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 alcoholic ex-baseball pitcher Morris Buttermaker who becomes a coach for a youth baseball team known as the Bears. 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 Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen.