Guys! You Guys! You won’t believe it but The Sandlot turned 20 a few days ago. I mean, shit I am old. I just picked up the 20th Anniversary edition of this movie and I think I can safely say that is easily one of the best teen/kid/sports movie of all time. This just takes me back when I caught this at the theater like 8 times during one faithful April in my youth. I even talked about this movie in a previous Movie of the Day post, but I feel the need to take a trip down memory lane with a highlight reel of some of the best moments from this movie for it’s anniversary. SANDLOT EVERYONE! SANDLOT SANDLOT!
The Sandlot is sparsely narrated by the main character (now an adult) who occasionally drops in on the action to comment on events or help move the story along. Tom Guiry plays Scotty Smalls, the shy new kid on the block who wants to join the rowdy pickup baseball team that plays every day in the neighborhood sandlot. But he doesn’t know how to catch a baseball, and his stepfather (Dennis Leary) is too busy to teach him. He tries out for the sandlot gang anyway, and though he isn’t very good, it turns out he’s lucky: there happen to be only eight of them, and nine makes a team. The summer passes blissfully as Scotty learns to play ball under the wing of Benny Rodriguez (Mike Vitar), the oldest and best player, as well as Ham, Squints, Repeat, and the rest of the kid-eccentrics. The skies darken, however, when Benny literally knocks the stuffing out of the team’s only baseball, a sign of impending doom, or worse, bad luck. Wanting to set things right, Scotty returns home and “borrows” his stepfather’s ball, which he promptly uses to hit his first home run, knocking the ball clear out of the sandlot into mean old Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones)’s junkyard, home to Mertle’s legendary guard dog The Beast. Scotty admits that he took the ball without asking, and he naively explains that his stepfather will want it back since it had a woman’s name written on it: some lady named Babe Ruth. Horror-stricken, the sandlot gang mobilizes to fetch the autographed ball from the clutches of The Beast, building a series of mechanical ball-retrieval machines which get progressively more complicated and preposterous as The Beast’s size grows in their imaginations. ~ Anthony Reed, Rovi
Let’s be honest, aside from Benny the Jet, you all wanted to be Porter. The smack talking ham of the group, he had some of the best lines in the movie and didn’t take shit from those preppy shits who think they were hot stuff cause they played in a league. He was unrelenting during this scene, setting the stage for some good, solid psych outs.
I definitely want smore of this movie. Sadly there were two other sequels that basically should have never existed. This was the perfect how to guide on making smores.
I am certain I said “forever” like Squints did for like months on end.
*whispers* Wendy Peffercorn *whispers*
Lord she was the object of desire for many of teens
Again Porter just laying it down for these fools. No one could be this kid at insults. He was just the fucking man. The kid you wanted to be like.
Sigh, I could go on and on with this movie but seriously, fucking watch it if you have never watched it before.
