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A Tribute to Baseball,
Summer, & Best Friends. |
The catcher views the entire field at all times, and when a team’s captain is not publicly declared it is usually he who is in charge of the clubhouse. It’s this sort of leader that bears the physically demanding role of target, and is usually occupied by the fat kid on the team.
Ham is my favorite character in the movie, mostly because he’s most well-cast actor. I’m sure when this kid (Patrick Renna) was growing up he was always stuck being catcher. Makes sense. It’s the only position that never involves running or any sort of hasty movement. The same rule is applied for goalies in soccer.
While I’d love to just list every quote Ham has in the movie, which would actually provide you readers with something to chuckle at, I’ll make some jokes that are funny in my head but the next day I’ll say to myself “I don’t get it”. Things are going to get real interesting… Ham was the knuckles of all the players, too. He’d always talk the team’s trash and start all their fights. I’m also sure he’s the one who puked the most on the spinney cars. Most of my love for Ham is really just for his actor. As a Bostonian I respect and agree with everything he says. I bought like 57 cases of Sprite after he was in that commercial with the black guy from the Jetta commercials. I also heard recently that the [SiC] new york yankees are thinking of firing Joe Torre to allow Patrick Renna to step in as head coach of the [SiC] yankees. They say they liked the way he called the game from behind the plate. “Sweet” Lou Pinella has recently relied
on similar tactics to keep his job in Tampa Bay. Funny how whenever
the Red Sox lose to Tampa Bay I end up sucking my thumb in the fetal
position while I wait out an ad for “The Sandlot: The Soundtrack”.
I didn’t even know this movie had music in it.
He swings and misses on the first pitch and gave me the biggest shock I’ve ever experienced in a movie. Then the perfect count: 0-1. He cranks it over the fence and exclaims “Yeah!” and pumps his fist. He runs around the bases while everyone throws their gloves at him and hit him.
He lets them know. He knows what he has just done. This is also the setup to The Big Pickle. It’s really the most powerful scene in the movie. It was the first plot twist ever. Yep, Fight Club is number two. Well that’s about all Hams ever does in this
movie. I’m sure there are scenes you think I missed, but you’re
opinion in awesome movie moments is probably more slurred than a
Ted Kennedy skid trail.
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I may or may not have mentioned this before, but at the time when "The Sandlot" was released (and, okay, for many years afterward) I had a really nasty habit of watching a movie, enjoying a movie, then creating elaborate alternate universes in which said movie had a sequel, and I was the star. This, naturally, did not stop me from bitching when, twelve years later, they actually did release a sequel to "The Sandlot" with, you guessed it, a not-at-all Tatum O'Neal-esque female lead. How dare they piss on the memory of a beloved childhood film by adding a girl to it. Especially when everyone knows that I was the only girl cool enough to hang out with the boys from the original "Sandlot," even though we haven't seen most of them for a good seven or eight years. Yes, at age eleven I was past my silly school girl crushes on the various members of NKOTB or Becca's mulleted football star boyfriend from "Life Goes On," but not yet at the point where my hormones kicked in and I started giving lovelorn glances to the 4'11'' kid with his entire head shaved except for the bangs. So it only seems natural that, as a tomboy who also spent time imagining herself in the sequel to "A League of Their Own," my heart would be stolen by a movie about a bunch of boys roughly my age playing sports. So with that, some thoughts on the dateability of the entire "Sandlot" gang.
Timmy, in hindsight, gains some boyfriend points for growing up to be insanely rich. But because I wasn't a money-grubbing whore when I was a 'tween, I didn't really give him a second thought. He just. . . looks too much like a tertiary bully from "Our Gang." Besides, when you're 11 there's absolutely nothing less enticing than the prospect of a younger sibling following you around all the time. Speaking of which. . .
