Chronology is not used in any particularly unusual ways in The Bad News Bears, but even when a film does not do anything unusual, you can still look at where the movie starts. In the case of this film, the opening scene features Buttermaker arriving at the baseball field early in the morning, pouring out the last of a can of beer only to pour some liquor into the can in its place, and continuing on to find out about the team he is supposed to coach. By beginning here, we are told that this movie will be about Buttermaker and how this situation of his presented at the beginning will be different by the end of the movie.

Chronology is, however, used in a couple of interesting ways in Hardball, and this helps you figure out what the focus of the movie is. The first telling piece of choice in chronology is where the movie begins; this is important for every movie. Hardball begins with Connor O'Neal, drunk, stumbling through the rain and into a church. We quickly find out that he has come to the church to pray for the Bulls to "cover the spread" - praying for God's help in winning one of his bets. This tells you that Connor is the central figure in this story. It also suggests that the movie is going to be about him changing from this type of person into something else; it establishes the "before" for the eventual "after."

This film's other interesting use of chronology is near the end, during Conor's team's game against their big rivals, the Buawahs. If they win this game, the go to the "ships" (championships). It's the last inning, they are tied 2-2, and there are two outs. The next batter up is having a mild asthma attack and cannot hit, so the coach has no choice but to let G-Baby - the younger brother of one of his players, not actually a member of the team because he is so young - bat. Just as G-Baby leaves the dugout with his bat, the film cuts away to later that evening, with no reference to what happened with G-Baby batting until later in the film, near the very end. This is an unusual thing to do in a sports movie, cutting away from the big game. But this cut is telling. By delaying letting the audience know how the game turns out, you let the audience know that the outcome of the game is not the focus of the movie. The people are the focus.

We do find out what happened when G-Baby came to bat, but are told what happened by Conor at G-Baby's funeral. That evening after the game, G-Baby was killed in a drive-by shooting. When Conor tells about G-Baby batting in the big game, and tells how he drives in the winning run, he is doing so in context of explaining how G-Baby made him a better person. So both the cutting away from the game before G-Baby's at-bat, and including this scene later as Conor explains the important part G-Baby and the rest of the boys have played in is life, helps emphasize that the focus of this movie is the people in the story and how they change. Baseball is what helps these changes happen, but baseball is not what this movie is about.