Bad News Bears, Good Will Stunting: A View to a Game

Not many players can say they replaced Will Ferrell, but Josh Ravin can. (via Dustin Nosler)

Not many players can say they replaced Will Ferrell, but Josh Ravin can. (via Dustin Nosler)

The date: March 15, 1947.

The place: Vero Beach, Fla.

The inning: top of the ninth. “No, it was the bottom of the ninth,” the pitcher will later tell his audience, with a martini, shaken, in his otherwise retired right hand. A lanky screwballer and future pool cleaner named Morris Buttermaker, the pitcher peers toward the plate to see “ol’ Ted,” the Splendid Splinter himself, poised with “a menacing bat.”

The date: March 12, 2015.

The place: Peoria, Ariz.

The inning: bottom of the seventh. “It’s weird,” the pitcher will later tell his audience. “You never want to think you’re at the end of your career, until it creeps up on you.” A gawky screwball and former anchorman named Will Ferrell, the pitcher peers toward the plate to see Rico Noel, a minor leaguer devoid of nickname, poised with a cooperative bat.

Separated by one time zone and nearly 68 years to the day, both pitchers – each uniquely fictional but each distinctly real – manage to throw first-pitch strikes. The former is followed by two more strikes, each, presumably, “a mother of a screwball” and each instrumental in the whiff of Teddy Ballgame. Or so Buttermaker tells his Bad News Bears, first in a seatbelt-free convertible and then beside the backyard pool where he sips the cocktail that one of his players has just prepared. The latter results in a deliberate bunt that Ferrell, in the midst of a stunt that will see him play 10 positions for 10 teams in five Cactus League games, handles cleanly before tossing the ball to first base for the out, an achievement that Baseball-Reference itself will quantify and display for posterity.

Neither pitcher will make the big club out of spring training, of course. Their stories, though patently if divergently make-believe, will converge in the place where a shared dream gives way to the real world. This is life outside the thought bubble, the daily grind beyond the nightly fantasy. As a savvy audience accustomed to the span between hopeful starts and happy endings, we now know that Buttermaker, despite his 170 strikeouts and 2.86 ERA in 1951, will ultimately trade the mound for a skimmer net and a six-pack, his right hand relieved of the baseball and burdened with the tools of a workaday trade and the instruments of his dependence. We know, too, that Ferrell, despite his success as a “ground-ball pitcher” and 0.00 ERA, will get the hook in favor of bona fide pitcher Josh Ravin, a 6-foot-5 righty  whose own 0.00 ERA is far more legitimate, less a product of Tinseltown invention than of suitable genes and nine years of professional labor.

And yet both Ferrell and Buttermaker, a pair of characters whose efforts have left them well short of baseball stardom, will have established in our treasury an inerasable feat: They will have made it to a springtime mound. Though formatted for the screen and subjected to separate trajectories across truth and fiction, they’ll have occupied a dream made real by our memories of their experience, and our memories of an identical dream.

The story begins, as every baseball story should, at a baseball field – a youth field, in fact, with sprinklers watering the mid-morning grass in the time before Opening Day. It continues with Walter Matthau’s beaten-down Buttermaker stepping from his beaten-up Caddy and, with a can of whiskey-infused beer in hand, meeting the man who secretly will pay him to coach a bunch of kids who desperately want to play baseball, in a highly competitive league, despite their profound inability to perform basic baseball tasks.

The other story begins, as many baseball fantasies do, with the commissioner of baseball informing a jowly, graying, middle-aged man that his “mission for the day” is to suit up at a series of baseball fields – professional fields, in fact, spring training fields whose sprinklers have greened the grass in the time before Opening Day. It continues with Ferrell’s uplifted everyman, a familiar character whose deadpan sincerity is the accepted touchstone for a range of audience responses, conferring with the man who has asked him to join a bunch of pros who desperately want to play baseball, and in the most competitive league of all.

Says Buttermaker to the councilman, “You got my check, Whitewood?”

Says Ferrell to the commissioner, “I’m hoping to make one of the clubs.”

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

Thanks, apparently, to a benevolent act of the baseball gods, I happened to watch The Bad News Bears and Ferrell’s Cactus League stunt on consecutive mid-March nights, and the experience, as meaningful as any rites-of-spring viewing might ever be, left me with nothing less than a renewed affection for a watered-down term: “play ball.” And it was Buttermaker and Ferrell – one a jaded ex-pro who returns to the amateur game, the other a hopeful amateur with (unreal) dreams of reaching the pros – who served as unwitting revivalists on behalf of this old introduction. Though each is a Hollywood creation, as manufactured as any character in the history of dramatis personae, both remain equally real to the senses that permit each of us the sight and smell of grass and dirt, at once instant and ageless. And both have now become the accidental advocates of a phrase we’ve largely come to devalue, our emphasis having been redirected to the win or loss it initiates.

