the friggin’ nuns were in Catholic school in the 70’s.
No wonder Catholic schools are closing. All the uptight lesbians took over public schools. And they don’t even have to get results.
I would have suggested Les Diaboliques myself.
encroaching middle age
encroaching?
That birthday done been croached, has it not Mr Welch? 🙂
Depends on how long he plans on living.
Welch secretly hopes he is a Dunadain.
Speaking of PC. I was watching the “unedited” version of Airplane on HBO the other day.
In the “I speak jive” scene the old lady states:
I could have sworn, in the original movie, they didn’t use the word “chump”.
Is my memory wrong?
Lately I used the term ‘jive-ass’ and some early 20 somethings had never heard it, but knew instantly what it meant. They objected mightily to my using that term….so naturally I had to use it repeatedly after that.
Yes we have become a nation of mostly pussies.
Jive ass is one of the great slangs in the history of the English language. Is there any better term to describe the current village idiot in the White House?
They sound like a bunch of jive ass crackers.
JAMF
I’ve been trying to bring back the phrase “natural fact” for the better part of a year now, with limited success.
Yes, it is wrong.
I think you may not be remembering it correctly. I remember it always being “chump”, and her lips pretty clearly say “chump” as well. I doubt they’d re-shoot the scene for later broadcasts.
I just found this posted in a chatroom:
That’s how I remembered it. I was 15 in 1980 and when my friends and I quoted that line, that’s the term we used.
It isn’t mentioned here, and that seems to be a pretty thorough list of differences.
Maybe we were just…
RAAACIST!
The original movie absolutely had “nigga” in the dialog. I remember watching Leave it to Beaver in reruns, and it was striking to say the least to have June Cleaver say nigga.
Huh, maybe I’ve only ever seen the edited version. If it came out in 1980 I would have been only 2, so obviously I never saw it in the theatres.
I seem to recall the word chump being in there. And I also thought is was “Jive ass fool”, not “dude”.
The lastros are on pace for over 100 losses again. Hooray!
They spent a day in sole possession of first place in their division for the first time since 2007.
Most strikeouts by a team in the first 3 games of a season in recorded history!
Video unavailable outside the US it seems. Any mirrors?
Found it: Bad News Bears, The – (Original Trailer)
I’m not a baseball fan (or sports fan), but I do like a good baseball movie. Bad News Bears, Major League, and Moneyball, to name a few.
Moneyball the “novel” was much better than the movie.
And semi-regular H&R poster Voros McCracken did not make the movie, despite having a chapter about him in the book.
And semi-regular H&R poster Voros McCracken did not make the movie, despite having a chapter about him in the book.
Wha???
Which part dont you understand?
You know Voros “solved” one of baseball’s “Hilbert problems”, right?
No. I have no idea what you are talking about.
You know about the Hilbert problems in math? Okay good. And if you dont, go google it, Im not explaining that.
In 2000, on the 100th anniversary of Hilbert creating his problems, Baseball Prospectus created a list of “Baseball Hilbert Problems” — Important areas of research in sabrmetrics than needed to be looked at.
One of them was how to separate pitching from defense.
Voros basically solved this (in a simplistic manner, fine tuning has since happened). He realized that over the long haul, pitchers have a constant Batting Average Against on Balls in Play. Basically, taking out HRs, Walks, and Strikeouts, BABIP is a result of the hitter and the defense, not the pitcher.
This isnt entirely true, but as a first order approximation is works well. Flyball/groundball rates affect this too, adding that in makes a really, really good 2nd order approximation. Beyond that, pitchers do have a tiny bit of control over it, but not much.
With that knowledge, its possible to start breaking apart the effects of pitching vs the effects of defense.
Wow. That is really cool. It is also not perfect because not every pitcher puts the same kind of balls in play. An effective pitcher won’t just strike people out but fool hitters and get them to not hit the ball as hard as they want to. Five screaming line drives are more likely to produce a hit than five fly balls or slow grounders no matter what the defense.
That is the general argument against it, but when you look at the math, it falls apart. That is the tiny 3rd order effect I was referring to.
Fly ball vs ground ball is a bigger deal. Fly ball pitchers will give up more extra base hits and a slightly higher average, IIRC (and more HRs, but that is already accounted for as purely a pitcher result).
Fly ball pitchers will give up more extra base hits and a slightly higher average, IIRC
———–
I believe that you’re incorrect on the latter point, IIRC ground balls actually become hits more often than fly balls, but (as you mention) fly balls become extra base hits (and HRs) more often than ground balls.
Semi-regular H&R poster Voros McCracken is a statistician who was a pioneer of sabermetrics. His statistical analysis was part of the book Moneyball. Unfortunately, his chapter didn’t make the movie.
His Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voros_McCracken
I remember the early arguments on rec.sport.baseball when he first announced this.
I was dumbfounded that it could be that easy. But the stats seemed to back it up. The wars over it got ugly quick.
Sometimes things are easier than people think. Take pitching effectiveness. Instead of going crazy with all of the advance stats, why not make it simpler and look at some measure of ERA and innings pitched. Every team in baseball has a finite number of innings that must be pitched. The more of those innings a pitcher eats up while allowing the fewest runs, the more effective he is.
That is all sorts of awesome wiining. Hats off, Voros!
That is fuckin cool.
He’s even got a wikipedia page if you want to look him up. I think he was employed by the Red Sox for a while.
1976 trumps 2013 in every way.
We were a lot freer then. Not as rich and didn’t have as many gadgets. Five broadcast TV channels (the big three plus PBS and the local old movie and rerun channel) kind of sucked. But we were a lot more free.
Halter tops and Farrah hair = awesome.
Fuck. Trying getting through the last few weeks of high school when the girl sitting in front of you is wearing a halter top.
Yep. Or sitting next to you. That was worse.
All that tanned skin was within easy touching distance with the girl in front of you (our desks had the writing surface literally, not figuratively, touching the back of the seat in front of you).
OTOH, it was a simpler time and running your tongue up her spine without an invitation was just “gross” and not a sex-crime that put you on a list for the rest of your life.
You what Jimmah Carter taught us?
He taught that we can survive a bad president.
You know what Obama has taught us?
Obama has taught us that Jimmah Carter wasn’t so bad after all.
OT- Bitcoin hacked value falls 20% overnight. Only a DDoS but still devastating.
Did it shoot right back up because mt gox has it at $134 right now.
Yes.
Whatever happened to Cavanaugh, anyway? He was eating nachos in that cafe across from Guitar Center, and then suddenly he was just gone.
Never forgave that bastard for banning me.
Never seen it.
to make time one of these days. Mostly because I love Walter Matthau in pretty much everything. He’s the reason I tolerate the otherwise-unbearable “Hello Dolly” when my wife’s watching it for the 10,0000th time.
No homo.
He was great in the original The Taking of Pelham, One, Two, Three.
I love that movie. Curse the assholes who tried to remake it.
Yeah, the two (!) remakes are utterly worthless. The original is a freaking classic – a perfect distillation of everything that was simultaneously wonderful and horrible about the 70s.
Matthau’s in another of the all-time great sports movies, The Fortune Cookie
But you can’t buy Song of the South in the US unless you order it from overseas. Which is total bullshit.
I liked that movie a lot as a kid, and it never occurred to me to see it as racist or whatever evil it’s supposed to have. I can’t remember all the details, so maybe it does have some things that don’t go over so well now, but so do other films and books.
White family goes to visit relatives; little boy runs off; black farmhand distracts the kid with tales of Brer Rabbit until his mom finds him.
I’ve seen a lot of people complain about the use of black people as farmhands as racist (which is stupid, as it’s historically accurate and used as a narrative device to tell folk tales), but the complaints about the “tar baby” scene being racist hold some more water.
Racist!!
My girlfriend got a bootleg VHS copy from a comic store in Rhode Island. The use of Uncle Remus and the white kid whose name I don’t remember is a great framing device for telling folk tales.
Have they burned all the copies of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer yet?
Down the Memory Hole!
Or just rip it off s torrent, like I did (not do because I’m not a petty, thieving, ciminal man).
Are you tired of going office daily? Make money working from home with Google! I’ve made $64,000 so far this year working online and I’m a full time student. I’ve made such great money. It’s really user friendly and I’m just so happy that I found out about it. Here is what I do,, http://x.co/vIx9
(Click on Home for details
You spam people for a living?
Here is the character “Joey Turner” in real life; he’s actor and punk rock sensation Brandon Cruz!
Saw him fronting the Dead Kennedys in 2002. I kind of hate to admit it, but I preferred him over Biafra, because he didn’t go off on 30 minute political rants, and they didn’t play any crap from Frankenchrist or Bedtime for Democracy, both of which I believe would have happened if Jello had been up there.
“Hey Yankees… you can take your apology and your trophy and shove ’em straight up your ass!”
God bless Tanner Boyle.
I notice Matt conspicuously left out The Bad News Bears In Breaking Training and The Bad News Bears Go To Japan.
And I, for one, wish to thank him for that. I mean, come on Tony Curtis. You were Antoninus fer chrissakes.
He was also great as The Boston Strangler.
I just noticed this movie is available for streaming on Netflix.