Threw Me For a Looper

  Last weekend, I saw The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training for the first time, and unlike some of the people on the internet that I read, I actually liked it ("love" might be a better word). But I was saddened by the Bears' loss of Timmy Lupus, who had been nicknamed by Tanner, his friend now, "the Looper," due to a leg broken in a skateboarding accident (too busy digging for gold to look where he was going? Discuss). You see him, though, when Tanner and resident nerd Ogilvie (who is almost unrecognizable at first; our geek has grown up!) go to pay him a visit and give him the only signed Bears' baseball in existence and a framed photo of when he caught that ball in the first movie. For those of you who forget what that unforgettable moment looked like (shame on you!), here's a refresher: 

  Yep, there's our Looper!
  Anyway, I kinda teared up (so shoot me) when Tanner asked if Timmy (who had made him "wanna puke" in the first one, remember?) would come with them "next time," because they are heading to Texas to play in a game in the Astrodome (which I can't visit on my tour of famed Bad News Bears sites because I don't think it's still standing, and Timmy said yeah.
  Neither Tanner nor Timmy are in the third one. But's that's neither here nor there. 
  So they don't have a coach now, the Bears, and they don't have a pitcher (at least Buttermaker is mentioned; nothing is said about where the heck Amanda went. Well, she said she wanted to be a model...), at least not until Kelly Leak (yeah!) rides up on his freakin' sweet Harely--a girl on back, of course--and announces that not only has he changed his mind and will be playing with the Bears in Texas, but he's found them a pitcher: Carmen Ronzonni.
  Apropos of nothing, the pasta my dad routinely buys for us is branded Ronzoni.
  Let me digress here for a minute (or a small paragraph, whichever) about the Evolution of Kelly Leak. You know how you can look at people at different times when they're kids and see "yeah, they grow up to be that"? This is the movie where This Happens to Kelly Leak. His Guerreroness is coming out. Not that it wasn't there in the first one, but that was more in the way he talked and stuff. Now all he needs is the glasses and a pair of chopsticks. And to, uh, lose the fringe. Not that I don't like it--and yeah, I'm trying to find one like it; anyone know where I can get one?--, but Guerrero doesn't do fringe. 
  I digress.
  All right, so they get Carmen (the actor, by the way, is Scott Baio's brother, in case any of you care, 'cause I don't, not really); now all they need is a coach. And, thanks to Kelly and, yeah, Carmen, they get one, for appearances anyway: the groundskeeper at the field. Watching the Bears tell their parents about their new coach is funny. Kelly, though, is never shown, nor his mom. Interesting...
  They don't really need him, though, apparently not even for driving the super-funky van Kelly's managed to, um, borrow. Coach? They don't need no stinking coach (until later)! All they need is--well, love, and: 

