You're Killing Me Smalls
October 01, 2010, By Craig J. Heimbuch 6 comments
I’ll admit it. It’s one of my favorite movies. I saw “The Sandlot” in the theater as a kid and have watched it, literally, dozens of times as an adult. When my wife went into labor with our first child, we packed a VHS copy that we watched in the room once the epidural had kicked in. Ditto with baby number two.
And my sons are constantly quoting the film.
Son 1: “Hey, Dylan, do you know where my Legos are?”
Son 2: “No.”
Son 1: “You’re killing me, Smalls!”
Son 2: “Thanks, Benny.”
It’s pretty stinking adorable, I’ll tell you what. When I was a kid, the movie was awesome for a lot of the same reasons “Stand By Me” was: they were about the transformative summers many of us experienced, the twilight days of youth and the dawning days of puberty. They were about the kind of friendships you can only make when you are 12. And I loved them for it.
But as an adult, I watch “The Sandlot” with an older, more experienced set of eyes and I see a lot of truth, life lessons to be gleamed and core wisdom for men. If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading right now and get it on Netflix. If you have, but it’s been a while, do the exact same thing. If, like me, you cherish this tale of baseball, friendship and myth, I encourage you to read on.
Sandlot Truth #1: Sometimes you have to just go for it.
Scotty Smalls was the new kid in town. He didn’t have any friends and, well let’s face it, was kind of a geek. But he saw eight guys get together every day for baseball and decided to go for it. He had no ability whatsoever. He couldn’t throw, couldn’t catch, couldn’t hit. He could barely walk without tripping over himself. And yet he managed to summon the courage to make his way into left field without being invited. “I figured I could just stand in the outfield somewhere and take up space,” he says in voice-over. It took guts - huge guts - for him to go out there, but he did and that made all the difference. Whenever I wonder if I should follow my instincts - proposing an idea at work, calling someone for an interview, whatever - and my judgement casts doubt, I think of Smalls and his giant-billed hat.
Sandlot Truth #2: Defend what you know is right.
The hero of the movie, Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez, stands up to his seven friends who didn’t want Smalls to join their team. “He can’t throw, he can’t catch,” mused Hamilton “The Babe” Porter. “The kid’s an L-7 wienie,” says Michael “Squints” Palledouris. “Yeah, yeah, a foot-long! Dodger dog!” added Alan “Yeah-Yeah” McClennan. But Benny stood up. “Why are you laughing at Yeah-Yeah? You run like a duck!” He went, um, to bat for the new kid because he knew it was the right thing to do. Benny had some pull with the group as the most talented player and he put it to good use, defending his principles. No more noble use of respect than that in any situation.
Sandlot Truth #3: Sometimes you have to talk a little smack.
I’m usually one who backs away from conflict. I don’t like fighting for fighting’s sake, but I know that there are moments in every man’s life that he has to be able to step to the mic and hit someone with a cookie (a phrase borrowed from my own childhood friend Adam). Hamilton Porter does this when the kids from the Little League team come to the sandlot to bag on Benny’s team of “fat kids and rejects.” Ham-bone does this with such aplomb, such unabashed bravery that there is, quite literally, no way the uniformed Phillips stands a chance. Keep that in mind the next time your cellphone company denies a mistake on a bill.
Sandlot Truth #4: A man needs options.
If it were up to Benny, the kids on the sandlot would have done nothing but played baseball. But one day, it was just too hot. “Come on Benny,” says Ham, “I’m bakin’ like a toasted cheeser. It’s too hot.” Benny could have dug in his heals and refused, but he allowed his buddies to convince him that the right thing to do was go to the pool. It was, “the thing he tolerated best,” when not playing baseball. Sometimes, no matter how passionate we are about the things we love, we need to acknowledge that there are times when pursuing them is counterproductive. That’s when we need to step back and seek a little refuge. A vacation, a road trip, a night off with the family to recharge the batteries.
Sandlot Truth #5: When it comes to women, don’t rule out the big gesture.
Michael “Squints” Palledouris had a thing for the lifeguard. And “every summer of his adult life” he watched longingly and from afar as Wendy Peffercorn took to her poolside ablutions. “Lotioning and oiling, oiling and lotioning,” Squints recalled. “I can’t take it no more.” He could have passed her a note. He could have sent her flowers or written her a sonnet. But instead Squints did “the craziest thing any of us had ever seen,” and faked his own drowning just so Wendy would give him mouth-to-mouth. He seized the moment and, after a couple of attempts at the breath of life, grabbed the back of her head and “kissed a woman. He kissed her long and he kissed her good.” It got him and the rest of the gang banned from the pool that day, but Squints won out in the long-run when he married Wendy Peffercorn and had nine kids. I married my best friend’s high school girlfriend. I walked up to her one day before graduation and told her that, one day, we would be married. That was 14 years ago in May. We’ve been married eight this past June.
Sandlot Truth #6: Slay your dragons.
The gang had tried everything to get Smalls’ step-dad’s Babe Ruth autographed baseball back. They’d tried suction and daring, they’d tried engineering and old-school spy craft. But one night, after days of trying, the Babe visited Benny in a dream, telling him to jump over the fence and get it himself despite the fact that The Beast - a legendary dog on the other side - “had killed one kid already.” Benny was scared. His friends begged him not to do it, that a baseball - even one this valuable - was not worth dying for. But, like St. George and his dragon, Benny knew that he would never be a legend and never forgive himself, if he didn’t do what the Babe had told him to do. He manned up. He hopped the fence and snatched the ball. He lead the Beast on an heroic chase. He got the ball back for his friend and exposed the legend as pure hearsay. And in doing so, he became a legend himself. We all have a Beast in our life. Fear of flying, fear of rejection, fear of commitment. And they can torment us because we give them the power to do so. But hopping over the fence and pickling the Beast is about taking the power away from our fears and, in turn, eliminating them.
Sandlot Truth #7: Don’t overlook the obvious solution.
Doctors call them unicorns - rare diseases that match the symptoms but turn out to be more common diseases combined. Sometimes what you’re looking for is a horse. Smalls suggested they knock on Mr. Mertle’s door to ask for the ball back, but he was roundly criticized by his friends, who were too wrapped up in the legend to believe the obvious answer could be so simple. Turns out, they were wrong. In the end, Mr. Mertle said they could have asked and he would have retrieved the ball and saved a whole lot of grief. Don’t overlook the obvious answers. They just might be obvious for a reason.
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