The film's cast includes Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley, and Alfred W. Lutter.

With the entire team wanting to quit due to the humiliation of their first loss, Buttermaker begins to take his coaching more seriously, teaching basics like hitting, fielding and sliding.

The site's critical consensus reads, "The Bad News Bears is rude, profane, and cynical, but shot through with honest, unforced humor, and held together by a deft, understated performance from Walter Matthau.

"[6] In his 1976 review, critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, and called it "an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society".

[7] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling the film's characters "more types than people" and the kids' foul-mouth dialogue "overdone", although he found O'Neal's performance "genuinely affecting".

[9] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times declared it "the best American screen comedy of the year to date", adding, "Bright, pugnacious and utterly realistic as most children seem to be today, these kids are drawn with much accuracy and are played beautifully.

"[10] Vincent Canby of The New York Times found the film only "occasionally funny", but praised screenwriter Bill Lancaster for "the talent and discipline to tell the story of The Bad News Bears almost completely in terms of what happens on the baseball diamond or in the dugout".

[11] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post praised it as "a lively, spontaneously funny entertainment" that "could rally a large parallel audience seeking less innocuous and stereotyped pictures with and about children".