The Greatest Moment In Sports Movie History

Bad News Bears in Breaking Training Video – Let Them Play

The Bad News Bears In Breaking Training was a 1977 sequel to the the original Bad News Bears movie. Not to be confused with the horrifically awful 3rd movie set in Japan.

My Bad News Bears Breaking Training top 10 List

Where Breaking Training fits amongst all time classic flicks…

1. # 2 road trip movie of all time (EuroTrip)
2. # 2 sports movie of all time (Hoosiers)
3. #1 kids movie of all time (Star Wars was more of an all ages flick)
4. #1 coming of age movie of all time
5. #1 baseball movie of all time
6. #1 cursing kids movie of all time (take that GoodFellas)
7. #1 best ever drunken coach (Buttermaker)
8. #1 best ever team sponsorship (Chicos Bail Bonds)
9. #1 (tied) best ever racial slur rant (tied with this Do The Right Thing rant)
   — a disgusted Tanner Boyle “Jews, Spics, Niggers and a Wop that throws airballs.”
10. #2 Greatest chant in sports history (Raaaaaaiderrrrrs)
    — Coach leak, The Bears, The Astrodome crowd: “Let Them Play, Let Them Play”

 

More Bad News Bears Trivia, Random Facts, Videos

About Breaking Training:

This movie follows the Bears’ the year after their infamous second-place finish in the North Valley Little League. After winning this season, the Bears have lost the drunken Buttermaker (Walter Mathau) as their coach, and hero Timmy Lupus ”the Luper” to injury. With a game to play in the Houston Astrodome against the cocky Houston Toros, with the winner advancing to play the  Japanese champs, they take an epic road trip to Texas. Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) reunites with his absentee father (William Devane) who ends up coaching the Bears. The movie returns Chris Barnes as the cursing Tanner Boyle, and brings in new blood in Jimmy Baio as pitcher Carmen Ronzonni.

This greatest sports movie moment ever shows Coach Leak leading the Astrodome crowd in a  goosebump inducing chant of “Let them play, Let Them Play!” as a defiant Tanner Boyle eludes security guards. If ever there was a movie scene that could define my entire youth, this would be it.

Bad News Bears in Breaking Training Trivia:

(courtesy of Wikipedia, IMDB, others)

• When the team arrives in downtown Houston, they book a room at the Concord Hotel. In real life, the building which they check into is the Lancaster Hotel, located off Texas Avenue across from Jones Hall.
• Later in the movie, after Coach Leak reappears, the Bears stayed at the Houston Hilton rooms 324 and 325 among others. The actual hotel is located at 6633 Travis Street in Houston, but the filming location was the Pasadena Hilton in Pasadena, California.
• Members of the 1976–77 Houston Astros lineup make a cameo appearance. They include César Cedeño, Enos Cabell, Bob Watson and J.R. Richard.
• When the 2002 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Milwaukee was tied and fans were told if the National League did not score a run in the bottom of the eleventh the game would be called, some of them chanted “Let them play” to no avail.
• When Jimmie Feldman is at bat the catcher says “You got one of the Marx Brothers up here.” Jimmie Feldman is played by Brett Marx, grandson of Milton “Gummo” Marx and a great nephew of Harpo, Zeppo, Chico and Groucho Marx.
• The playboy magazine that Carmen gets is the February 1977 issue.

Bad News Bears in Breaking Training Movie Poster

Bad News Bears Road Trip

- Road Trip Must See… The first Bad News Bears movie and some scenes from Breaking Training were filmed at Mason Park in Chatsworth, CA. The park is still there on Mason Ave. just north of Devonshire <click for Map-Satellite>. The field has been completely redone and unfortunatley there is nothing to indicate there was ever a movie filmed there.

Breaking Training: Great Comment From The Web

“Folks, There is only one group of people who will truly enjoy and think this is a great film-the group who it was intended for: those of us who were in our pre-teens or early teens who saw this when it first came out in the Summer of 1977.

