Bingo

 The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976) is another movie that I've known about for ever, but kind of put in a category with sports movies, or maybe barnstorming movies (The Great Waldo Pepper?). But Ms. Spenser had never heard of it and wanted to know why I was holding out on her.

It starts with newsreel footage of the actual 1930s Negro League, including Satchel Paige. We then move to Billy Dee Williams, Bingo Long, pitching for his Negro League team against slugger James Earl Jones' team. It's a wild game, with Williams sending his team off the field for his "Invite Pitch". But off the field, the team owner, Ted Ross, mistreats them, firing a batter who gets concussed by a beanball and docking everyone's pay $5 to send him back home. So Williams decides to form his own team of all stars from the Negro League: the Bingo Long Traveling etc. Since they won't be in the league, they'll have to barnstorm - travel around the country playing local high-school teams and the like. 

He doesn't have much trouble recruiting other players, including Jones. He picks up one guy because he wants to get away from the overweight man-eating team owner Mabel King. He picks Richard Pryor because he has a car. Pryor is studying Spanish and plans to sneak into the Major Leagues as Cuban. And he takes Rainbow (DeWayne Jessie), the concussed player who has been stricken mute by his injury, as batboy. 

For their first game, they ask an older black man for directions to the ball field and he tells them to do it right - go through town on mainstreet, high-steppin' and cake-walkin' - he calls it "kickin' the mule". When they try this, the white folk look suspicious and the black folk shake their heads. So they try harder, kick a little higher, swing a bat like a baton, and soon everybody is into it. There's even a song "Kick That Mule".

I'll skip over the highs and lows, the hi-jinks and the troubles. The owners association tries to get them back, and even sends thugs out after them. In the end, they play a game versus Williams' old team. Win, they join the Negro League. Lose, they go back to their old teams at half salary. You guess how it comes out.

This is very much a feel-good movie. The team gets called the N-word, but doesn't seem face real segregation - they eat, drink, and go to ball games with the white folk. Pryor gets in trouble sleeping with a white prostitute, but it was a setup by the owners thugs. And in the end, one of the team even gets scouted for the Majors. Pessimistic Jones figures the end of the color line means the death of the Negro League. Ever-optimistic Williams has great plans for the team. The movie fades to a sketch of the two and the credits role. They don't even know that WWII is right around the corner.

This is a great movie, with fine turns from Williams, Jones and the rest of the cast. There is some goofy clowning on and off the field, and it doesn't seem like there's any problem Bingo can't work around. Racism was a fact of life, but not something that could crush a man's soul. Maybe a bit of a fantasy, but who doesn't like fantasy?