I was at Brennan Park a couple of weeks back to do a feature on young ballplayer, Coleman Kawaguchi, during evaluations for the upcoming season.
Baseball fascinates me, and it’s the subject of my favourite sports movie, The Bad News Bears. At risk of being declared un-Canadian, I’d say Slapshot, while an amusing farce, is not in the same league.
The Bears has everything: great characters, humour and a narrative that holds you until the last out. The original was released 40 years ago, a fact celebrated by The Onion AV Club recently with a piece musing on what the characters might be doing now.
The gist is the Bears are the worst team year after year, a ragtag bunch of misfits, until they bring in Coach Buttermaker (played by Walter Matthau), who is lured with cash by a dad. He enlists a couple of ringers – a rebellious Jackie Earle Haley and the tomboyish, curveball-throwing Tatum O’Neal. The three manage to bring the team together and turn it into a contender.
There are many layers to the movie. For one, it makes clear what happens when parents interfere in their kids’ games. In other ways, it was a trailblazer. For example, having a girl as one of the top players 40 years ago was one of the bold moves.
Then, there was Tanner, the foul-mouthed, bigoted shortstop who seems to represent everything bad in America then (and now, as evidenced by Trump supporters). He frequently uses offensive racial slurs, even though his teammates represent just about every ethnicity but white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Yet, Tanner is somehow able to work with his ethnically diverse peers on the field.
There are laughs, but one wonders now if some crank would protest the moment when the kids and Buttermaker break open his beer stash to spray each other and have a few sips too at the end of their inspiring season.
Most refreshing of all, the Bears [spoiler alert, if possible 40 years later] excel but fall short in their championship bid – something that seems downright un-American.
This seems to be at the heart of the movie, though. The Bears represent diverse backgrounds and combine forces to achieve something special, which is kind of what America is supposed to be about. Of course, maybe it takes a Canadian to say that.
