The Sandlot Character Development

The film “The Sandlot” and the characters it portrays evidently demonstrates certain characteristics of middle childhood. Although at face value “The Sandlot” seems like a run-of-the-mill family comedy, the roots shows exactly what middle childhood beholds: Fearing humiliation, idolizing our heroes, good and bad behaviours that friends see, copying behaviours we see friends doing, and the new challenges children are willing to try. These are only few of the many characteristics of physical, cognitive and social-emotional aspects found within middle childhood development that were present in the film.
Starting from the beginning we see the main protagonist Scott “Scotty” Smalls rolls into a new town. Scotty from the start wants to learn how …show more content…
In the film Babe Ruth is seen as an absolute baseball deity and the best of the best. The characters often refer to him as his many famous nicknames; Great Bambino, Sultan of Swat, etc. It is a known fact that Babe Ruth used to be a chronic chewing tobacco user until his death from throat cancer. He chews tobacco so the kids copied him and they try packing lips as well. Another example is in Benny’s dream in which he was in a conflicted state about challenging The Beast and getting Small’s stepfather’s baseball back. Babe Ruth appears in his dream and offers up advice to Benny and provide him confidence. Benny takes this to heart and agrees fully just because it is his hero. Models and mimicking appear to mostly be in respect to “The …show more content…
The very first challenge presented was Smalls wanting to learn baseball. He knew it would not be easy in the beginning but he tried anyways. Next is that the entire group of boys wanted to face a rival team at the Sandlot. They were tossing chirps left and right with Ham setting the leader off by saying the ultimate insult; “You play ball like a girl”. This exchange of verbal dueling was a challenge in itself. Michael “Squints” Palledorous underwent a crucial coming-of-age challenge, getting with a girl. Squints has been crushing on Wendy Peffercorn and is willing to go to extreme lengths to get with her. In an act of pure desperation Squints goes the diving board at the deep end of the pool, Squints cannot swim. Squints “drowns” and is pulled out by Wendy and “needs” CPR. Squints gets what he was after and they kiss. Finally the challenge of confronting the beast. At first after Smalls’ pitch to the boys to go and get the rare ball, the crew graciously declined. It was not until Benny rallied them in which they took on their hardest challenge yet. Challenges and facing them seems to play a large role in middle childhood. The movie “The Sandlot” featured many characteristics found within middle childhood other than physical growth. The social-emotional and cognitive side was touched on heavily. The good and bad behaviours of friends. Mimicking models in an effort

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The Sandlot Character Development

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Textual Analysis Of The Movie The Sandlot

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