This chapter considers the use of baseball in the oeuvre of Linklater. It is concerned specifically with the function of the game, its players, and its culture in the director’s two sports genre movies Bad News Bears (2005) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016); but it also takes into account its presentation in other films. Drawing on close textual analysis, cultural history, and critical theory, the chapter argues that baseball—which Linklater himself played at college level before a heart problem ended his chances of going pro (if that was really ever an option at all)—is used to contemplate both the joys and the traumas of youthful, male, and mostly white comradery in U.S. culture; and, conversely, to reflect on an American culture historically dominated by white old “boys.” Indeed, if baseball is frequently said to be a symbol of the American Dream, Linklater suggests it is a rather distinct and exclusive one.

“A METAPHOR FOR EVERYTHING”

Few contemporary directors are associated with baseball as much as Richard Linklater, the exceptions being, perhaps, his compatriots Ken Burns and James Benning. Strictly speaking, however, only one or two of Linklater’s movies could be argued to be “baseball movies,” movies whose focus lies with the athletic pursuits of a player or team (often against all odds). The first of these is the adaptation Bad News Bears, an account of a misfit little league baseball team and their disillusioned, alcoholic coach Morris Buttermaker (Billy-Bob Thornton). The second is college flick Everybody Wants Some!!, which tracks scholarship ball player’s Jake’s (Blake Jenner’s) first few days on campus in 1980s Texas, but spends little time on the field. Yet the sport recurs in one form or another across the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Linklater’s one-off ESPN documentary called Inning by Inning (2008) is a portrait of college coach Augie Garrido as much as it is a paean to the game. Baseball is one of the central chronotropes in the high school drama Dazed and Confused (1993), while it makes a short but memorable appearance in the coming-of-age document Boyhood (2014).