I went back recently and looked at the first post I did on the Bears and then went and read the one I did about Breaking Training. And I realized I kinda glossed over plot details on the first, just giving you basics and stuff, and basically spilled out Bears Adventure No. 2 word-for-word. I felt pretty bad, so I'm here to rectify that. Aren't you lucky?
The story goes, there was a class-action lawsuit that created a seventeenth team for the North Valley junior baseball league, and this team is of course made up all of all the rejects and losers who couldn't make it onto the other teams. Coaching this group of losers is a man who is a bit of a loser himself: Morris Buttermaker, played by Walter Matthau in the greatest impression of my dad ever, if my dad one day became an alcoholic and started coaching pee-wee baseball. But anyway.
The team gets shut out 26-nothing in their first game (before which AwesomeDude Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) rode across the field on his Harley) and Butter maker forfeits, leading Councilman Whitewood, who started the whole thing, to call it quits. However, the kids and Buttermaker, keep going, and unwilling to face another loss like that one they took to the Yankees (coached by the now-headless Vic Morrow), Buttermaker goes about trying to find a way to make them better.
That is found in a new pitcher--who just happens to be a girl. (She pitches better than Cole Hamels did in game four, all you Phillies fans. Wanna recruit her?) Her name's Amanda Whurlizter, and she's the daughter of one of his ex-girlfriends. Her best pitch? The spitter (technically, she uses Vaseline, but all right). With her help, they actually, you know, don't suck as much.
But Amanda can't carry the whole team herself, so he decides to try and recruit--holy Skittles, it's Jackie Earle Haley. After chucking the ball back onto the field and riding away on his motorcycle, Buttermaker is significantly impressed with the kid's skizzles. However, some of the other players have some reservations about approaching him....
"Of course he's got a great arm, Buttermaker; he's the best athlete in the area. But you don't understand. That's Kelly Leak." (Toby)
"You talkin' 'bout Kelly Leak? That's dude's a bad mother. Talkin' 'bout a loan shark. I borrowed a nickel from him last Tuesday--said if I didn't give him a dime by Friday, he'd break my arm." (Ahmad)
"Es un bandito." (Miguel)
"I don't know what they're all talking about, but I like him. He's got balls." (Tanner)
And then Amanda says:
"If the guy can play then the guy can play. Let's get him on the team."
And the coach looks at her.
Cut to an arcade, where Kelly Leak is busy kicking a grown man's butt at air hockey (which I feel I am beast at, by the way. Anybody, seriously. Take me on.). In walks Amanda, and she proceeds to sink a couple on Kelly (who was busy looking at some chick's butt before Amanda walked in) before offering him a bet. They aren't going to play for money. If Amanda wins, Kelly will play for the Bears. If she loses...Kelly can name whatever he wants.
Long story short, Amanda ends up having to go to the Rolling Stones concert with Kelly ("Friday night at eight"). However, Kelly Leak does end up joining the team (conveniently as Buttermaker is distributing cups and supporters to the kids, as per league rules, and they begin fighting over whether Amanda has to wear one too, opening the way for Kelly's classic line, "If she doesn't wear one, neither do I."). And with these two in place, the Bears do the unthinkable: They start winning.
This leads to a confrontation with the Yankees in the championship, where nobody thought they would make it (yay, underdogs!!!). I'm not spoiling anything by saying they pull a Rocky, which was also released in 1976, but it takes a lot to get there: Amanda nearly throws her arm out, Timmy Lupus catches a crucial ball to keep them in the game, Coach Turner hits his kid to teach him a lesson about almost hitting Engleburg with the ball (all righty, then), and of course a bench-clearing brawl where Kelly Leak pulls a Yankee off fight-happy Tanner with the immortal line "All right, you mother, let's see if you can kick my ass." Which he can't.
And then Kelly Leak, the run that would put them over the edge, the star, the home-run king who's batting 841 and tries to use that to pick up chicks (that and his Harley), gets out. So the Bears lose.
But they also win, because they go the distance (yeah, I said it), and in the end Tanner rights everything by telling the Yankees to take their "apology, and your trophy, and shove it straight up your ass!" And then little Timmy Lupus (or the Looper, as he comes to be known in the next film), tells the Yankees to "just wait till next year!"
Ah, yes. The Bears. Not the mutilated version, either, that Satan in the form of Thorton/Linklater forced upon us in the guise of a remake that was really more of a stupid, unnecessary re-imagining, but the one, the only. The ones who have ushered in spring with brawls, crudeness, and extreme overuse of the word "crud" by a kid who picks a fight with the entire seventh grade and gets dumped in a trash can sticking up for a teammate (and bills the kid who dumped him in there for the burrito he smashed into the dumper's face to start the fight). The ones who showed a girl can play with the boys, that budding juvenile delinquints are good at baseball, that burritos were once only thirty cents.
Ah, yes. Spring.