Tommy is (*ahem*. . . was) probably the least desirable member of the team to me. Yes, even less so than Ham. He was just too young. And aside from the fact that he appears to already have a receding hair line at age 9, the problem is that. . .well, the poor kid looks like he's got just a touch of The Downs. Maybe that's why he repeated everything. Timmy was a retard, and none of them were hateful enough to tell the retard he couldn't play, or even ask him to stop repeating. "The Colossus of Clout. . . and actually played with it. . . hot water burn baby. . . " etc.
Those of you in the viewing audience might better remember Kenny as one of The Amazing Disappearing Black Brothers from the "Mighty Ducks" franchise. If you'll recall, in the first MD film, Brandon Adams (the actor in question) played Jesse Hall, angry young black hockey player. Also on the team was his brother, Terry. Remember him? When the sequel came around, it was time to streamline to make way for the gimmick brigade. The ice skating siblings were out in favor of a singing cowboy, and poor Terry Hall was affirmative actioned back to Minnesota to make room for Ghetto Fabulous Ice Hockey Whiz Ruxss Tyler (played by Mr. Kenan Thompson, truly a stalwart of our generation). Then when D3 rolled around, there was no sign nor mention of either Hall brother, both having been usurped by Kel's better half. In fact, I think he might be the ONLY cast member from D2 that didn't make it into the third film. I mean shit, they keep fucking Averman around but they can't give a scholarship to two different black men? This country, I tell you.
Anyway, before chucking a piece of plastic at my melon (no, seriously, he didn't. Don't e-mail me.), the one comment B had about the cover art was this: "I'd forgotten that the fat little fucker from 'The Big Green' was in this movie." How he forgot this is honestly beyond me, especially when you consider that the seed for Sandlot week was originally planted many months ago at PBHQ, when Nick and I decided to do a tandem recitation of Ham's S'mores Speech. But, in B's defense, how many people out there can honestly say they haven't turned on their TV, seen Ham dressed as a wigger in a SOBE commercial, and basically thought the same exact thing? I'm guessing not many. At age 11, if accused of wanting a boy like Ham as my boyfriend, I probably would've indignantly yelled, "NUH UH," blushed a deep red color, then wandered away to spend some time alone. As the full fledged hip and metropolitan woman of the world that I am today, I have to think that maybe it wouldn't be so bad (or SOBE bad, I guess). I mean, what woman wouldn't want a boyfriend who could keep her up to her nose in s'mores all day long? As a side note, the actor who played Ham, Patrick Renna, has what just may be the scariest IMDB message board I've ever seen.
Okay, okay, Bertram. Now. . . as a child of the 80's, I'm naturally attracted to the kitsch value of a boyfriend whose name includes not one but two different Sesame Street characters. So let's just assume that if his last name had been Prairie Dawn, I'd have let him touch my training bra.
One can't consider the boyfriend potential of Squints without considering his connection to Wendy Peffercorn. I mean, we've already been told that he grows up to marry her and father a bunch of children with her. Which, based on attractiveness of Marley Shelton compared to the attractiveness of Squints, tells us nothing if not that he grows up to have a pretty big L7 weenie of his own. But at the same time, Squints has kissed a woman. He's kissed her long and good. So is it an okay trade to date a boy who longs for an older woman, if the trade off is that he knows how to French kiss. I don't know. I just don't know.
Before I started writing this, I was sure that Marty York had just grown up to look like a larger version of his "Sandlot" self. No hair on his chest, kinda greasy, and even more wonk-eyed than he was before. But I was wrong. Turns out, he grew up to be a magician.
If you take away the high water pants, and the big nasty black eye, and the giant bass hat, Smalls is probably the second cutest kid on the team. I remember thinking when "Lassie" came out, "Hey! Isn't that the kid from 'Camp Nowhere?' No, wait, oh man, it's Smalls. Dude, what's going on with your hair? Ugh, you're killing me Smalls." "Camp Nowhere," by the way, an awful movie. You know what the problem I always had with Smalls was? Tom Guiry was almost too good at acting, he seemed awkward in his scenes with the other kids. All the other actors just seem like they were plucked out of an actual sandlot and stuck in front of the camera. There's a natural awkwardness to them, but never with Smalls. He's always SO professional and SO "on" in his acting that he almost runs into that creepy Haley Joel Osmont man-child territory. So, in short, child Smalls was not good boyfriend material, but since Tom Guiry is the only one to have forged a legitimate career post-"Sandlot," he'd probably be my choice nowadays. At least he's not a fucking magician. Jesus Christ.
