Me writing about this film, while being a tribute to what I consider to be one of the best films ever made about baseball, also serves to explain why I haven't written much about films lately, my last post strangely coinciding with the start of the new baseball season and the beginning of my addiction to mlb.tv. Having the time and opportunity to watch ballgames this season, that's exactly what I'm doing. Obviously I will also be watching films during the summer and when I hit on one that's worth mentioning I will surely write about it. Interestingly enough, the movies I have been watching lately, due in part to my surroundings, have been children's films and therefore had a chance to re-experience one of my childhood favorites, once again following Smalls, Bennie 'the Jet' Rodriguez and the rest of the baseball ruffians in The Sandlot as they try to get their priceless baseball back from the Beast, a neighborhood watchdog. Focusing primarily on baseball as a unifying enterprise, The Sandlot is part of a small group of children's pictures of the 90s which stand-out amongst its peers as not having any antagonists per say, letting the children's innocence blossom and grow unencumbered without any imminent (usually criminal) threat from the outside (adult) world; an innocence that gets shattered through the normal course of childhood rather than by an imposed adult intrusion. While there are adults in the picture, their understanding of common elements differ widely in perception (the most crucial of which being the Babe Ruth-signed baseball) and the film's central threat turns out to be unfounded and erroneous. The only thing that can be taken at face-value in The Sandlot is baseball, the only reality that remains unchanged and unfazed from beginning to end. In setting the film in the 60's, the film also brings us back to when the game was just a game, before the days of 275 M$ contracts and HGH, reminding us that only kids really know how to play the game.
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