The Sandlot (1993): Favourite Films Series

The Sandlot (1993): Favourite Films Series

If you were a kid who grew up in the 90’s, you might remember The Sandlot. You might even remember it fondly. I loved the film as a kid, but when I was in my teens, I went back to it, and not only found a new love and appreciation for it, but came to the realization that it was actually one of my all-time favourites, and would always hold a special place in my heart. It’s rare for something nostalgic from your childhood to endure like that, but I think it also speaks to the underrated qualities of The Sandlot.

There’s a particular kind of magic you only experience as a kid during summer break from school, and The Sandlot tells a tale that perfectly captures that magic, which makes it one of the best summer films ever made. I was going to do a top ten list on the best summer-set films, but decided against it, because The Sandlot was always going to be my number-one pick, so I thought I might as well just talk about it at length instead of nine other films plus this one. Scotty Smalls is the new kid on the block, he doesn’t have any friends yet, but he sees a kid in the neighborhood packing a baseball bat and glove, so he follows him to this place they call “the sandlot”, an old baseball diamond where eight friends hang out every day and play an endless game of baseball. The other kids are hesitant to let the inexperienced, nerdy Smalls into their group/team, but Benny sticks his neck out for Smalls and the two become best friends. It’s not all fun and games all summer long, though. Scotty’s lack of baseball knowledge lands him in a world of trouble, when a highly valuable baseball signed by the legendary player Babe Ruth ends up over a fence and into the jaws of a local neighborhood legend, a monstrous dog known as “the Beast.”

The Sandlot has a bit of an unconventional structure. In a normal three-act screenplay, there is always a plot point at the twenty minute mark. Seriously, check out any one of your favourite movies, and you’ll find, sure enough, at the twenty minute mark or somewhere very close, something will happen that will drive the story forward in a certain direction. In The Sandlot, the plot point at twenty minutes is Benny helping Smalls catch his first baseball and make his first successful throw. It’s a triumphant moment: Smalls is accepted by the other kids and allowed to play with them, it establishes his new close friendship with Benny, and it gets the story underway. If Smalls hadn’t caught the ball, he would have been sent away from the sandlot by the other kids, he probably wouldn’t have made any friends that summer, and there wouldn’t have been a movie (or at least not the same movie, maybe a very different and more boring one). But another thing conventionally-structured screenplays usually do is establish a source of opposition for the protagonist early on. The Sandlot does establish one, but not for a while. Time is taken to let the audience get to know the characters first before the big problem comes up.

The characters and dialogue all come off as genuine. These don’t feel like “movie kids” written by an adult trying to remember how kids sound and act and what they do. Writer/Director/Narrator David Mickey Evans did not forget what it was like to be a kid, and even though these kids are living in the 1960’s, a time long before the internet or cellphones or video games, there’s an undeniable timeless quality to how the kids talk to each other and the kind of activities they participate in, in addition to their baseball games. Briefly on that note, baseball is the main focus, and even though sports movies aren’t a genre I gravitate toward, I think The Sandlot technically counts as one, making it my favourite sports movie by a landslide. It makes you care about baseball and understand how fun it is, even if you aren’t a fan.

Going back to the characters, when you watch them all playing or hanging out, it feels like you’re watching an actual group of friends. Many of the scenes, lines, and moments feel improvisational, which adds to the realism. The casting, too, is excellent, especially for a cast primarily made up of child actors. Not a single kid stands out as being particularly weak or not fitting in. One of the kids remembered most fondly is Patrick Renna as Hamilton “Ham” Porter with his repeated line that has worked its way into the realm of mainstream pop culture references. I would be remiss if I didn’t include it. “You’re killing me, Smalls!” Every single character is unique and memorable (from the slightly annoying but endearing Alan “Yeah-Yeah” McClennan to the pitcher who throws his famous “heater” Kenny DeNunez) and even though not every character gets a moment to shine, like Bertram or the brothers Timmy and Tommy Timmins, every one of them at least have little moments that all add up to greatness, and these start to shine through the more you re-watch it.

This is one of those movies like Alien or Iron Man or What We Do in the Shadows (bet you didn’t think I could connect it to all those movies) where a lot of the dialogue is easy to miss if you’re not listening carefully, and this is likely because of the improvisational style, but that’s part of what adds to the re-watchability factor. When I was a kid, I missed so many of the lines because they’re spoken by characters who aren’t necessarily front and center, or they might be said over other lines, but they’re fun to pick out and laugh about later. Even though Smalls is the main character and the one we get most of the story through, Benny is the heart and soul of the group, with the greatest passion for baseball of them all. As the narration goes, “You see, for us, baseball was a game. But, for Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, baseball was life.”

I’ve covered the main aspects of what makes The Sandlot entertaining and timeless, but all of these aspects also contribute to another reason it’s one of my favourites: it’s very, very funny. PG-rated family movies can be hit or miss for comedy, but The Sandlot doesn’t come off as restrained. The kids utter swears (not a lot, but not just one or two either), they are completely unsupervised by their parents, and they even get into chewing tobacco, which makes for one of the funniest scenes in the whole movie, where they celebrate a victory against a rival team by going on an amusement park ride and throwing up everywhere. Even when things get intense with the central problem of the film (the baseball that goes over the fence) the comedy doesn’t stop coming—if anything, it just gets funnier. I find comedies are often good for a laugh one time, but when you know the jokes that are coming, it doesn’t hold up the same to watch them over again. The Sandlot is one of the few I could never get tired of. Certain lines, moments, and situations will never not be funny to me.

The Sandlot is obviously an easy recommendation from me, but if you didn’t see it as a kid and come into it for the first time as a jaded adult, your level of enjoyment could vary. The best way to come at it is to remember this is a story about kids and what it’s like to be a kid, and to enjoy the humorous angle it takes. It isn’t a life-shattering, mind-blowing story, but it’s a lot of fun, and if you have fond memories of childhood, I guarantee it will stir up some good feelings. Plus, it’s not without a few genuinely poignant moments and lines. I’ll never forget Babe Ruth’s two great lines to Benny: “Everybody gets one chance to do something great. Most people never take the chance, either because they're too scared, or they don't recognize it when it spits on their shoes.” And: “Remember, kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.” 

 

For more insights about why The Sandlot is great: 

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-mythology-of-sandlot.html