It's impossible to not think Benny is just the complete tits. He's the talented one, the cute, the fast one, the only nice one, AND he occasionally hallucinates sports heroes. What's not to love? Mike Vitar wasn't much of an actor, but I was truly all about him in the two major roles of his career. Of course, when I didn't see much of him post-Duck, I kind of figured I'd never see him again. He never struck me as the type with post-teen years staying power. So D3 was kind of the end of an era, a loss of a childhood crush for me. Then again, according to IMDB he grew up to be a firefighter and. . .I think I have a crush on him all over again.
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What?
Double rollover nostalgia is what happens when you develop a fondness for a time period before you were born, usually as a result of this being the period when your parents were young. As a result, I have a small-but-not-too-small passion for '50s & early '60s pop culture. Well, between that, Happy Days, the fact that I live in a state with more diners from that era than anywhere else in the world, & of course, films like this. Watching The Sandlot was the first time a movie made me feel like I was part of something bigger. It gave a much more down-to-earth portrayal of just being an American kid than any other film I'd seen before. Sure, there were other buddy flicks... but the kids in those went on amazing adventures that I could only dream about. They went after pirates' treasure, or learned how to be ninjas. They hunted monsters, or befriended them. They were left home alone, or locked in school overnight. They traveled through time, or space, or magic wardrobes. The Sandlot was simpler than that.
It was just about kids hanging out, playing baseball, & having a great summer. The adventures weren't too wacky, & I didn't feel like I was missing out on some great adventure. This was a story I could relate to. I was good at hanging out, & I was good at having a great summer. Not as good as the Sandlot kids' summer, but the same elements were there. Campouts, swimming, ogling the Wendy Peffercorns that quickly walked in & out of my life. Baseball, I wasn't quite as good at...
Ok, I wasn't that bad. Just not as good as my peers. That's why I often just played by myself. One time last summer, when I was feeling particularly ambitious, I called up all my different hairstyles from the previous four years & asked them to join me in a pickup game.
At least I knew how to play. I knew what I was talking about. In my dad's house, I didn't have a choice. My father has always been a passionate man. He's passionate about his faith & his family. Birds & wildlife. Gardening & table manners. The blues and rock 'n roll. But aside from those first two, there was no passion I saw deeper in my father as I was growing up, than his love for the game of baseball. There are almost two entire rooms in my house dedicated to the things he's collected. Plaques & paintings. Bats & balls. Photos & Hall of Fame collector cards. Commemorative, unopened bottles of soda. Forever sealed inside is a small sample of air, memories, & flat, syrupy beverage from years gone by. Things I'd look at in awe but knew not to touch, let alone... well, you know...
Dad never played in a "real" a league, or at least he never had any stories about it if he did. All the stories he's ever told of him playing ball were with his 8 friends, whom he still sees & talks to on a regular basis to this day. They played in a non-professional softball league. Just a local group of guys in Philly who played against other groups of guys in Philly. My dad's team was called the Mad Hatters, & they all wore different, often stupid-looking hats. He played first base. His old first baseman's mitt is probably the most comfortable thing I've ever worn on my hand. He coached a lot as well. A women's softball team that my mom played on before I showed up. First base, of course. He coached my brother through most of his little league years. I was there in the dugout with him, keeping the books. Between the strategy of the game & the fun of just playing with your friends, those were the parts of the game I grew to love the most. It was just a game, & yet it was so much more.
