The Bad News Bears is a 1976 American sports comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Bill Lancaster. It stars Walter Matthau as an alcoholic ex-baseball pitcher who becomes a coach for a youth baseball team known as the Bears. Alongside Matthau, the film's cast includes Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley, and Alfred W. Lutter. Its score, composed by Jerry Fielding, adapts the principal themes of Bizet's opera Carmen.

Plot

In 1976, Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic pool cleaner and former minor-league baseball pitcher, accepts an under-the-counter cash payment from a businessman to coach his son's youth baseball league expansion team, the Bears. The team is made up of misfit players, formed as a settlement to a lawsuit brought against the league for excluding such players from other teams. Shunned by the more competitive teams (and their competitive parents and coaches), the Bears are the outsiders, and the least talented team in the Southern California league.