In truth, the phrase we heard before our first baseball game and, sadly and ironically, just prior to our last, “play ball” is still and simply the faithful preamble to the game we cannot stop watching and sometimes wanting to play. That is the real story here.

“When I say your name, step forward and tell me what position you want to play,” the world-weary Buttermaker utters to the motley collection of hopeful boys, all gathered before him, in street clothes, at the behest of the man who’s paid for their opportunity.

“Pitcher,” replies bespectacled Rudi Stein. “Can I play pitcher?”

Other boys are talking over each other, vying for the coach’s attention.

Redheaded Regi Tower steps forward. “Can I play second and third base?”

On the other field, among the men, Ferrell is about to play shortstop before he plays second base. The announcement, with its familiar resonance, still seems to hang above the spring training field: “Batting fifth, No. 19, at shortstop: Will! … Ferrell!” Enduring, too, is the Jumbotron image – an outsized avatar that’s made public the private dream – of a grinning grown-up in a big league uniform, the green and gold of the A’s. Ungainly, a bit out of shape, but still moving with a measure of grace, the shortstop tosses a few warm-ups before dropping – oops – the throw from the catcher, a miscue that further distinguishes the actor from the other guys on the field. Still, this is the first of his 10 positions, each the first choice (or last resort) back where Toughskins and T-shirts are for now the uniforms.

“Everybody out on the field,” orders the mercenary Buttermaker, watching as the kids scatter from the third-base dugout and onto the playing surface, “any position you want!”

The announcement seems to hang above the youth league diamond, outlasting, somehow, the sound of passing traffic. With it are the “Look alive!” and “Let’s get one!” exhortations of a coach who, like every youth coach, suffers the blurred anonymity supplied by the windows that go past him, but also who, just moments ago, found himself the subject of a biographical sketch. “(Y)ou never played in the major leagues,” team nerd and historian Alfred Ogilvie said to his manager, “but you did pitch for Phoenix in the minor leagues. In 1951 you won nine games, lost six, had 170 strikeouts and had an ERA of 2.86.”

Now the ex-pro is hitting grounders to the infielders and fly balls to the outfielders, boys who bungle the plays so thoroughly that “amateurism” seems too mild a term for their catalogue of awkward miscues. Now, too, in another place in time, Ferrell has traded green for red and replaced Angels star Mike Trout in center field. “Hopefully,” the Cubs’ Kris Bryant has said to the television audience, “he knows how to catch the ball.”

Watching at home, we see the actor in the outfield grass. We see the characters, the kids, there, too. We see the players at stages of the spectrum, phases we’ll have occupied if our number doesn’t come up short in the end. We call up the feelings. We remember having chosen this position, no, that position – pitcher, shortstop, second and center field. We remember the bungling, the effort, the bungling again. We remember the feeling – the fear – that we don’t belong here, but also the excitement of trying to find our place on the ball field. We remember the knot in the gut, all those futures just waiting to untangle.

We think of it now, standing in the grass, wondering if the ball will come.

Timmy Lupus, though awkward and shy, has just shaken a dry martini as if he were a veteran bartender at Trader Vic’s. Lounging beside the pool he’s enlisted the kids to help clean, Buttermaker takes a swig and pronounces it “superb.” The coach is then implored, in a continuation of a previous dialogue, to recount his strikeout of the Splendid Splinter.

“March 15,” says the coach, sipping his drink. “Score tied, nothing to nothing,”

The kids are gathered around him, an audience yoked to the tale that includes them.

“It was the top of the ninth. No, it was the bottom of the ninth. Bases were loaded.”

The scene cuts to a mound littered with a dozen beer cans, most of them empty. Blotto, Buttermaker is pitching batting practice to Rudi Stein while a voiceover picks up the tale.

“There was ol’ Ted, coming to the plate, swinging a menacing bat. Strike one.”

Just before throwing the pitch to Stein, the ex-pro tumbles off the mound and passes out.

Ferrell, wearing Trout’s glove and hat, is now manning center field, its expanse the impending backdrop of memories sweet or bitter, stories recounted with the facts or exaggerations they might demand. More than a century old, spring training has long been a time when permanent imprints are made from instant triumphs and precipitate failures, and the players who inhabit its seasonal posts are only the latest in the line of performers on which a story rife with tragedy and comedy and victory and defeat can find its marks.

In moments, the Cubs’ Welington Castillo has sent a line drive to center field. Prompted into action, Ferrell ranges to his left, fields the ball on the bounce and, after a surprisingly elegant crow hop, fires it to the cut-off man before acknowledging the standing ovation.

