30 for 30: 1993 — "The Sandlot"
"Remember, kid. There's heroes and there's legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."
What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 1993. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992
“The Sandlot” starts with a voiceover telling us about the time Babe Ruth called his shot, pointing to the stands before firing off a game-winning homer at the bottom of the 9th on a full count in the 1932 World Series. That story has morphed into awed legend over the years. It’s been partially confirmed by Lou Gehrig, and, in “The Sandlot,” passed down by our sportscaster narrator.
“The Sandlot” is about one summer in the lives of a group of kids who play baseball together, but it’s also about nostalgia for simpler times when legends could point to the center stands and hit a home run. But most importantly, it’s about who tells the stories of those legends.
The legend of Babe Ruth looms large over “The Sandlot,” but another legend looms just as large in the eyes of our protagonists: that of The Beast, a massive dog said to have killed a handful of kids; and his owner, the mean Mr. Mertle, who supposedly put the dog up to the crime.
We later learn that Mertle is not mean, and he’s also a former pro baseball player who played with Babe Ruth. His career was cut short when he took a fastball to the head, permanently blinding him.
When I watched the movie this time around, I really wished it would have told me more about Mertle. We don’t get enough scenes with him. Mertle carries on the legend of Babe Ruth (or, just “George,” as he calls him), but nobody carries on Mertle’s legend —until he meets Scotty Smalls and the rest of the team.
I think it’s interesting that our entry point into this story isn’t Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez, the best player on the sandlot team. No, it’s Scotty Smalls, a kid who starts the movie not knowing how to properly throw a baseball and ends it hitting the most regretful home run of his life. It’s Smalls we hear telling Benny’s story, the common man regaling his audience with tales of the mythic person he once knew. I’m reminded of that old quote about how everyone dies twice— once when your body dies, and then again when people stop saying your name.
“The Sandlot” is about nostalgia for childhood and simpler times, yes, but now I think it’s about the impact of the oral storytelling tradition, about making sure someone’s name still graces your lips. That the movie has a voiceover only helps further this read of the movie.
And I’d like to think that when Benny or Smalls tell their kids their bedtime stories, they tell them the story of how Benny outran The Beast that summer, but they also tell the tale of Mr. Mertle and how he was as great a ballplayer as the Great Bambino.
I didn’t make any of those connections with this movie as a kid, but looking back, it’s easy to see why I connected with this movie so much, even though I dind’t realize it when I saw it for the first time as a kid.
Minus the stepdad family dynamic, I am Smalls. I was a new kid every few summers who was an OK athlete but who still enjoyed sports and hanging out with friends, but desperately wanted to belong somewhere to something. I would eventually find my people every fall, once school had settled in, and my memories of playing sandlot ball, or street hockey, or basketball or soccer or lacrosse, are not too different from the kids in “The Sandlot.” We just wanted to go out and play the game. I remember one of my birthdays in Alaska was spent just playing a game of sandlot ball at the field near our house because I was just happy it hadn’t started snowing yet. This movie will make you nostalgic for your childhood for sure.
This movie influenced me so much that I dreamed one day of being a professional baseball player (preferably for the Braves, but I’d settle for the Mariners, home of my heroes Ken Griffey, Jr. and Ichiro, or maybe the Cardinals, because they had Mark McGwire, who would never cheat and cork his bats like Sammy Sosa…nevermind).
I would go to card shows at the mall and spend allowance money on packs of baseball cards in hopes of finding one of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron or Mickey Mantle. As I got older I realized my sports dreams were not in the cards, but I still enjoyed playing. And that’s something that “The Sandlot” lets kids know right off the bat. Benny is the only one of the group to go pro, we’re told. And what does Smalls do? He becomes a play-by-play announcer— still close to the game he loves.
This also isn’t so much a “movie” as it is a series of vignettes stitched together at the seams: The Gang Plays Night Ball. The Gang Has a Campout. Squints Kisses Wendy. Smalls Gets Into a Pickle. Benny Outruns The Beast. It all has a loose hangout feel.
There’s also an awestruck wonder here, which harkens back to the nostalgia of it all, a sense that you truly never do have summers again like you do when you’re a kid. where everything is outsized and every experience has the potential to be another great story— hopefully, a story that you can pass on for years to come.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find my baseball glove.
Up next: We’re going to go to 1994 and take a tour of the Pridelands with Simba and Mufasa in “The Lion King.”
Letter of Recommendation
Speaking of Ichiro, this article from the Athletic about his time with Seattle is one of the best things I’ve read in a long time.
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