Staying Fit
‘The Sandlot’ Recipes
Honor this 1996 baseball classic by making some s’mores:
Welcome to our Dinner and a Movie series, where we feature nostalgic essays on some of our favorite films from the '80s and '90s, and share recipes inspired from movie moments.
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“Hey, you wanna s’more?” asks Hamilton “Ham” Porter, a stout, freckled redhead.
“S’more what?” asks our young hero, shy bookworm Scotty Smalls.
“No, no. You wanna s’more?” Ham repeats, slowing the pronunciation and pointing to his display of burning candles, marshmallows, stacks of graham crackers and bars of chocolate. Nervously and innocently Smalls says, “I haven’t had anything yet, so how can I have more of nothing?”
“You’re killing me, Smalls!” Ham cries out, giving us an often-repeated phrase for expressing exasperation.
It’s 1962, and Smalls, Ham and the rowdy boys of The Sandlot crew are hanging out in the clubhouse, eating s’mores and making memories. And Ham is only too happy to initiate Smalls into the wonders of the perennial summertime treat: “First, you take the graham. You stick the chocolate on the graham. Then you roast the mallow,” Ham patiently explains, placing a puffy ball of marshmallow on a reshaped wire coat hanger and heating it over candles. “When the mallow’s flaming, you stick it on the chocolate. Then you cover it with the other end. Then you scarf.” And scarf he does, though not before sharing a gooey, sweet bite with Smalls — who relishes not only the s’more, but the friendly sign of inclusion that proves even more fulfilling.
And that’s the joy of The Sandlot. It’s a movie about baseball, but it’s also a movie about lasting friendships and coming-of-age.
This year marks 30 years since the film’s debut, and it still charms today. By far the most heartwarming theme is seeing shy newcomer Smalls, who acts like a foreign exchange student in the land of American boys. He knows nothing about baseball — the neighborhood’s chosen sport — but he’s adopted into the group because he’s the needed ninth mitt-holder to fill out a team. He successfully catches a ball and that cinches it — he’s in. And there’s nothing better than acceptance, especially at this critical time in a person’s life.
The movie shows the boys are growing up in subtle ways, facing new and old challenges and learning what they’re made of. And somehow they squeeze a lifetime of adventure into one summer.
A boy named Squints (Chauncey Leopardi) tricks the buxom teenage lifeguard into giving him his first kiss. The team’s misadventure with Big Chief chewing tobacco at a summer carnival induces a messy bout of nausea on the Tilt-a-Whirl. And future L.A. Dodger Benny Rodriguez dons a pair of black PF. Flyers sneakers, “guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher,” to retrieve a much-prized ball that has sailed over the backfield fence into Mr. Mertle’s yard — where a ferocious dog dubbed “The Beast” has gained a reputation for eating both balls and wayward children. Mertle’s fence offers another callback for baseball fans: It’s a corrugated metal barrier painted a deep green — just like the Green Monster, the nickname for the 37-foot, 2-inch high left field in Boston’s Fenway Park.
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