   Yeah, that's Leak. Hey, the look fools the cops, so I guess it works. 
  Along the way to Houston, hijinks ensue--see: "female hitchhiker on the side of the road+van full of teenage boys," Engleburg (who is not the original actor, unlike the others) running to a bunch of bushes to "go," Ahmad saying that they're all going to go to the "joint"--and, yes, throwing a "The Man" in there for good measure.
  Then they get to Texas--and need a coach, because somebody parked the super-funky van in a no-parking zone (I guess that's what happens when you don't actually, you know, have a license). So Kelly says they have one, and while the other Bears all look around like huhh??--even Carmen, who has seemingly been in cahoots with Kelly the entire movie--, he skips off merrily to find him. 
  Well, not really. He actually hitches a ride in the back of a truck. But whatever. He still gets to the same place, which is...a plant! Who is at the plant, you wonder? Who is this mysterious coach? Well, it has something to do with the picture of an unknown man Kelly was staring at earlier in the movie by the light of a Zippo, and you see this man comes walking out--
  Holy snot it's William Devane!
  Yes, for all those people out there who actually know who he is, try not to have a heart attack because he looks, you know, so young. For those of you who don't know, skip the above paragraph. 
  But in this movie he's not just William Devane--he's a man named Michael ("a guy named Michael runs the school..." jk). Michael, we learn as Kelly calls his name out, Leak. As in, father of Kelly.
  And for all you freaks out there, please don't write WD any weird letters of thanks--it's just for the movie, guys. Chill out. 
  Anyway, so Kelly and his estranged father have a Typically Awkward Conversation, but Kelly manages to get his dad to agree to coach the Bears. Who get out of trouble for the whole van thing. And who are now primed for a training montage!
  Mike does his best Buttermaker here, though he is less tolerant of Kelly's smoking (seriously, dude, you won't grow up to be Rorschach unless you quit while you're still young--I spelled "Rorschach" right on the first try! Yeah!). And, thank God, he actually gets Carmen to, you know, pitch, right when I was starting to pray for a runaway bull to take him out and pitch for the Bears instead, because throughout the movie it has been demonstrated that Carmen can't pitch--or, as Tanner puts it in the beginning, they now have a team made of "Jews, spics, niggers, and a wop that throws airballs." I mean, yeah, Amanda was a girl, but at least she could throw. 
  Then Kelly and his dad get in a fight, and Kelly runs all dramatically and teen-angsty away from the field, where he encounters a bunch of players from the Texas team, the Toros, who taunt him by saying the word "f----t" a lot. Then they make fun of Mike, and Kelly attacks one, and then he continues to run away crying. Aww. This was not helped by the fact that Dad, who was sitting next to me stealing my popcorn, telling me that Kelly gets hit by a bus while running and crying. I mean, I know he didn't, but that still was not a very nice thing to say, Dad, you jerk.
  Mike finds Kelly in a pool hall (pool and air hockey and baseball? He's a triathlete!) and they have a talk--well, Kelly goes off about a bike Mike gave him the day he left, and how it's sitting untouched in the basement, and this is where I cry. A little. You know. Because it's emotional. Mike walks away after telling Kelly to ask himself whether he still would have looked Mike up if the Bears hadn't needed a coach.  
  Then they're all in the locker room before the game, wondering where Kelly is. He has not come back. They have to press on anyway, so when Mike asks them if anyone has anything to say, Tanner says "I do" and walks into the middle of the room. He then proceeds to paraphrase the movie Knute Rockne: All American's "Win one for the Gipper" speech by saying something about Timmy like (don't quote me): "Timmy couldn't be here with us today, but we should win this one for the Looper, because he'll know, and he'll be happy." This is when my heart melted with "awww"ness. Again. 
  And then, just in time, Kelly shows up and utters the line "What are we waiting for?" and the Bears, bolstered by the return of their star player, run out onto the field, ready to kick the Toros' butt and take jersey numbers. 
  "Toro," by the way, means "bull" in Spanish. Bulls and Bears? Is this a baseball movie or Wall Street?
  I'm not going to give you a play-by-by, but let's just say the Bears are the Bears and are losing five-nothing at the end of the second inning (it's a four-inning game between major-league games). Also, in a funny aside, when Jimmy Feldman is up at bat, the catcher says "we got one of the Marx brothers up here," when in reality the actor who plays Jimmy, Brett Marx, is a grandon of Gummo Marx. Really. 
  However, before the Bears can go up again and reclaim some dignity by, you know, winning, the game is stopped--apparently, they are out of time. All the Bears shuffle off the field--except for Tanner, the shortstop who is taking "win one for the Looper" to the extreme and refusing to get off the field. When people are sent out to get him off, he starts running--and even throws a base at one of their groins. You gotta love Tanner Boyle. 
  Some of the Astros players come in an ask what's going on. Ahmad explains that they were supposed to have four innings but are only getting two. The player replies, "Aw, let 'em play." This seems to inspire Coach Leak, who runs out onto the field and, while not going as bat-dooky crazy as Tanner, starts chanting "Let them play, let them play!" over and over again, fist-pumping before fist-pumping was cool (see, Snooki? Mike Leak started it). And then, just when I thought my heart couldn't melt any more, Kelly runs out onto the field with his dad and starts chanting with him (I didn't cry here. I almost did. But I didn't.).  
  Soon, everybody else starts chanting (Tanner still evading capture in the outfield), leaving the people in charge baffled. Eventually, they decide to, yeah, let them play, and they do--again, no play by play, but: They actually win. Yep. They do it. 
  Then, walking back to the locker room after the big game, Kelly stops his dad and says that yeah, he still would have looked him up even if they hadn't needed a coach. Awww. Life is looking good for you and me. 
  And sometimes life imitates art: At the 2002 Major-League All Star Game, when it was announced that it would end in a tie if neither team scored before the end of the inning, the crowd began to chant "Let them play!" But it still ended in a 7-7 tie because both teams ran out of players. Oh, well, sometimes it's great just to have played. 
  But sometimes it's better to kick butt and win one for the Looper and reconcile with your dad and actually learn to pitch and have a cool theme song that, thirty years later, nobody will be able to find anywhere so they can download it for inspiration.
  There's something telling me our time is now...