By Robert Scucci
| Published 39 seconds ago
Roger Ebert perfectly summed up The Sandlot when he said that “this movie had seduced me with its memories of what really matters when you are 12,” and I can’t think of a better way to describe it. Literally nothing happens in The Sandlot in the sense that the boys at its center are just living their lives and playing baseball. To them, though, everything is a life-altering event because they’re kids on summer vacation, there’s a scary dog lurking behind Mr. Mertle’s fence, and they want to play ball all day as if their lives depended on it.
I’m not saying this as an indictment of The Sandlot’s barebones story structure, but as a way to celebrate it. It’s fun, carefree, and even though you can look at the title cynically as an adult, there’s no other film that brings back memories of the days when insignificant moments felt like they defined your entire existence. Just like real life, sometimes the plot doesn’t matter. The memories you make while your parents let you run loose through the neighborhood, only expecting you home when the streetlights come on, however, are priceless.
The Boys And The Beast
The Sandlot centers on young Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), whose preteen years are narrated by an older version of himself (voiced by writer and director David Mickey Evans). A timid new kid in town, Scotty feels like an outsider but befriends Benny (Mike Vitar), a boy who eats, sleeps, and breathes baseball. The rest of the gang, Ham (Patrick Renna), Yeah-Yeah (Marty York), Kenny (Brandon Quinton Adams), Squints (Chauncey Leopardi), Bertram (Grant Gelt), and brothers Tommy (Shane Obedzinski) and Timmy (Victor DiMattia), are reluctant to let Scotty join their baseball clan, but Benny vouches for him and slowly teaches him how to master the game.
The boys’ adventures in The Sandlot all center around playing baseball, trash talking, and trying to impress girls, so the stakes are extremely low when you’re watching from an adult perspective. For a child, though, these are crucial moments that test their will and teach valuable lessons about facing fears, finding confidence, and causing a ruckus in the neighborhood when their antics spill beyond the titular sandlot.
The primary conflict tying it all together is retrieving Scotty’s stepfather’s Babe Ruth autographed baseball, which he accidentally smokes over Mr. Mertle’s (James Earl Jones) property line, where a vicious dog known only as “the Beast” guards the backyard. The boys need to come up with a plan to retrieve the ball and escape the Beast’s wrath, which in their minds is almost mythological.
Nothing Ever Happens, And That’s The Point
It’s easy to criticize slice-of-life, coming-of-age films like The Sandlot because nothing much happens on the surface. The adventure is mostly in the kids’ heads because they haven’t yet had the chance to experience the world the way their cynical adult counterparts have. The only thing that matters is playing the game and learning something about themselves as their bond becomes unbreakable.
There’s no real antagonist in The Sandlot, just vibes and the kind of youthful exuberance that reminds you of a time when the biggest conflict in your life was hopping a fence to outrun a dog or trying not to throw up on a carnival ride after consuming too much chewing tobacco in an attempt to look cool.
Sometimes you just need a reminder that the simple things in life are worth celebrating. As long as your buddies are by your side and you share a common goal, it’s easy to lose yourself in the day-to-day because when you’re a kid these days feel like forever. A family-friendly reminder that you may not realize you’re living in the good old days until they’re gone, The Sandlot plays out exactly like you remember it, with no real climax or conflict, but with a whole lot of fun living in the moment.
The Sandlot is streaming on Netflix.
