Favorite Thing #5: The Sandlot

The Sandlot is arguably one of the best, if not the best live action family friendly movie to come out of the 90's. Close contenders include: Hook (Dustin Hoffman's sweet 'stache, "Bad Form!" and "Ruuu-Fiiii-OOOOOOOO"), Newsies (Christian Bale. Enough said.), and Muppet Treasure Island (who doesn't love a movie that combines Muppets, Pirates and Tim Curry). The Sandlot tells the story of uber-dork Scotty Smalls who moves to the Valley with his mom (Karen Allen of Indiana Jones Fame), and new step-dad (Dennis Leary--in a very non-funny role). Smalls befriends Benny 'The Jet' Rodriguez who convinces his baseball playing ragtag friends to let Smalls play with them, even though he is a total dweeb who can't even through a ball. The movie follows the adventures and hijinx of the gang throughout the summer and ends with the touching "look back" by the narrator Smalls, which for some reason was very popular in the 80's and 90's. In honor of Sandlot, I thought I would share a few of the things I learned from this great movie:

1. If you are the token fat kid among your friends, you need to be a wiseass. You need to trash talk the other team while catching by saying things such as " If my dog were as ugly as you, I would shave his butt and make him walk backwards" or "Is that your sister in left field, naked? She's naked! Think she'll go out with me?" "You call that pitching? This is baseball! Not tennis!" You will also need to have some sort of useful skill, like s'mores making. Extra points for hitting on pool hotties and then drenching them in water after you do a "Ham Ball".

2. The use of "Bitchin!" to show your pleasure with something makes you cool. It can be used in every day conversation with great ease. When writing your mid-year review at work, you can write " I did a bitchin' job this year so far." You can also use it to replace the words cool, awesome, sweet nibblets, etc.

3. Extremely long billed hats are funny. Enough said.

4. All you have to do to make a dog like you is crush it with a fence and then "rescue it". The dog will be so greatful, it will slobber all over your face and take you to his secret stash of baseballs.

5. Don't eat chaw and then go on a fair ride. This has saved me a great deal of embarassment. Because of Sandlot, I have never puked all over everyone, including myself on a fair ride.

6. If you suck at baseball and want to become good, all you have to do is stick your glove in the air, close your eyes and have someone hit a ball directly into your glove. You will then no longer throw like a girl and will be able to snag balls out of the air with ease. Bitchin'! Really. I saw it in Sandlot. It must be true.