The Sandlot is 30 years and a few months old, I discovered. Meaning that we are now at a double remove from the substance of its story. The film is a feast of nostalgia for a baseball-obsessed childhood in the San Fernando Valley of the early 1960s.
The plot is simple: Fifth-grader Scott Smalls has moved into a new neighborhood. His mother gently encourages him to try to play with the boys in the neighborhood — a diverse crew of best friends who gather to play baseball on the local sandlot. The majority are skeptical of Smalls, but their leader and baseball prodigy “Benny” Rodriguez accepts Smalls. Over the course of the summer, they play baseball, have adventures chewing tobacco and going on carnival rides, and confront “the Beast” — an enormous backyard dog whose lair sits on the other side of the sandlot’s back fence. Smalls hits his dad’s baseball into the dog’s lair — the problem being that it is a piece of memorabilia with the signature of Babe Ruth on it.
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