It had been probably 20+ years since I've seen The Sandlot, and don't let the tone of the title of this post or the fraud that I'm about to expose give you the impression that I don't like the movie. It's still a great movie, and I definitely enjoyed the perspective of watching it as a father with my five-year-old son. But make no mistake, it's built on lies.
Here's a brief summary of the movie, for those who haven't seen it or those who may have forgotten. In the summer of 1962, fifth grader Scotty Smalls moves to a new town. His mom forces him to make friends, which he does by ingratiating himself in a circle of baseball-obsessed kids who play baseball every day in the summer at a makeshift, dirt-laden diamond surrounded by the backyards of various homes, called "The Sandlot." Just beyond left center field is a tall fence, behind which "The Beast" resides in the backyard of a house that is apparently home to a junkyard and a dinosaur graveyard. Hundreds of baseballs have been hit into that yard, but none have been retrieved because of the ferocity of The Beast. After the kids lose a ball over said fence one day and no one has another ball, Smalls -- who is the only American male in 1962 who has never heard of Babe Ruth -- decides to take his stepfather's most prized possession, a Babe Ruth autographed baseball, to bring back to the Sandlot. Of course, he cranks his only homerun of the movie over the fence into the Beast's realm. Hijinx ensue, as the boys try to retrieve it. They eventually do, and then the fence falls over on top of the Beast. Smalls lifts it up, the Beast licks his face, and Smalls and Benny "The Jet" go to the back door of the house to confess their misgivings. A blind man named Mr. Mertles (played masterfully by the inimitable James Earl Jones) answers the door. Turns out he was an old ball player, and he offers to trade the mangled, chewed-up Babe Ruth ball for a ball signed by the entire 1927 Yankees team. Flash forward to the then-present day (1992 or 1993), and Smalls is a play-by-play sportscaster for the Dodgers, and Benny plays for the Dodgers. He steals home to win what appears to be a meaningless day game against the Giants. Roll credits.
Now here are the lies.
1. Benny was still playing Major League Baseball -- and entrusted to steal home plate -- in his 40s.
We all know Benny was even more obsessed with baseball than the others, and he was clearly had decent speed, as he had to outrun The Beast for a good ten minutes. Whether that shows he had slow-twitch muscles rather than fast-twitch muscles -- and, therefore, would not be a particularly good base stealer -- is an argument for another day. What concerns me is, in the last scene, it's the present day, which we can assume is 1992 or 1993. Benny is playing for the Dodgers. This would have been 30-31 years after the summer of 1962, which would make Benny somewhere around 41-43 years old (his exact age isn't revealed). Without access to Elias Sports Bureau's database (despite daily, repeated requests over the course of decades), I can't say for sure that Benny would have been the oldest player in MLB history to steal home (though Ty Cobb apparently stole home at age 41 in 1928, when stealing home was much more common), but I can say this: no MLB manager in the 1990s -- and certainly not Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda -- would have entrusted such a rare and difficult feat as stealing home to a 42-year-old. Lies!
2. There's no fucking way that dog lived to be 199.
The Beast (whose real name is Hercules) was an English Mastiff. At the end of the film, adult the Smalls narrator notes that Hercules lived to be 199 years old, in dog years. If we go by the standard 7:1 dog to people years ratio, this means Hercules lived until he was 28.43 years old. Setting aside that this would have made Hercules the second-oldest dog on record (of any breed), the average lifespan of an English Mastiff is 7-10 years, and the longest-living English Mastiff on record lived to be 15. If we are to believe that Hercules lived to 199, assuming he was already a fully grown adult in 1962, he would have lived into the 1980s. Lies!
3. Timmy and Tommy Timmons did not invent the mini mall.
During the ending narration, adult Smalls says that Timmy and Tommy Timmons ended up being an architect and a developer, and they combined forces to invent the mini mall. Thing is, the mini mall (aka the strip mall) had been around in the U.S. since the 1920s, and they were particularly booming in the post-War '50s, when more people began to have cars. Lies!
Which brings me to this: was there even a Sandlot?
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