The Sandlot at 30: Reunion weekend for classic film coming to New Smyrna Beach | KEN WILLIS

What to do when one of Hollywood’s ultimate “coming of age” films has fully come of age?

You throw a party, naturally, and when that age comes up on the big three-oh, might as well make a weekend of it.

“The Sandlot,” an enduring and endearing classic by all accounts (including the banking kind), turned 30 this year and there will be a local celebration due to a local connection.

David Mickey Evans wrote and directed the film but you also know him as the narrator. He’s been a New Smyrna Beach resident for a dozen years, and next month (Dec. 15-16) he’ll be joined by several Sandlot cast members for a reunion weekend of fundraising festivities in NSB.

Five years after a 25-year reunion at NSB's Brannon Center — including a screening of the movie — some locals asked Evans, “Hey, you wanna do that again?”

“I told them sure, but it’s a matter of when I can get those guys,” Evans says.

Turns out, Sandlot cast reunions have become a cottage industry, often in minor-league ballparks.

“These guys do a lot of these things, all year long,” says Evans, who says he practically visited every ballpark in America five years ago during 25th-anniversary celebrations.

Next month’s reunion weekend will include a pair of movie screenings at NSB High’s auditorium, with meet-and-greets afterwards with Evans and the cast members scheduled to attend: Tom Guiry (Scotty Smalls), Shane Obedzinski (Tommy Timmons), Victor DiMattia (Timmy Timmons), Grant Gelt (Bertram Grover Weeks) and Marty York (“Yeah-Yeah” McClennan).

And there will be a softball game, including those cast members, at the ballfield complex behind the Edgewater YMCA.

The reunion’s proceeds — through ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. — will benefit the local Table 2 Committee, an area non-profit that raises funds for local youth sports. More information: Table2Events.com. You can even buy your way onto one of the softball rosters.

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The Sandlot: From modest opening to monstrous numbers

Don’t underestimate the pull of the Sandlot film on millennials. Many a VHS tape, and later a DVD, was worn to the nub by kids who couldn’t get enough of Smalls, Benny the Jet, the Beast, and all the rest.

A late and wonderful scene involving James Earl Jones, some four years after he so romanticized baseball in Field of Dreams, was (and remains) enough to keep the parents watching.

Count this parent among those who, some 20 years ago, probably saw all of The Sandlot multiple times in the living room, though only in 5-minute spurts here and there and never from beginning to end. Until recently. Amazingly, it remains highly watchable, downright entertaining in fact — sweet, funny, well-paced, great soundtrack, and memorable lines: “You’re killing me, Smalls!” 

The movie grossed about $30 million after its 1993 release, which is like saying Hank Aaron hit 13 homers his rookie season. Not bad, but hardly a sign of what was to come.

“It did pretty well when it was released, then a few weeks later it did better and better, and that almost never happens,” Evans says. “I remember thinking, ‘what the hell?’ People just couldn’t get enough of it.

“It was great for the kids. The wives enjoyed it. Men of a certain age were like, ‘that was my childhood.’ ”

The Sandlot opened in theaters early in ’93, and by year’s end it hit the shelves of Blockbusters (remember them?) and eventually retail stores. That’s when the turnstiles started whirring and the rally began.

“When it went out initially in the rental market, 690 or 700,000 tapes went out, at $100 a pop,” Evans says. “Then DVDs hit, and if I had to guess, 20 million DVDs sold. Maybe more at this point.”

As a three-headed contributor — writer, director, narrator — Evans is triply reminded of the film’s success each quarter when the residual checks are deposited.

“It’s Disney’s number one evergreen film,” Evans says. “Every year, it continues to sell. Think of all the movies they’ve made.

“I think people just identified with it. You either were one of those kids, knew one of those kids, or wanted to be one of those kids.”

Upon first visiting New Smyrna Beach: 'I'm never leaving here'

Evans, 61, was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Los Angeles and eventually had enough of that about 16 years ago. When a 30-minute drive started taking three-plus hours, the straw had finally broken the camel’s back.

He says he was living in a “Divorced Daddy Row” apartment complex, and simply packed all he could in his car and left. Soon thereafter, in 2007, he was directing a movie in Orlando and met his next (and current) wife, who lived in Winter Park. They came to New Smyrna Beach for a long weekend, and that was that, basically.

“I walked to the beach from where we were staying, it was 10 or 11 a.m.,” he says. “There wasn’t one human out there where I was. I said, ‘I’m never leaving here.’ On a day like that, to get to a beach in Los Angeles … you’ll never get off the freeway. Way too crowded.”

He still writes every day, he says, and current projects include a streaming series, based on The Sandlot, for Disney/Fox, and next spring he'll be in Iowa to direct a movie on that state’s legendary high school football coach, Ed Thomas, who was tragically killed by a gunman in 2009.

Keepin' on ...

Next month’s Sandlot reunion comes 10 years after he and Sandlot cast members first toured the country as part of 20th anniversary celebrations.

“I’d said, ‘let’s go to ballparks,’ ” Evans says. “So my wife and I drove all over the country. The cast members would fly in and fly out.”

It began in Memphis at the ballpark of the Cardinals’ Triple A Memphis Redbirds.

“When the Fox (studio) guys showed up, there’s this stadium with some 15,000 seats, and it’s filled,” he recalls. “The Fox guys, they just didn’t get it. They were astounded. They were West Coast guys who couldn’t see over the hood of their BMWs.”

The movie’s ongoing appeal is owed, Evans feels, in large part to its uniqueness.

“It was virtually impossible to get a movie like that done, even then,” he says. “So there’s not another movie like it. And it just keeps on keeping on."

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: The Sandlot at 30: Wanna play ball with Smalls? Reunion coming to NSB