“You’re killing me, Smalls!”
Here we go: 30 baseball movies in 30 days!
The Sandlot is the most fitting way for me to get started, because the movie changed my life. That’s not hyperbole, just simple fact. My life has genuinely been different since the year it was released.
It didn’t change my life because it fanned the burgeoning flame of my undying love for baseball, although it certainly did that.
It didn’t change my life because, as a young viewer, it made me feel like I’d actually joined this lovable gang of knuckleheads, with Benny the Jet taking me under his wing. Although it definitely did.
Nor did it change my life because the film so perfectly captures the joy at the heart of the game. Of course, it does. It illustrates the fact that baseball is beautiful purely for the sake of itself, even when played in boundless, day-long affairs with no score or opposition. Like so many movies, books, and poems about the sport, it reminds us that baseball isn’t just about baseball, it’s also about life in general. That’s definitely my favorite thing about The Sandlot, but it isn’t the reason it changed my life.
No, the reason The Sandlot changed my life is far simpler and more obvious than that: it’s because the writers decided to name their lead character Scotty Smalls.
Since The Sandlot was released in 1993 — the day before I turned 11 — I’ve henceforth been Smalls wherever I went. Even now, as people more often call me Scotty than Smalls, there is still a near-universal inability to get my name right. No matter how many times I say my name correctly, people still insist on adding a second s at the end of my last name.
I doubt I’ve ever gone more than two months without hearing someone deliver the immortal line first uttered by the Great Hambino, “You’re killing me, Smalls!” Fun fact, the line was reportedly improvised.
For the last 27 years, The Sandlot quite literally changed the way people speak to me, albeit less often as I get older.
Who knows, maybe it was destiny. It’s fitting that I’m forever linked to this film, because even watching it again at 37 years old, having seen it at least a dozen times before, I still love The Sandlot. Even though it’s been more than a decade since my last viewing, I still know all the lines, including their exact tone and cadence.
I’ve avoided the other family-oriented baseball movies I loved as a kid (Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield), because I’m confident I’d think they are awful seen through adult eyes. I don’t want spoil the love I had for them as a child. But The Sandlot transcends that fear. It still captures the magic of summer vacation, and the way that baseball, for the initiated, will always be the heartbeat of summer.
The Sandlot changed my life, concretely and unequivocally, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world where it didn’t exist.
Next Up: We’ll head to the northwest for The Battered Bastards of Baseball, a documentary about the Portland Mavericks — a short-lived independent baseball team that captured the affection of Portland and the attention of the nation. It’s on Netflix, and I promise it’s a great way to spend 80 minutes even if you don’t like baseball.
