The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings

1976 baseball movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Negro League pitcher Bingo Long's in the declining years of his baseball career. He's disgruntled, tired of the way the owners of the baseball teams treat the players. The firing of his pal Rainbow after a beanball is the last straw, and Bingo gets together some stars from various teams to form an all-star barnstorming team. The owners, understandably, are irritated by that.

Nice little baseball movie here and probably the second best movie that Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones were in together. And was Richard Pryor an Ugnaut? Maybe him, too. The comedy didn't quite work for me in this, but the baseball and it captures the feeling of the late-30's and the oft-flamboyant trash-talking Negro Leagues and African American life style so well. And I should know because I grew up a black boy in the late-1930's. I enjoyed the parallels, the writers having a little fun with baseball lore. There's a catcher half the size of Midget Cadell and a one-armed player a la Pete Gray. Richard Pryor's attempts to break into the majors as a Cuban and later Chief Tokohama was straight from my favorite baseball story of all time when a black player tried to break into the league in 1901 by claiming to be a Native American. And some of Bingo Long's antics--sitting his outfielders down, for example--seemed straight from Satchell Paige's biography. So it's a lot of fun as a baseball movie, and there are some nice social themes in there as well. Don't go into it expecting something Major League funny though. The characters are more likable though. Billy Dee's smile is infectious, and James Earl Jones is great here. This is the best baseball movie he's ever been in, of course.