I tried playing on a real team for a year in high school. My brother had been playing almost all his life, & I was busy doing soccer or karate or swimming. I was never exceptionally awesome at any of those. I just enjoyed them. So I wanted to try enjoying baseball "for real." There was Dad, patiently playing catch with me as I threw in his general direction — not making him move, but not quite hitting the bullseye that was his glove. This frustrated me at first, like it always did. I guess I expected to become instantly good. That I could just slip on a pair of PF Flyers & suddenly be able to break bricks with my hands by punching them from underneath. The shoes aren't what gave Benny his talent. His heart did. He went out & practiced every day, honing the skills of the game he loved & lived. And like Benny told Smalls to stop thinking so much & just have fun, so too was my father there to tell me. To stop worrying about being great, & just play the game. I didn't play in the league again after that first year. It just wasn't my style. I was much more comfortable playing with a tennis ball or a kickball on the intersection of Constitution Road & Antietam Drive than I could ever be on grass & dirt.
This is my sandlot. My playground. Cue the Madonna song. Or, more accurately in my head, that one girl from theatre whose mom was the dance choreographer. That girl sang so off key, that it's her nervously bad version of the song that stays in my mind. I drive past this stretch of pavement every day, usually at night. No one uses it as a baseball field now, & while I'm sort of grateful in that it doesn't warrant a crappy sequel, still, through my rose-colored nostalgic contact lenses, it's always a bright summer day at this intersection. You see the aftermath of a winter rain shower. I see a clear blue sky & humidity rising from the tar of the road. Faint yelling over close calls echo through my car as I drive to my grown-up life in the city. But I know better than to really grow up. Those faint yells would be pissed & demand a do-over. I'm always up for a do-over.
The Sandlot reinforced the fun of baseball being the most important part for me. It reinforced a lot of things about life & values for me.
The Sandlot was playing the night I first met my best friend, so technically, it's the first movie we saw together. With about 80 of our other closest friends... but out of everyone there, she's the only one I've managed to keep in close touch with. The one I insist in keeping in my life. For how long, you ask? Here, I'll give you a hint.
And it all started with dinner & The Sandlot. A movie about best friends. A movie that means a lot to me, like she & Dad mean a lot to me. I wouldn't be who I am without them. They're my pairs of PF Flyers. They make me run faster & jump higher. If nothing else, The Sandlot is at least eerily prophetic. In the end, Bertram got into "The '60s," & no one ever saw him again.
Wow, that's really creepy.
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So it's hard for me to say "this guy is cool" and mean it. I'm going to do that here. James Earl Jones is cool.
He exists to us now as a strange, unnaturally blue eyed Verizon Wireless God of acting thunder, showing up when Simba needs motivation, CNN needs station identification, or David Prowse/Hayden Christensen need to let someone know clearly that they are about to be forced to death by the futuristic distant past's robot Radio Raheem. A pretty impressive career for a guy who stuttered and was a borderline mute as a child. It's easy to love the man who was Darth Vader, but think of all the accomplishments he's accumulated over the years. - His first film was "Dr. Strangelove" for Stanley Kubrick, generally accepted as one of the greatest films of all time. - He played the first black president in 1972's "The Man." So without James Earl Jones we might still be having problems as a retarded, Hee Haw society that can't accept a black man as intelligent and in a position of power.
- He has appeared on "The Simpsons" and, get this, was the first established celebrity to appear on "Sesame Street." If that's not enough to get you street cred for the rest of your life I don't know what is. And among all his Tony Awards, Oscar nominations, and popular culture contribution milestones, it is Jones' contribution to the "sports movie" that endears him so strongly to me. James Earl has always shown the innate and honest love of sports that every true fan with a heart knows and feels and can be counted on to convey that with his booming voice, his subtle mannerisms, and CGI Sith danger eyes.
