Who says athletes don’t have a sense of humor, or good taste in ’90s coming-of-age films? No matter what baseball team you like, any millennial with a love for sports and sports movies will enjoy knowing that the players of the 2015 New York Yankees team also really love The Sandlot. How could they not? Playing like a family-friendly and baseball-centric version of Stand By Me, the film is considered a classic whether you care about baseball at all or not. Don’t know what The Sandlot is?

The Sandlot tells the story of Scotty Smalls, a new kid in a small town, and his adventures in the summer of 1962. Scotty meets up with a group of kids that spend most of their days playing baseball in a sandlot. Scotty and crew get into a mess of different events over the course of the summer, including a trip to the public pool (where their nerdy friend kisses his crush Wendy Peffercorn), beating a rival team in a baseball game, and getting violently ill by chewing tobacco at the summer carnival. Their biggest misadventure, though, is trying to get back a baseball signed by Babe Ruth that Scotty stole from his stepdad and used for a game ball, which they knocked into a neighboring yard guarded by “The Beast.”

If you have ever been a kid during the summer, you can relate to this movie. Obviously this was true for the New York Yankees, who took a break during spring training this year to recreate the famous scene when Scotty realizes just how much trouble he’s in. It is obviously a fitting scene to for The Yankees and the lineage of Babe Ruth, and it is also obvious they did their homework for it, too. While the acting may not be the greatest, they do get the framing, editing, and even the blinking down to uncanny accuracy. Take a look for yourself with this comparison edited by @BrooksKnudsen.

 

Leave a comment below with your favorite scene from The Sandlot, or your favorite summer time memory from childhood.