The tale is pretty much the kind of thing that every red-blooded American boy of that age would dream about. The little leaguers fire their tyrannical coach and “borrow” a van to play at a little league championship in Houston. To avoid spoiling it, I’ll just say that this deals with their adventures along the way and the results. A “Huckleberry Finn” of the 1970s, to be generous.

The overprotective parents and PC squads of today would have heart attacks at the scenes of the kids’ foul language, cigarette smoking, chasing a grown woman, committing grand theft auto, and swiping Playboy magazines. But most of us who saw it at the time knew that this was over -the top and didn’t take it that seriously.

Yeah, an adult viewer would agree that the story, writing, and acting are atrocious. But this wasn’t intended to be Shakespeare. See it with a 13 year old mind and trust me, you’ll “get it.” For those of us who saw this as 13 year olds in 1977, leave your brains at the door and enjoy the nostalgia and the theme song “Looking Good.” To everyone else-you’ve been warned!” – Damon Fordham

*** Damon, I could not have said it better myself. Iwas a pre-teen baseball addicted foulmouthed respectful kid in the Summer of 1977, and this movie inspires me to this day. I simply love it!

More Bad News Bears Facts, Trivia, Randoms, Video Clips – Click Here

Bad News Bears Theme Music – Life Is Looking Good

“Life Is Looking Good”

Music By Craig Safan

Lyrics By Norman Gimbel

Sung By James Rolleston

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Everything in life I Needed to Know, I learned from the Bad News Bears


…ahhhhhhhhh, memories of  simpler times for a kid with a late 60′s birthdate. These 2 movies (Bad News Bears Japan was an abomination) actually gave kids credit for their complexities, long before todays PC police forced fake sentimentality and “gee wiz they won the championship” whitewashed Mighty Duck turds down our throats. If Raidergirls were a little league team (perish the thought) we’d be the Bears… asking Chico to bail out our beer swillin’ coach.

When faith in humanity is lost there is always solace to be found in the Bears… and if it’s a ”make it a double bartender” day for brotherhood, “The Sandlot” ( ”Stand By Me” on a baseball diamond… or morphed with “300″ in this silly but well synced vid) also stands at the ready. No amount of self pity or woe for modern fellow man can withstand the double dosage of a “Booger Eatin’ spazz” and  ”You’re killing me Smalls.”

“Golly Violet, grab Little Giants, these Bears curse and chase women”

 ”Let Them Play, Let Them, Play”

 – This Bad News Bears clip still gives me goosebumps every time

  
Goosebumps immediately  follow the first “let them play” chant from the absentee dad of rebellious Marlboro toking ballhog Kelly Leak. Then comes the  Bad News Bears theme music as second base chucking Tanner Boyle continues to elude floundering security guards. I need a tissue… 

Bad News Bears in Breaking Training - Randoms Page 

 

 Bad News Bears Random Facts and Minutiae…

 - Tanners Tirade…   ”Jews, Spics, Niggers and a Wop that throws airballs” would get you killed in todays PC world.

- Don’t jump in Engelberg. You’ll flood the valley… catching a break of epic proportions, the real Engleberg (or “Englepuke”) the lovable lug playing the stereotypical fatassed catcher, missed the atrociously bad Bad New Bears in Japan movie… due to losing  to his rotundness, and Paramounts unwillingness to write it into the script.

“…it’s a substantial bucking of the trend toward ever more chubby, surly and inert children“

- “virtual” Yosemite sucks balls… unlike todays portly ps2 generation, kids raised in the Bad News Bears era were EXPECTED to be playing something outside until dark.

- win some lose some… ”Original” Engleberg also missed out on the cultural phenonema that was Breaking Training… and of course being forever remembered as the dude with a bucket of KFC covering his junk… while talking a dump.  

 - He who would sacrifice liberty for security, deserves neither… One listen to “life is looking good”  which played as the Bears took their “borrowed” van on an epic roadie to Houston, spurs those circa 70′s era feelings of hope & freedom… that seem fewer and farther between in our post 9/11 world.

- Da Bears… stayed at the Houston Hilton in Breaking Training. They stayed in Rooms 324 and 325, and could see the Astrodome from room 325.