The role that won James a NABOO STARFIGHTER FROM THE FILM STAR WARS full of awards and acclaim was that of Jack Jefferson in the stage and film performances of "The Great White Hope," a film that deals with the racism faced by the first black heavyweight boxing championship challenger. He is ostracized by the black community who feels he's sold out and by the white people who will eventually make it impossible for me to watch standup comedy without feeling like I have personally beaten the shit out of slaves using my nasally voiced uppity misunderstandings and lack of rhythm. I can't even watch ESPN now without Steven A. Smith telling me how much of a GAP-Nigger I am. Thanks a lot, guys who were mean to James Earl Jones.
Jones' next role was in 1976's "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings," about a group of Negro Leaguers who get sick of how they're being treated by ownership and take their act on the road, barnstorming the Midwest and performing for those old people who are wasting too much time.
"The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings," or "TBLTAS:MK" as it's known in fan fiction circles, is a great movie that you should check out if you've never seen it, even if just to see what James Earl Jones looks like dressed as one of the slaves of the 1980s Houston Astros. The film also stars Billy Dee Williams aka Lando Calrissian, the former malt liquor spokesman and domestic abuser who now resides somewhere in the tropics, possibly in a Colt Cabana. 1989's "Field of Dreams" is the big one. I love this movie because I am a human being and blood pumps through my fucking heart. "Field of Dreams" never made a whole lot of sense. Kevin Costner enjoys baseball and farming so he starts going psycho and seeing visions of dead people and vague symbolism that instruct him to visit a recluse author and Burt Lancaster, and then... oh who knows. It's one of those movies that makes sense because it DOES. Like E.T. rising from the dead because Gertie wants him to. And while Kevin Costner is the impulsive, trusting brain going along for the lesson it is James Earl Jones' Terence Mann who speaks out to encapsulate the love that we have for the things we take for granted. "Ray, people will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn into the driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. 'Of course we won't mind if you have a look around,' you'll say. 'It's only twenty dollars per person.' They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it; for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll like walk out to the bleachers, sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game, and it'll be as if they had dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; it has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." And all in once those are the reasons why James Earl Jones' contribution to even something like "The Sandlot" can add this unmitigated sense of pride and truth to a film.
When the kids help out Hercules and finally get around to being there with Mr. Mertle they learn of his sincerity not through an elaborate speech, but because Jones himself believes the words he says. They should've just knocked on his door. He WAS a better hitter than George. He loves his big old misunderstood dog and he loves baseball. And for a blind guy he's got things hanging surprisingly straight on the wall. I try to adjust a frame and it goes flying out of my window and crashing twenty stories below. Which says something for me, because I live on the second floor. James Earl Jones loves baseball. This much we know. And so do we. So do those kids on the sandlot. Even when they get a little to close to AWWW SHUCKS old timey movie colloquialisms of the mid-twentieth century, where everybody is two steps from the Beav, it is their truth and sincerity that brings things together and gives us a movie we can really appreciate. "The Sandlot" is one of those movies. It's never been one of my favorites. I don't need the narrator to explain to me the irony of the dog's name and I don't need another fucking form of media lowering professional wrestling to the "Masked Marauder" level of undone homework that Big Green growing up to be "The Great Hambino" brings. But I do think it's pretty cool. Without hyperbole, without LEGOs, and without Mr. T. James Earl Jones, you're one of my favorites. You're one of everybody's favorites. And I really do appreciate you being there.
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The thing about baseball is that the players are deceptively out of shape. In all seriousness, I'm still waiting for the day when David Wells takes the mound and in a moment not unlike the time Brock Lesnar superplexed The Big Show, the entire field just implodes underneath him due to the stress of having to support his lumbering girth, sucking everyone on the field into a bottomless pit transcending both time and space. They'd then have to pour like, twenty cases of Liquid Plumber into the hole because Johnny Damon's mane of hair managed to clog a trans-dimensional rift or something. I don't know. I'm not Steven Hawking. Get off my ass, alright?