We think of it now, just as we thought of it then.

Out on the youth field, Councilman Whitewood is concluding his Opening Day speech: “What I want is to see every boy in America out on the baseball field playing the great game of baseball.” The band plays, the fans cheer and the umpire shouts, “Play ball!”

Now in a Cubs uniform, Ferrell is stepping into the batter’s box. In response, the Angels have unveiled the radical Ferrell Shift: all four infielders stationed between first and second base, a grouping that speaks to the actor’s presumed inability to turn on a big league heater. Looking much like a softball player who stumbled into a professional at-bat, Ferrell takes a pair of waist-high fastballs – meatballs, by big league standards – and flails at the third, with a bat speed more suited to the subject of a slow-motion replay.

The previous highlights – Ferrell having his eye-black applied, Ferrell taking rips in the batting cage, Ferrell shagging fly balls – gave him the look of one whose history had prepared him for a passable impersonation, but now his return to the dugout seems the inevitable outcome of an ill-considered attempt to squeeze himself into a role that wouldn’t have him. Even if the punchline is already written, the payoff still kind of hurts.

Watching, we know the feeling. We’ve been there, in a different place and time. Failure, even if expected, even if reconciled to circumstances that govern the uh-oh moment, still inhabits a psyche now separated from the episode itself. It moves with us from space to space and hour to hour, daring us to forget where it came from and what might invite it again.

Back at the other field, Buttermaker has returned to practice after the Bears’ humiliating 26-0 loss to the hated Yankees – a forfeit, actually, after the Yankees scored all their runs in the first inning. Despondent and embarrassed, the Bears don’t share their coach’s grudging resilience. Dressed in street clothes, they’ve decided to turn in their uniforms.

“We took a vote,” says glum Toby Whitewood, “and decided that we’d quit.”

Buttermaker studies the sullen faces, the uniforms folded on laps.

The vote appears unanimous. They’re tired of the ridicule.

Buttermaker then sees feisty Tanner Boyle and his busted lip.

“What the hell happened to you, Tanner?”

Catcher Mike Engelberg answers. “Tanner got into a fight because of it.”

“Who with?”

“The seventh grade.”

Buttermaker nods.

“You want to quit, Tanner?”

“Crud, no,” the kid replies. “I wanna play ball.”

Crud, yes – that fire in the belly, that hunger, that need to go back…

The whole thing is a joke, really. It’s comedy. It’s not serious. It isn’t even real – except for the fact that it’s happening, right there on the field. Ferrell, at 6-foot-3 and – as Baseball-Reference will describe it – “220ish,” is situated in the batter’s box, this time for the White Sox, waggling his bat in the lead-up to the pitch. It is a place we’ve occupied a million times before – a big league box! – except for the fact that it’s never once been real.

The outcome is pretty much scripted – written in pencil, let’s say, before the eraser is trashed – but this time, just prior to a swinging strike three, Ferrell manages to foul off a pitch. A fraction of wood, having met a fraction of cowhide, has stamped his claims to experience. Contact, however brief, is a thing you might always feel. It can last longer than its occurrence and make you want to add another instance to your stock. Back at the other field, the Bears are commiserating after an 18-0 loss. “Well, we committed 18 errors and their pitcher threw a no-hitter against us,” says Ogilvie, “but there is some good news: two of our runners almost managed to get to first base, and we did hit 17 foul balls.” It’s enough.

A fraction, an instant – it’s all that divides you from the highlight of your story, and it’s enough to send you back to the field. You can’t just quit. To stop playing is to create the wrong ending, to abbreviate what might have become a standing O or just a stand-up double. To quit, before the facts demand that you must, is to dishonor the introduction. Buttermaker affirmed it when the Bears tried to turn in their uniforms: “I can understand how you guys feel…But this quitting thing, it’s a hard habit to break once you start.”

As an audience, we don’t know – can’t know – Buttermaker’s story. His biography is a gap with a Williams tale inside it, plus a few recited stats to confirm a year of his baseball career. What happened? Why did it end? Did he really whiff Ted Williams, or is the story just a concoction to ease the pain that alcohol can’t reach? Is it really just a myth, a fairy tale in the face of far less magical truth, to replace the facts of what once was a dream?

All we really know is that he began coaching for money but stuck around for the game.

A montage, like the contents of a memory, can tell you how you reached this point and maybe why it matters. After picking up a pair of ringers – one a girl and the other a delinquent – the Bears (finally) win some and (inevitably) lose some while Tanner trips a kid rounding second, Engelberg plows over a catcher and Rudi loses his spot as starting pitcher. In Arizona, Ferrell asks if he might win a Gold Glove, holds aloft a catch as if it were an Oscar and slams down his mitt after being replaced as the Cubs first baseman.

