50 Best Sports Movies Ever

27. The Bad News Bears

Year: 1976
Sport: Baseball
Starring: Walter Matthau, Tatum O’Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Jackie Earle Haley
Director: Michael Ritchie

When it comes to sports comedies, there are a select few that are mentioned without any measure of hesitation. The previous film, The Longest Yard, is one of those films, but No. 38 holds a differently special place in people’s hearts.

In 1976, director Michael Ritchie and screenwriter Bill Lancaster brought The Bad News Bears to the silver screen. The rest is history.

The Bad News Bears was remade in 2005 with Billy Bob Thornton and Greg Kinnear starring in the featured roles. Respectfully, that solid effort pales in comparison to Walter Matthau, Tatum O’Neal, and Vic Morrow’s work on the 1976 edition.

There are few better moments in sports cinema than when Matthau’s Morris Buttermaker realizes both how hard he’s been on kids who lack the will to win.

Matthau’s performance stands out from his illustrious career, which is saying something considering he’d won an Academy Award less than a decade earlier for his role in The Fortune Cookie.

The premise of the film is that Matthau is an alcoholic ex-baseball player who takes over a little league expansion team made up of the worst available players. He pushes them to win and succeed, but receives resistance from a group of kids who fail to identify with both the sport and the coach.

This coming of age comedy, of sorts, sees Buttermaker find himself as he helps the kids discover their passion for the sport most commonly immortalized in cinema.

Next: 26. Victory