The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)

A troubled, rebellious teen drives his rambunctious baseball team out to Houston where they play an exhibition game and the boy meets his estranged father, and hires him as the teams coach.

Director:

Michael Pressman

Writers:

Paul Brickman, Bill Lancaster (characters)

Stars:

William Devane, Jackie Earle Haley, Clifton James

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
William Devane	...	Mike Leak
Clifton James	...	Sy Orlansky
Jackie Earle Haley	...	Kelly Leak
Jimmy Baio	...	Carmen Ronzonni
Chris Barnes	...	Tanner Boyle
Erin Blunt	...	Ahmad Abdul Rahim
George Gonzales	...	Miguel Agilar
Jaime Escobedo	...	Jose Agilar (as Jaime O. Escobedo)
Alfred Lutter III	...	Ogilvie (as Alfred Lutter)
Brett Marx	...	Jimmie Feldman
David Pollock	...	Rudi Stein
Quinn Smith	...	Timmy Lupus - The Big Looper
David Stambaugh	...	Toby Whitewood
Jeffrey Louis Starr	...	Mike Engelberg
Lane Smith	...	Officer Mackie

Storyline

The Bears, the little league champions of California, are invited to play a between-games exhibition at the Houston Astrodome with the local champs, the Toros. Kelly Leak, the Bears' star player, decides to rejoin the team and go with them to Houston to make amends with his estranged father, Mike.

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Plot Keywords:

baseball movie | little league | astrodome | baseball | houston astrodome | 

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Taglines:

They've fired their coach. They've "borrowed" a van. They're on their way to the Houston Astrodome...with girls on their minds, cops on their tails, and the game of their lives at stake.

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Genres:

Comedy | Family | Sport

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 July 1977 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Bad News Bears 2

Filming Locations:

Mason Ave. at Devonshire St., Chatsworth, California, USA

Box Office

Gross USA:

$19,104,350

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$19,104,350

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

100 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The role of Officer Mackie is played by the reasonable new actor, Lane Smith. At the end of the movie, he is one of the first few fans to rise up in the stands and yell, "Let them play," at the Astrodome. Lane would appear 15 years later in "The Mighty Ducks," as win-at-all-costs, Coach Reilly who was the coach of the Ducks rival team, The Hawks.

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Goofs

As the bears are driving towards Houston from Los Angeles (Van Nuys), they are driving into a sunset, which sets in the west, not the east.

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Quotes

Mike Leak: LET THEM PLAY! LET THEM PLAY! LET THEM PLAY!...

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Connections

Referenced in South Park: Stanley's Cup (2006)

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Soundtracks

1812 Overture
Written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

User Reviews

A comedy of errors

Probably like most kids my age at the time, I found this to be the *second* coolest movie of summer 1977 (gee, what do you suppose was the first). But with age comes awakening and through viewings in my later years the holes in this script broke out like jock itch. Although some of the gaps were plugged in the paperback, it still left a leaky script up there on the screen.

First bad play is the lack of explanation as to why the Bears, and not the league-champion Yankees, get to travel to Houston. Later, the kids are held on suspicion of grand theft auto for their van (which they earlier admitted to secretly "borrowing") but the issue is never resolved, so what's the point of making the vehicle hot in the first place? Of course, the hardest pitch to hit is the idea that a Houston home crowd would unanimously root for a visiting team, regardless of some sappy news story of a kid back home with a broken leg. On that note, the photo given to Lupus of his heroic catch from the first film is said to have been taken by Ogilvie's dad. Yet the photo is nothing more than the actual shot itself from the first film. That would mean that Ogilvie's dad would have to have been standing right next to Lupus in the outfield when that catch was made. Okay, okay. This one *is* nitpicky but I hate when movies flub little details like this. Finally, it's established that the winner of the Houston game will advance to a game in Japan. Yet in the next film, BNB Go to Japan (1978), no mention is made, even by the Bears themselves, of the Houston victory and they travel to the land of the rising sun for other reasons, which they address on a talk show hosted by Regis. Even back *then* the man was everywhere.

Trivia: In Paul Brickman's paperback adaptation of his screenplay, Ronzoni spins a tale of scoring with a babysitter. This monologue would later resurface verbatim years later in Brickman's script for Risky Business (1983), in which Tom Cruise, in an early scene, brags to his buddies about scoring with a babysitter.