The Sandlot

Director: David Mickey Evans (1993)

Cast: Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, James Earl Jones

The Sandlot is a favorite for kids of every generation since it debuted more than 30 years ago. This film is great for all ages and many parents introduce baseball to their kids with repeated viewings.

Tom Guiry plays Scotty Smalls, the shy new kid in town 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, Bill, is too busy to teach him. He tries out for the team 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, the oldest and best player, as well as Ham, Squints, Repeat, and the rest of the kid-accentrics. 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" Bill's ball, which he promptly uses to hit his first home run, knocking it clear out of the sandlot into mean old Mr. Mertle's junkyard, which is home to his legendary guard dog, the Beast. Scotty admits that he took the ball without asking, and he naively explains that Bill will want it back since it had a woman's name written on it: some lady named Babe Ruth. Horror-stricken, the team mobilizes to fetch it from the Beast's clutches, building a series of mechanical ball-retrieval machines which get progressively more complicated and preposterous as the Beast's size grows in their imaginations. In the end the boys go to Mr. Mertle's house and find out The Beast is actually a pussycat of a dog who just loved playing with the balls and Mr. Mertle was a former Negro League Baeball player who had lost his eye site.Mr. Mertle gives Scotty a baseball signed by the 1927 New York Yankees to replace the ball the beast had chewed up and the Dog gave the boys dozens of baseballs to play with.

Fast forward 20 years at Dodger Stadium where Scotty is a a broadcaster for the Dodgers and and his old friend Benny is a player on the team.Of course Benny steals home to win the game.Fun Facts: James Earle Jones Starred in Baseball films like "Bingo Long", "Field of Dreams"

and the broadway play "Fences" where he played a retired ball layer. The irony is, he's not a baseball fan, but he likes the stories.