Walter Matthau plays Morris Buttermaker, a former minor league baseball player who is recruited to coach a Little League team composed of the worst players in Southern California. Disillusioned by his fall from grace, Buttermaker wallows in booze and agrees to coach the team only for the money. After having to forfeit the team’s first game, he decides to recruit a 12-year-old female pitcher (Tatum O’Neal) and the tough-kid town outcast (a young Jackie Earle Haley, later of Watchmen and Little Children). Though Buttermaker finds it difficult not to chastise the players for sucking, the coach is able to put the bottle down long enough to realize they want to win just as much as he does.
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