Important Info re: Ogilvie from Bad News Bears

Seneca, quoting Epicurus, writes in his Moral Epistle No. 11 that one should — in order to conduct oneself as virtuously as possible — one should “Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them.”

Seneca continues:

Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.

While I won’t attempt to guess at which Master the reader has chosen for these purposes, allow me to take for granted that, for probably 50% or 70% of our readers, said Master is probably the fictional character Alfred Ogilvie of both 1976’s The Bad News Bears and 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.

Indeed, Ogilvie possesses the three virtues most cherished by this publication: he’s bespectacled, is facile with baseball numbers, and, as the above image indicates, enjoys the company of women in high-waisted fashions.

What the reader may not know — but should probably start knowing right away — is that the actor who portrays Ogilvie in the aforementioned important films actually appears in what science has scientifically proven to be the funniest extant comedy not featuring the Marx Brothers: Woody Allen’s Love and Death.

Regard, bespectacled child actor Alfred Lutter as a young and impressionable Boris:

While the reader will be tempted to unpack the meaning of this important information, he or she would be wise to resist that temptation, and, instead, to let these Amazing Facts wash over him and/or make the author, who is now hungry after writing this, a sandwich.

Image stolen from a Bronx Banter interview with Josh Wilker. And also the movie Bad News Bears.