For this week’s Friday Flashback, I thought I’d reminisce about one of my favorite baseball sports movies, The Sandlot.  Side note: Can you believe the movie released over EIGHTEEN years ago?! Yowza!

I’m sure I’m not alone (or maybe I am? I do a lot of weird things) that I feel compelled to watch it anytime it comes on ABC Family — and it happened to be on AMC last night. (Yeah yeah. I’m a 20-something and I watch ABC Family. How else am I supposed to watch reruns of Gilmore Girls?).

I initially had planned on doing a “Where are they now?” sort of post, but I quickly found out that most of the “boys” really didn’t do much post-Sandlot. Well, aside from being in The Mighty Ducks and its various sequels.

As much fun as it would be to rattle off the various episodes of Law & Order they’ve been in, I thought it would be better to watch a few clips from the movie. It is one of the best after all.

Squints putting the moves on Wendy Peffercorn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr5lHZQz-Z4

Benny outrunning Hercules:

And, finally, the “You play ball like a giiiiirrrrrrl!” scene:

I’m sure this scene should probably insult me. The ultimate insult to these boys is being compared to a girl?!

But it’s probably one of the most memorable ones to me because it reminds of playing competitive softball for the first time.

My coach, after watching me for a few plays during tryouts, pulls me aside and says, “Laura, no offense, but you throw like  a girl.” to which I responded, “Well, I am a girl. How else am I supposed to throw?”

My coach just laughed and said “Good point.” Honestly, after watching some of the guys play softball in some of the leagues I’ve played in, I’m sure glad I “throw like a girl.”

Yeah, I get a lot of “you’re not a guy” or “you didn’t play baseball,” so I couldn’t possibly relate to this movie. True.

But I did grow up in a small town, one where I met up with my friends during the summer to ride our bikes and just be kids. We played more kickball and kick the can than baseball — but the idea’s still the same.

I miss the times when my biggest problem would be losing something I owned — ideally not something signed by Babe Ruth, but you get my point. Times were just … simpler.

Now, if said baseball had been signed by Stan Musial, owned by my father, and I basically fed it to a dog? I can safely say that I would be writing this post from the grave.

You don’t mess with “The Man” in the Schulte household.