There is one summer we can never forget. It’s when Benny, Smalls and the gang got us in to one of the biggest pickles of our lives and Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez got his reputation as being the “Jet.” The story begins with a grown-up Scotty Smalls, telling the audience about the day that changed his life. When you’re new kid in town in the beginning of summer, the hardest thing to do is find friends. Luckily, Smalls finds his way to the “Sandlot,” where he is in complete awe. His first attempt at catching and throwing a ball is a complete disaster. All the neighborhood kids thought it was unbelievable that a kid didn’t know how to play the game, but there was one guy that saw potential in Smalls. Benny quickly befriended Smalls because he could complete their squad.
This is when you find out that there is something special about Benny. “Just stick your glove in the air and I’ll take care of it,” Benny says and knocks it right into Smalls glove. With Smalls accepted in to the group, the story unfolds and we experience all of the childhood antics that most boys always get into.
In 1993 director David Evans brings us back to our childhood in a tale where baseball is not just a game, it’s a way of life. In this short summer, Smalls and his crew learn lessons that all guys figure out at some point like how to land a kiss with the hot lifeguard and work together as a team. With baseball, the guys at the Sandlot felt like anything was possible, except for the day they are forced to face “the Beast,” a large dog that inhabits the house behind the field. Home runs are normally a good thing, but in the Sandlot they just mean that the ball is gone forever and are in the paws of the beast. With one of their days ending short due to a homer from Ham, Smalls decides to snatch a ball from his step-dad’s trophy room not knowing the value of it. Unaware of who Babe Ruth is, Smalls is up to bat and knocks it back into the lair of the beast. Slowly his stomach turns because he finally realizes that the Great Bambino, and the king of crash are all nicknames of one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived.
We are given lots of things in this film that would remind us of our childhood. When Smalls inquires about the beast they decide to do a late night camp out, smores and everything. This is where the legend of the beast is told and that its sole purpose is to eat children. It’s funny because on my street growing up, all the kids had stories about particular houses like the crazy cat lady at the corner house and the abandoned house owned by a psychotic doctor. Where did these stories spawn from? No one ever knows, but we did believe in all of it. Telling ridiculous and imaginative stories was common between kids, which some times comes back to us as adults from time to time.
To get the ball back, the boys try a number of simple tactics at first but soon became a bit more elaborate. I enjoyed this particular section of the movie because when I was younger I would never give up. I would spend all day trying to solve a problem and had all the patience in the world. My friends and I would think we would have this golden idea, but just ended in all of us getting in trouble with our parents. When our parents asked us what we were thinking, we simply said “I dunno.”
All of us guys growing up in our neighborhoods have had our little cliques, who all have had a character like Squints the loverboy, or Smalls the brain of the group, or Ham the chubby eater, or Benny the leader of the group. Watching this film over and over again takes me back to my days in Riverside where life was easy and all we did was play. If you have this in your DVD collection, watch this film and take a run through your childhood.
Keep it fresh.
