In 1991, the world was introduced to a little ragtag group of 12-year-old boys who lived and breathed baseball. They met up every day at the same spot, and played the game together. They never kept score. They never divided themselves into teams. They never even started over. They just picked up right where they left off.
On May 16, The Sandlot (1991) — now 35 years old (meaning that it is old enough to run for president) — will be screened at the McDonald Theatre, joined by three cast members. Tom Guiry who played Scotty “Smalls” Smalls, Chauncey Leopardi who played Michael “Squints” Palledorous and Marty York who played Alan “Yeah Yeah” McClennan. After the film, the cast will recount their favorite behind-the-scenes moments and answer questions from the audience.
The Sandlot is undoubtedly an important movie. It’s inspired exhibits in baseball museums across the country — including a dedicated section in the baseball hall of fame — and countless themed baseball days in games of all levels.
But York says that he didn’t even realize how much people liked the film until its 25th anniversary. He recalls that the cast had been invited to attend a game at Dodger Stadium, where the film’s final scene takes place. “It was game three against the Giants, and there were 60,000 people in the stands,” he says. “We got to come out of the Dodger dugout.” As the now grown-up boys walked out onto the field, the crowd ignited and roared in a standing ovation.
“I just looked around,” he says. “I never knew the impact of The Sandlot until that moment. It was mindblowing.” The cast was then escorted to greet the team, “and they were shaking meeting us, some of those guys.” According to York, MLB All-Star Matt Kemp told the cast that the film is the reason he plays baseball. Later, they were invited to an LA Angels game, where All-Star Mike Trout had them autograph his PF Flyers.
Before then, “I worked regular jobs. I did a lot of other acting gigs.” He acted until he was 17, appearing in projects like Saved by the Bell and Boy Meets World. “The Sandlot was something in my past,” York says.
That’s not to say he didn’t have the time of his life while he was in it. In fact, York’s favorite part of filming was his off-camera adventures with his castmates. It was the hottest summer of his memory, but “we were staying in these condos that had a giant pool, so we would go swimming every day after shooting,” he says. “And then we would go back to the hotel and play Super Nintendo and ‘Street Fighter Two’ and have tournaments. Typical ’90s.”
His on-set experiences involved learning how to play baseball (because he had never played before), filming the famous tobacco scene by eating a hunk of jerky and licorice and meeting the three dogs who all played “The Beast” — the film’s villainous mastiff who steals all of the baseballs that get hit over the fence.
The Sandlot’s most memorable scene with “Yeah Yeah” is when he’s lowered to the ground Mission: Impossible style from “The Kid Crane” to retrieve a lost ball. York says he was given the opportunity to accept a stunt double to perform the scene instead, but he insisted he could — even though he was (and still is) very scared of heights.
“They made this fiberglass body harness thing, and they put a catcher’s mitt over it, and there were steel wires,” he says. He remembers being 20 feet in the air and hovering over a picket fence. “One wrong move and I would have been impaled.”
When “Yeah Yeah” reaches the ground, he is greeted by “The Beast,” who, in this scene according to York, is played by a giant animatronic dog head covered in slobber-like liquid.
York says that this robot dog was about the size of his own 12-year-old body, a small detail which he believes to be one of the strongest aspects of the movie. At the end of the film, the real “Beast” is revealed to be much smaller than how he’s depicted in reality, because “you’re seeing the dog from the eyes of a kid,” he says, and to a kid, “The Beast” would be “larger than life.”
When he returned to the field as an adult, “The Sandlot was so much smaller than I remember being as a kid,” York says. “You grew up and things aren’t as big as they were when you were a kid.”
The film is unique in the ’90s baseball movie catalog, because above all, it is a film about the rapscallion innocence of boyhood. “I think more than baseball, The Sandlot is a movie about friendship,” York says.
Though York says his real-life childhood involved a lot of auditioning and tireless work as a child actor, he still found time to go outside, ride bikes and play games with his friends. The Sandlot’s depiction of these universal experiences is the reason why it has stood the test of time.
The Sandlot Special Cast Event is Saturday, May 16, at McDonald Theatre. Tickets start at $27.50 and are available at McDonaldTheatre.com.