- Road Trip Mandate… The original movie and some scenes from the second movie were filmed at Mason Park in Chatsworth, CA. The park is still there on Mason Ave. just north of Devonshire. The ballfield has been completely redone and there is nothing to indicate there was ever a movie filmed there.

- Road Trip part deux… the bell-bottom wearing hitchhiker from Breaking Training plays a close second (to Phoebe Cates scorching the earth in that red bikini from the Phoebe Cates Fast Times at Ridgemont High Red bikini pool scene… another tissue please) in movie hottie moments that stand the test of time.

- Courtesy of the real Rudi Stein… “We had the Astrodome to ourselves for a full week. Between scenes we would explore the tunnels and backrooms of the place. It was pretty amazing. We actually put an ad in the paper for extras when we needed large crowd shots. As I recall, we needed about 1,000 extras one day and had 3,000 people show up. When we started turning people away, there was a mini-riot outside that require police intervention.”

- Disingenious… There is a field named “Bad News Bears“  in Westwood, CA.

- Sign O’ the times… The remake with Billy Bob Thornton (not watched by me for reasons of tradition) got a scathing review from Movie-Mom.

  ”The Bad News Bears was instrumental in turning a formerly docile population of pint-sized fielders into a foul-mouthed field of anarchists.”

- …and more from a peculiarly astute suck.com … ”For a nation of Timmy Lupuses, accustomed to seeing the pains of adolescence portrayed on the big screen while the misery of pre-adolescence gets ignored, the thrill came in seeing their own lives up on the screen.”

- Meant to be funny…  Miguel and Jose’s, “four dollars…for both of us“  actually got me to ask for LESS allowance from my parents.

- wtf???… ”Check me out on Myspace” saysMiguel.

- Deep… In his 1976 review, critic Roger Ebert called the Bad News Bears series “an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society.”

- and Buttermaker talked Ahmad down from the tree…Roger Ebert calls the movie “disturbing” in his review (racial epithets, drunken coach, 12-year olds swearing, etc.) but also duly notes that ”The members include a black, a couple of Mexicans, various other minority group members and, eventually, a girl.”

 3 Life Lessons learned from the Bad News Bears…

1.  sport sees no prejudice… aka welcome Ahmad, Miguel & Jose, Amanda, etc. to the North Valley Little League. Sports is a place where how well you perform impartially measurable tasks truly outweighs the amount of pigment in your skin.

* …or whether a cup is mandatory protection.  Cheers, Tatum.

 

 

2. sports is a great equalizer… Whether it be by greed or the intrinsic beauty of a ballteams singular focus on a seemingly improbable goal (e.g. yesterday’s Penguins Championship)  the proverbial glass ceiling (think beyond just gender) is routinely smashed in sports… Amanda pitches, the WOP throws his airballs…

3. sport is one bastion of a true meritocracy in action…  The scales of Sports justice tilt decidedly in favor of karma, which unlike political appointees… usually leads to the most qualified candidate getting the  job. 

* Meritocracy dillema: Kelly Leak races in from left to call off the Looper on a pop fly; as Kelly is clearly the best man for that job… right, wrong… you decide?

 Where are these little rodents now?
   

     

With the exception of  Chris “Tanner Boyle” Barnes who has become a recluse  (go figure… the Napoleon Complex finally broke him, perhaps the trauma of the ketchup donnybrook???… may you live in rebellious peace Tanner Chris) they seem to be an all too normal slice of americana. Much as Jerry Mathers will always be the Beaver, I shall purge the “Tanner sold more copiers than Oglivie this month…” minutiae gleaned from the video above, and choose instead to respectfully remember them  as Kids from the North Valley League in admittedly selfish perpetual bliss.

Kelly Leak contemplates all that is life

This grainy angst filled “Kelly Leak stares forlornly at the Astrodome” photo perfectly captures a moment in all of us, when we questioned authority, our role with our parents, a team of some sort counting on you… what to do…

 To  fellow late 70′s – early 80′s era sports obsessed youth… may your little Tanner Boyles also share in these life altering rite of passage movies.

…

Bad News Bears in Breaking Training Top 10 List

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