The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) * *

 

Directed by:  Michael Pressman

Starring:  William Devane, Jackie Earle Haley, Jimmy Baio, Clifton James, Chris Barnes, Brett Marx, Alfred Lutter, Erin Blunt, Lane Smith

The Bad News Bears was an examination of the birth of the Little League Parent with a big game at the end.  The group of misfit little leaguers were constructed as a social experiment where players of different races were thrown together thanks to a liberal town councilman.  They all had one thing in common:  They were terrible baseball players who got better thanks to their drunken coach.  One year after the success of the Bad News Bears comes The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, which is the same players minus the cynical undercurrent.  No parents even chaperone the team to the game being held at the Houston Astrodome, which gives the Bears an excuse to steal a van and have team captain Kelly Leak (Haley) drive them from California to Houston.

Kelly is 13 going on 26, although with his continual cigarette smoking and driving a motorcycle, I thought he was closer to an adult.   They're a rowdy bunch of course, and although they are the supposed California state little league champions, they play with the incompetence of the Bears of the previous year.  Walter Matthau is nowhere to be found, but since the team requires an adult coach, Kelly looks up his estranged father Michael (Devane), who doesn't even recognize him when Kelly meets him after Michael's shift at the local plant. 

Michael agrees to be the team's coach, and he's a pretty good one.   He returns them to their former glory as the play the local Houston champs in a four-inning exhibition before an Astros game.  It doesn't make much sense to turn them back into bumbling players from the first film, except to recycle that comic formula.   Devane's Mike is a genial guy with a resentful son and naturally they have argument before reconciling.   All of this is the undercard to the main event, the game where the Bears (who inexplicably are batting at the bottom of the inning because they seem like logical visitors) are being pounded early and then coming back after the game is halted due to time overruns.  

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training has no Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, or Vic Morrow.  The kids are the focus, including a new pitcher (Baio) who throws wild every pitch, and then we have Tanner Boyle (Barnes), the blonde-haired hothead with the Dutch Boy haircut who is the smallest player on the team, but has the biggest mouth.  The movie is mostly a retelling of the story which made the first film a success, and they win the big game this time.