Kids and grown-ups – they’re always crossing paths.

As the Bears climb in the standings, Buttermaker buckles down. He tells ringer Kelly Leak to handle every ball he can reach because “the game’s too important for us.”

With a win, the Bears can play for the title.

In Arizona, after whiffing for the White Sox, Ferrell has donned the Giants catching gear and settled behind the plate. Mask down, he calls for the intentional walk. And after four very intentional pitches, he returns to the dugout on skipper Bruce Bochy’s playful hook.

One thing he’ll remember: He still got to catch the ball.

Just before the title game against the Yankees, Buttermaker approaches the squabbling Bears and confesses that he ordered Kelly to “cover for you” in efforts to win the game.

“Huh?” the players reply. “Why?”

“Whaddya mean, why?” the coach barks at the kids. “We’re in the championship, aren’t we? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Now just behave yourselves and act like men!”

Now in a Dodgers uniform and flanked by photographers, Ferrell strides to the mound.

“And he’s all business,” TV announcer Matt Vasgersian declares with the same mock earnestness with which Ferrell has handled the day. “How about that steely-eyed glare!”

With his glove over his face, Ferrell is conferring with catcher Austin Barnes.

“Have you heard of the slurge?” he asks. “I throw the slurge.”

After getting out of the second inning in the title game, pitcher Amanda Whurlizer has returned to the dugout and is icing her elbow in the coach’s bucket of beer. Concerned, Toby approaches Buttermaker. “Better take Amanda out. She’s hurting pretty bad.”

Buttermaker snaps. “Shut up and play your position and let me worry about the team’s health! What do you want me to do,” the coach adds sarcastically, “put in Rudi Stein?”

On the mound for the Yankees is ace Joey Turner, the coach’s son. After ignoring his dad’s order to throw low and outside, he nearly beans big Engelberg. Furious, manager Roy Turner storms out to the mound and strikes his son, knocking him to the ground.

The field goes silent. All you hear is the traffic.

The rest of the story is written. You already know how it ends.

In one place and time, Buttermaker has fashioned an outcome that celebrates the origin of the narrative. Even if it has taken on the quality of myth, he gets what he wanted from the game: a strikeout of Ted Williams in one frame, a triumph of a different sort in the other.

In a separate place in time, Ferrell, too, has fashioned a fitting outcome. Having thrown out the base runner, he addresses Don Mattingly when the manager arrives to remove him.

“I still made the team, right?”

Watching, we know the feeling. We remember. We think of it still. We think of the team and the desire to be a part of it, however good or bad it might be. We remember the need to put on a uniform and to run to the position we want most. We think of the bat in our hands and the stitches on our fingertips, just before we let go. We remember the look of the dirt and the feel of the grass, and the smell of chalk and rosin. We think of the ball in the glove and the sensation of roundness and contact, and the softness of the leather, and the lights.

We think of baseball in springtime, in the time before the end – a win or a loss? – matters more than the beginning and all the little moments it creates: throwing a strike, hitting the cutoff man, getting a piece of the ball. Even now, with our hands burdened by workaday tools, we think of standing on the grass and wondering if the ball will come. We think of peering toward the plate to see ol’ Ted, or Rico Noel, or one of those arrogant Yankees.

The story is part of the canon now, its conclusion anointed in the beer that Timmy Lupus pours on his teammates: Having seen the coach he was about to become, Buttermaker decided to remove the ailing Amanda and send Stein to take her place on the mound. He also substituted his worst players for some of his best, telling Lupus, “Now get your ass out there and do the best you can” before telling Councilman Whitewood, who’d become consumed with winning the game, that “everybody on my team gets a chance to play.”

Life will let us know, each of us, when it’s time to get off the field. But there is a small taste of triumph, whether make-believe or still sort of real, in just wanting to play ball.


John Paschal is a regular contributor to The Hardball Times and The Hardball Times Baseball Annual.
6 Comments
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GBSimons
8 years ago

I thoroughly enjoyed this article. Very nice job, John.

John Paschal
8 years ago
Reply to  GBSimons

Thanks, GBS! I’m glad you enjoyed it.

I enjoyed writing it. In terms of “research topics,” a writer could definitely do worse.

Wildcard09
8 years ago

This was excellent. A nice relaxing read to help me reminisce about better, simpler times out on the field. Much needed on this hectic Friday morning, thanks!

John Paschal
8 years ago
Reply to  Wildcard09

Thanks, Wilcard09. I’m glad you liked it, and that it helped ease the pain of — neologism alert — hecticitude.

Now, whether I can next stomach “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training” is another question entirely.

Paul G.
8 years ago

*applause*

John Paschal
8 years ago
Reply to  Paul G.

Much obliged, Mr. G!