The Bad News Bears
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
47 free The Bad News Bears trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A drunk pool cleaner, a team sponsored by a bail bondsman, an 11-year-old ace pitcher and a cigarette-smoking kid on a Harley: The Bad News Bears (1976) was rude, profane and unexpectedly sweet, and it has been the template for every underdog kids' sports movie since. These 47 questions cover the original film's cast and production, the plot beats of the championship game against the Yankees, the Bizet-scored soundtrack, the two sequels (the Astrodome trip in Breaking Training and the Japan film with Tony Curtis), the short-lived CBS sitcom with Jack Warden, and Richard Linklater's 2005 remake with Billy Bob Thornton. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for a baseball-season movie night.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays coach Morris Buttermaker in the 1976 film The Bad News Bears?
Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau. He later sued the studio for selling the hit to television in a single package with its two sequels, arguing the original was worth far more than they were.
Q 02The Bad News Bears was written by the son of which Hollywood star?
Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster. His son Bill, left with one short leg by childhood polio, drew on his own Little League days, and the field he played on was renamed Bad News Bears Field in 2005.
Q 03What is Morris Buttermaker's day job in the 1976 film The Bad News Bears?
Pool cleaner
Pool cleaner. He soon has the Bears working his pools with him, and tells them it was 'contract disputes' that kept him out of the major leagues.
Q 04Which opera supplies the main themes of the score for The Bad News Bears?
Carmen
Carmen. The trick caught on: both sequels built their scores out of borrowed classics as well, and the Bears' trip to Japan in the third film is set to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
Q 05Who plays Amanda Whurlizer, the Bears' star pitcher?
Tatum O'Neal
Tatum O'Neal. Her Amanda has sworn off 'all that tomboy stuff' and sends Buttermaker packing the first time he asks her to take the mound.
Q 06Buttermaker gets Amanda to pitch for the Bears by agreeing to pay for which lessons?
Ballet
Ballet. Amanda, who is saving up for braces, haggles hard over how many lessons he owes her and tries to squeeze a pair of imported French jeans out of him too.
Q 07Who plays motorcycle-riding troublemaker Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears?
Jackie Earle Haley
Jackie Earle Haley. He played Kelly in all three films of the 1970s series, and has since called the third one, set in Japan, the worst movie ever made.
Q 08What brand of motorcycle does Kelly Leak ride in The Bad News Bears?
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson. The best athlete in the neighborhood rides it straight onto the field, and joins the Bears only after the rival coach tells him he has no place in the league.
Q 09Which business sponsors the Bears' uniforms in the 1976 film The Bad News Bears?
Chico's Bail Bonds
Chico's Bail Bonds. Rival teams wear family names like Pizza Hut and Denny's, and landing this sponsor is about all Buttermaker gets done before opening day.
Q 10With the Bears down 26–0 in the first inning of their opener, what does Buttermaker do?
Forfeits the game
Forfeits the game. The rival coach has just told him his team has no right to be on the field, and the humiliated kids vote to quit before he finally starts coaching them.
Q 11Which team do the Bears face in the 1976 championship game?
The Yankees
The Yankees. They had routed the Bears on opening day, when their coach told Buttermaker to do the league a favor and pull his team out of it.
Q 12Who plays rival coach Roy Turner in the 1976 film The Bad News Bears?
Vic Morrow
Vic Morrow. The star of TV's Combat! gives Turner a chilling pep talk before the title game, telling his boys that if they lose they will have to live with it.
Q 13What does rival coach Roy Turner do to his son Joey on the mound in the Bears' title game?
Slaps him
Slaps him. Joey had thrown at a batter's head against orders, and he answers by holding the next ball hit to him until the Bears' runner scores, then walking off the field.
Q 21Which major leaguer does Bears outfielder Ahmad Abdul-Rahim idolize in the 1976 film?
Hank Aaron
Hank Aaron. When Ahmad quits in shame over his opening-day errors, Buttermaker talks him back with a tale of a nine-year-old Aaron making 42 errors in his first sandlot season.
Q 22What does Buttermaker order nervous Bear Rudi Stein to do to reach base?
Get hit by a pitch
Get hit by a pitch. "Lean into it and let it hit you," he tells the frightened boy, the moment the film shows that the need to win has got to the Bears' coach as well.
Q 23Who secretly pays Buttermaker to coach the Bears in the 1976 film?
Councilman Bob Whitewood
Q 14How does the championship game end for the Bears in the original 1976 film?
They lose narrowly
They lose narrowly. Buttermaker, seeing that winning has gone to his head, sends in his benchwarmers so that everyone plays, and the Bears still very nearly pull it off.
Q 15What does Buttermaker hand out to the Bears after the championship game in the 1976 film?
Beer
Beer. The kids end up spraying it all over each other, a scene the 2005 remake kept only by making the beer non-alcoholic.
Q 16What happens to Buttermaker at the Bears' last practice before opening day?
He passes out drunk
He passes out drunk. He keels over while retelling how he once struck out Ted Williams, and the kids decide he is no good to them sober either.
Q 17Which Bear is the short-tempered shortstop who fights the entire seventh grade?
Tanner Boyle
Tanner Boyle. He takes on the whole grade after classmates taunt the Bears over their opening-day humiliation, loses the fight, and is the one player who refuses to quit.
Q 18Which Bear plays catcher and breaks Buttermaker's windshield at the first practice?
Mike Engelberg
Mike Engelberg. A compulsive eater and a strong hitter, he is told on the spot that his father will be the one paying for the glass.
Q 19Which Bear does a teammate introduce as a "booger-eating spaz"?
Timmy Lupus
Timmy Lupus. The shy right fielder, written off as the worst player in the league, is sent in late in the title game and comes through with a key play nobody expected.
Q 20Which bookworm Bear memorizes baseball statistics and helps with strategy?
Alfred Ogilvie
Alfred Ogilvie. The asthmatic stats whiz rides the bench all season, and when he is finally sent up to bat in the title game he points out he is 0 for 14, then draws a walk.
Councilman Bob Whitewood. He had won the lawsuit that forced the league to take the kids it turned away, his own son among them, and no father had the time to coach them.
Q 24How was The Bad News Bears rated on its release in 1976?
Rated PG
Rated PG. Nearly thirty years on, the 2005 remake told much the same foul-mouthed story and came out rated PG-13.
Q 25The actor who played Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears later played which horror villain in a remake?
Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger. He took the part over from Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and an unimpressed Roger Ebert wrote that under the makeup he "might as well play Santa Claus".
Q 26Which studio released The Bad News Bears in April 1976?
Paramount
Paramount. When Little League officials protested about the children's language, the studio answered that the film was not about Little League at all.
Q 27Buttermaker's actor shared one BAFTA Best Actor nomination between The Bad News Bears and which other comedy?
The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys. He was a substitute in that film: the part of the cranky old vaudevillian had been won by Red Skelton, who then walked away from it.
Q 28Roger Ebert called The Bad News Bears an "unblinking, scathing look" at what in American society?
Competition
Competition. Ebert found stretches of the comedy "very disturbing", because the competitors were Little Leaguers and the people who most needed to win were the adults.
Q 29The score of the Bears sequel Breaking Training borrows its themes from which Tchaikovsky piece?
The 1812 Overture
The 1812 Overture. The original film had been scored from a famous opera, so the sequel's composer, Craig Safan, followed its lead and built his music on Tchaikovsky's showpiece.
Q 30In Breaking Training, the Bears travel to play in which famous stadium?
The Astrodome
The Astrodome. Beating the Texas champions there earns the Bears a trip to take on the best young team in Japan, which is where the third film picks up.