A Visit to The Sandlot

The Sandlot has been one of my favorite movies since I first watched it back in 1993. The movie, about a group of young teen baseball-playing boys and their summer exploits, was set in 1962. It may have been eight years before I was born, but much of what took place was so familiar to my own childhood. Like them, we had our neighborhood team (but much more gender diverse) and daily baseball ‘games’. And also like the players in the movies, the fun went beyond just the games. We hung together, wandered the town together, and sometimes made questionable choices together.

Those stories are for another day. This post is about the movie. Rather, my family's love for the movie. The Sandlot may have been set in Southern California, but last year I discovered that it was actually filmed in Salt Lake City, Utah. Unbelievable at first, but a drive through some neighborhoods and a look at the surrounding mountains, show that Salt Lake City can pass for LA without much effort.

Since we were to go to Salt Lake City this past summer, my wife and I thought it would be fun to see the filming sites of some of our favorite scenes from The Sandlot.

Twenty-five years have passed and things change. That I can accept. What was more difficult to accept was what wasn’t even real to begin with. The actual sandlot, for one. We played ball on the field from Field of Dreams in Iowa and hoped we could do the same with The Sandlot. Not possible.

Not only was the field created for the movie. The site of the field was overgrown with Utah flora. All we could think was that it may be infested with some of Utah’s native creatures. Google told us that Utah has an abundance of snakes, from venomous pit vipers like copperheads or rattlers to the less harmless like rat and garter snakes. Then there were the spiders and other rodents to contend with along with cutting through people’s yards to get there. So THE sandlot was off the table. 

The home of Mr. Myrtle and Hercules was a facade built for the movie. Even the oak tree that housed the tree house was temporarily installed. The magic of Hollywood, I guess. 
But we still managed to find some iconic spots. 

I’ll start with the kid’s houses. We found the ‘homes’ of Scotty Smalls and Benny Rodriguez. Cruising this residential neighborhood in the south of Salt Lake City was kind of a hoot. The movie was done here 25 years ago and obviously things change. The biggest change was the trees. Everything looks so open in the movie, but as we scanned the homes for house numbers we were surprised by all the growth and some places overgrowth. Besides the trees, there was all the ‘clutter’ and stuff that occupies the real world but isn’t so obvious in cinema. 

Smalls Residence - 2019

The Smalls Residence - 1962

Benny going home in 1962

Benny's house in 2019

 In our search, we almost misidentified one of the homes. A prominent “No Trespassing” sign threw us off, thinking that maybe other Sandlot pilgrims may have been overly enthusiastic. Ultimately, we decided that the homeowner was just a crank.

Maddie & my own Wendy Peffercorn
at Vincent's Drug Store

My favorite site was Vincent’s Drug store. This is where the boys gathered to purchase pop and this is where we first learn of Squint’s love of Wendy Peffercorn. 



The name wasn’t just for the movie. It really was Vincent’s. The sign hangs over the store to this day. 

Vincent's Drug wasn’t as large as in the movie and SEE!  More trees!

I would have loved to have gone in and bought a baseball or maybe even some Big Chief Chewing Tobacco. 😉  But sadly, Vincent's was no longer in business. 

All that really seems familiar from this shot is the sign that juts from the store

Sticking with Squints and Wendy Peffercorn and on to the site of perhaps the non-field scene most identified with the The Sandlot. The pool. And it was right in Ogden where we were staying. 

No, we didn’t go in. That was a consideration, but time was an issue. So I had to take my chances as an old white guy standing outside the fence taking pictures of a pool full of children. No, I didn’t feel creepy at all. Thanks for asking. 

The façade of the building had changed quite a bit, but the pool area itself, minus the diving board, looked pretty much the same.

Wendy's Perch

The Pool Hunnies waiting for the Hammonball

Trivia Note: If you watch the movie, you may notice shivering. They were filming during the summer, but the temperature on day they were scheduled to film the pool scene was 58°. The shivering was real. We did not have that problem. Our visit saw 93°, so the pool was packed and we were standing in the blacktop parking lot baking like toasted cheesers. 

2019 - Lots of kids. No Pool Hunnies. And no diving board!

So we may have missed out on THE field, but we couldn’t do a baseball movie stop without finding A field. The sandlot was inaccessible. The field used in the opening scene was at a school that had been torn down and rebuilt, so that field no longer existed. But there was one we could see. Rose Park Field in Salt Lake City. This was the field on which our Sandlot team ‘beat the crap’ out of the bully little leaguers who cruised the town on their bikes, suited in their team uniforms. I regretted not bringing gloves, bats, and balls, but still, we made the most of it, throwing off the same mound, miming liners to left center, and running the bases.

1962 - Celebration!

2019 - Same Dugouts!

2019 - Thomas as Ham
jawing it up with the batter

1962 - Do you think your sister will go out with me? 

2019 - Giving them my Heater

I've liked a lot of movies, but there are only a few with which I feel connected.  A connection with a film can be through its plot, setting, dialogue, or characters. But with The Sandlot it was all of the above. That movie was my childhood. 

And while the point of this tour was to experience a beloved movie on another level, I found the tour churning up my own childhood memories and I was sharing with my family stories of my neighborhood friends and tales of our adventures and misadventures. We've all hit 50 now, but it was therapeutic in a way to relive our own battles with killer dogs and scary neighbors and talk of a time when our world was so small but seemed so huge.

That was a fun and successful day and we knew just how to celebrate!

Chewing tobacco and spinny rides!

Big Chief! The best!