Baseball season.  The smell of freshly cut grass, the taste of peanuts and Cracker Jack, the sound of the crowd roaring in the stadiums.  But for this girl, the best part of baseball season is the yearning I get to watch The Sandlot.   Granted, this is coming from the girl who spent a good portion of a Dodgers game analyzing the Padres right fielder’s butt, but everything I know about baseball, I learned from The Sandlot.  How else is a 7-year old to learn who the “Great Bambino” is?

If you’re reading this post, you probably don’t need me to tell you what a great movie it is, but it’s a great movie.  It’s one of those rare family movies that the whole family can actually enjoy.  We must have watched it at least 100 times (no joke) in my family.  It’s the only way to explain why I can still quote the entire movie.  And why I still think that Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez is the perfect man.

More than anything, I love Sandlot for it’s heart.  There are few movies that capture childhood as well as this movie.  It only makes me sad that kids don’t seem to have summers like that anymore, running around the neighborhood getting up to antics kids get up to.  Blame it on To Catch a Predator, kids with iPads, or whatever it is we are blaming these sorts of things on these days.

So here’s to summers of big dogs, throwing up on Scramblers, Wendy Peffercorn, playing ball “like a girl”, S’mores, and shaving your dog’s butt and teaching it to walk backwards.

Don’t lie.  You want to watch Sandlot now, right?  Don’t be ashamed, it doesn’t take much for me either.

– Ellen