The Sandlot - Plot

Plot

The film is narrated by Scott "Scotty" Smalls (Tom Guiry), who is reminiscing about the summer of 1962. Smalls moves with his mother (Karen Allen) and stepfather, Bill (Denis Leary), to a new neighborhood outside of Los Angeles. One afternoon, he decides to follow a group of neighborhood boys, and he watches them play a game at a small field, which they call the "sandlot." Smalls joins in the game, but is teased for his lack of skills. Benny, who is the best player in the neighborhood, stands up for Smalls and convinces the other children to let Smalls play.

Smalls continues to play with them, and shares many adventures with his new friends. He learns that players avoid hitting home runs over the sandlot's fences, as the property beyond the fence is guarded by a ferocious 300-pound English mastiff dog, who the boys refer to as "the beast." When a home run is hit, the game is over for the day unless the boys manage to obtain a replacement ball. The team has several misadventures, including a trip to the pool, where Squints, who can't swim, deliberately jumps off at the deep end to get his lifeguard crush, Wendy Peffercorn, to rescue him. While Wendy is busy trying to resuscitate him, Squints promptly kisses her. She is offended by this and bans the boys from the pool forever. It also cements Squints and Wendy's relationship. Later, the team plays a night game on the Fourth of July where everyone except Benny is more interested in watching fireworks than playing. Later the boys are confronted by a snooty rival team who begins an argument by telling Benny that he plays with a bunch of rejects. After the two teams spew insults at each other, Ham shouts the unforgivable insult, "You play ball like a girl," and provokes a challenge from the other team. But the sandlot kids earn an easy victory over their rival team. Later, they experiment with chewing tobacco at a carnival with disastrous results.

One day while Smalls' stepfather is on a business trip, Benny hits a ball so hard that the leather ruptures, causing the ball's entrails to come out. While the others are impressed, Benny feels guilty because the group does not have 98 cents to buy another baseball. However, Smalls runs to Bill's trophy room, and steals his stepfather's autographed ball, in hopes to preserve the game. The team is impressed with Smalls’ gesture, and allows him to have the first at bat with the ball. He proceeds to hit the ball out of the sandlot, but is shortly enveloped with fear when he realizes that he has lost Bill's ball. The situation is further worsened when Smalls learns that the ball was autographed by Babe Ruth, and is irreplaceable. Although even Benny is annoyed that Smalls would play with such a valuable ball, the team immediately scraps up change to buy a new ball. They then forge Babe Ruth's signature on the new ball to temporarily replace the missing ball until they can come up with a plan.

Squints says that Mr. Myrtle is a mean old man, and would not return the ball, so Smalls and his friends begin engineering elaborate plans to recover the ball. After five failed rescue attempts including a stick, a pot on a metal rod, a vacuum cleaner, Yeah-Yeah on a pulley system, and a catapult composed of an Erector Set, Smalls prepares to accept his fate. Around the same time, Benny has an enlightening dream. In the dream, Benny is visited by Babe Ruth who encourages him to run into the beast's domain and use his speed to recover the ball and escape. Ruth leaves Benny with the words, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Benny summons his friends the following morning to the sandlot, and prepares to recover Smalls’ baseball. Using his PF Flyers, he steals the ball from the beast, and successfully manages to elude the dog as it chases him through town with the sandlot gang following. The beast chases Benny through an alley, a movie theater, a carnival, the pool, and back to the sandlot. Growing exhausted from the chase, Benny starts to slow down and the beast starts to catch up to him. Benny returns to Mr. Myrtle's home and hops the fence. The race ends with the fence falling on the beast. Smalls and Benny both feel responsible for the ordeal, and they help the beast escape. After being rescued, the beast, whose real name turns out to be Hercules, becomes much more friendly towards the boys, and even shows them where he buried all of the baseballs that had gone into the yard over the years. Benny and Smalls then decide to tell the dog's owner, Mr. Myrtle (James Earl Jones), about the ordeal. Mr. Myrtle reveals that he would have simply returned the ball if the boys had just asked him. The rest of the boys are upset with Squints for making up the story of Mr. Myrtle being "the meanest old man that ever lived." Squints tells his friends that they should simply be happy to retrieve the ball. Benny and Smalls eventually learn that Mr. Myrtle used to be a professional baseball player in the Negro League and a friendly rival of Babe Ruth. Mr. Myrtle, whose career ended after he was hit and blinded by a stray pitch, agrees to give Smalls a ball signed by Murderers' Row – several of the best Yankee hitters in the late 1920s - including Ruth. In exchange, Mr. Myrtle asks that the boys to visit once a week and discuss baseball. Smalls proceeds to give Mr. Myrtle's ball to Bill.

While Bill is pleased with the new ball, he is still upset about losing his original ball. Therefore, Bill decides to only ground Smalls for a week. Smalls and Bill become closer than before. The film then explains what happened to the boys. Yeah-yeah went to military school, enlisted in the Army, and became a pioneering developer of bunjee jumping (for obvious reasons), Bertram got into the 60's and was never heard from again, Tommy and Timmy went on to become an architect and a contractor and became wealthy upon inventing mini-malls, Squints married Wendy, had nine kids, and they now own Vincent's Drug Store (Where the team bought their baseballs), Ham became a wrestler known as "The Great Hambino", and DeNunez, after playing Triple A Ball, but not making it into the Majors, went on to start his own business and coach a little league team called "The Heaters" (Named after his trademark pitch). Then the film jumps 30 years into the future, where Smalls is a radio sports commentator for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Benny is one of the team's star players. Benny manages to steal home in the movie's final moments, then flashes a thumbs-up to Smalls in the press box. The movie ends with Smalls looking at a photo of the team from 1962.