The writer, director and narrator of the baseball movie classic “The Sandlot” says he can’t wait to screen it and meet fans at the Twins’ sandlot Sunday.
David Mickey Evans told me during an interview stop in the Twin Cities Friday that he’s been touched by the overwhelming response to the screenings at various Major League and Triple-A ballparks nationwide to commemorate the film’s 20th anniversary.
The movie will play on the stadium’s scoreboard following the Twins game Sunday afternoon against the Red Sox, as well as on Fox Sports North.
Evans says his stop at Target Field will be his first.
“When the word got out that we wanted to travel to different stadiums, the Twins called and said, ‘We’d love to do that,’ so we said, ‘Yes, of course,'” Evans enthused. “We drove by there doing press and it’s a great looking stadium. I can’t wait to get inside there.”
Originally released in 1993, “The Sandlot” tells the story of Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), the new kid in a 1960s neighborhood in Los Angeles who forms a bond with a rag-tag group of boys who play baseball in a local sandlot.
Evans is proud that “The Sandlot” has become a modern classic often compared to the coming-of-age holiday movie “A Christmas Story.”
“They’re similar films and they’re both honest films,” Evans said. “They both have a bit of heightened reality, but are authentic in regard to the characters and story. Watching them, you never feel like you’re on the outside looking in, you’re on the inside looking out. You can identify with the characters.”
See the original trailer from “The Sandlot” below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QDq-e1GbjE
Accompanying Evans at the Target Field event will be “Sandlot” stars Patrick Renna, who played Ham (known for his line “You’re killin’ me Smalls!), and Chauncey Leopardi, who played Squints — the bespectacled member of the group who bravely fools his lifeguard crush, Wendy (Marley Shelton), into a “life-saving” kiss.
Fox Sports North: Twins players share “Sandlot” memories
Like other cities, Evans says he and the actors will be on hand to meet and talk to fans — and if he gets his way, anybody who wants an autograph will not go home empty-handed.
In fact, Evans and company in a recent stop in Trenton, N.J., signed autographs from about 3:30 p.m. until after 11 p.m.
“We’ll be there the whole time to meet fans, shake hands, tell them how grateful we are and sign stuff,” Evans said. “The only thing that comes between me and the fans is when the stadium kicks me out.”
For the events, Evans said he has commemorative posters celebrating the 20th anniversary of the film, which carry a very special meaning to him.
“There’s a photograph of the team on the wall of the announcer’s booth at the end of the movie that I took the last day of the production,” Evans recalled. “It was a very sweet memory because that was it and we had all done our jobs, and I had to go cut the rest of the picture by myself. So, we’ve blown it up into big, movie-sized posters, and across the top, there are the dates, 1993 and 2013. On the bottom, there are the lines, ‘You’re killin’ me Smalls!’ ‘Legends never die’ and ‘For-ev-ver!’ There will be all kinds of things there. People will dig it.”