So I guess I've always held out hope. Hope that one day Major League Baseball would just throw all screening procedures out the window and let any hapless schmuck with bad hand-eye coordination join the Royals or Brewers or one of those other teams nobody cares about. Then maybe being pale enough to glow in the sunlight like a Motel 6 hotel matress under a blacklight and having to tint my entire face in order to field a routine pop-up wouldn't detract from my dreams of one day making it big. Every summer between the ages of six and twelve my mom would slather me with about a metric ton of sunscreen, drag me kicking and screaming down to our town's recreation field, and sign me up for little league. For the first year or so things weren't too bad, I guess. We'd get to swat awkwardly at a ball perched upon a tee for a few hours every Saturday while our coaches passed the time by hitting on the single mothers. Then I'd race home as fast as I could and savor those precious few hours after baseball and before church when I could spend some quality time alone with my good friend Nintendo. With each passing season the gap in talent between everyone else and myself would continue to gradually increase. Suddenly, summer went from being a three month vacation away from gym class inadequacy to sitting terrified in right field praying to God that someone else would cover for me. Batting wasn't much better, as even on the rare occasion I'd make contact with the ball, I'd spend about five minutes shaking as if I were a piece of sheet metal being banged repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer. Most of the time though, I'd swing about ten seconds before the pitcher even released the ball, get laughed at by the rest of my team, be told I had a "good eye" by my coach (which was absolute bullshit, as I had scaled down versions of the Hubble telescope fastened to my face with one of those wicked tacky day-glo glasses sport-bands), until I'd shamble off the field and back to the sanctity of the dugout bench.
To this I've always held a spot in my heart for The Sandlot, and Scotty Smalls in particular. The movie isn't a typical kids sports movie in which a bunch of well intentioned but ultimately talentless misfits from the wrong side of the tracks go from being the laughing stock of their respective league to the gritty underdogs with hearts of gold, eventually upsetting the arrogant city championships in some sort of overtly dramatic final showdown after being humiliated earlier in the season due to their once great but now shell of his former self coach's timely change of heart. These kids weren't playing baseball for fame or glory. They had nothing to prove and no plateaus to reach. They were already a good team. Good enough, in fact, to challenge the local organized squad to a game. They played because they loved the sport. And then there was Scotty. Scotty was a meek, timid, talentless, social misfit. He was a complete atheletic neophyte. In reality, he'd have a higher chance of being held upside-down over a toilet than being accepted as one of the gang. But he was. And as a ten year old, I was astonished. To this day, Benny driving one deep, right into his glove is one of my all-time favorite moments in movie history. It was a win for everyone who ever wanted to be good enough to play ball with the rest of the guys. It gave me hope that one day I'd break out of my shell and prove to everyone I was worth a damn. Of course this never happened. I didn't sweat it though. My mom stopped making me play baseball a year or so after the movie came out, so I went back to reading books and doing other socially maligned activities and lived out my atheletic fantasies vicariously through professional atheletes and feel-good sports movies. To this day though, whenever I walk around the house wearing my mother's bra and liking it, I think about Scotty making that catch and I tear up a little on the inside.
Just kidding. About the bra thing, that is. I don't need to justify myself to you assholes. I'll do what I want.
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In the ever changing game of baseball one topic of talk
remains controversial, and is fought over fiercely. Baseball players,
more so than any other athletes I’ve observed, experience
and display a great pride in their personal position above all others.
This endless battle has 10 armies, each seemingly equally strong.
Yet one position above all others has had greater support towards
their cause; and they are the catchers. 
There
are few things I love more than waxing nostalgic. One is jumping
in puddles. Another is waxing double rollover nostalgic.
Very few times am I able to sincerely express my love
of an actor or performer without devolving into hyperbolic comparisons
between said person and a professional wrestler, or a comic book
character, or someone who once stood in the background of Breezly
and Sneezly. On other sites you get a lot of this. Usually it's
Mr. T or Christopher Walken. Sometimes LEGO men and Skeletor proclaim
how much of "teh" whatever that person is. Example: John
Goodman is teh cheese sandwich~!!! 
I've always wished I were good at baseball.
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