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By Jennifer Asencio | Published
The Sandlot is a beloved coming-of-age movie about baseball. The 1993 comedy-drama not only resonated with fans but is frequently quoted in memes to this day. It is a touching period piece about a summer that shapes the entire life of the main character, Scott Smalls.
In it, “Smalls” (Tom Guiry) is the new kid in town, having moved to San Fernando Valley in 1962 with his mother and stepfather, Bill (Denis Leary). Encouraged to go make friends, he stumbles upon the titular lot, which is used by eight boys for a never-ending baseball practice. They are led by Benny (Mike Vitar), a talented center fielder who takes Smalls under his wing and teaches him the game.
They have typical pre-adolescent summer adventures with girls, with Little League, and with each other. But the most important test for Smalls and the entire gang is Hercules, a gigantic hound who dwells in the yard of Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones), whose home is adjacent to the back of the lot. Hercules likes baseballs, so when a prized ball is hit over the fence, the boys have to figure out how to get it back.
This heartwarming family film helped form the childhoods of many 80s and 80s kids, relying more on its child stars than on the famous adult actors (Smalls’ mother, played by Raiders of the Lost Ark star Karen Allen, doesn’t even get a name). The year in the movie is 1962, a more innocent time when kids weren’t bogged down by so much technology, not even the number of TV stations we have these days. The boys from The Sandlot would probably be flabbergasted by the ability to play their favorite game on Xbox instead of in the lot, but that’s not all that would surprise them.
They probably wouldn’t recognize baseball if they were suddenly time-warped into 2026, because it is vastly different from the game they spent so much time practicing. Over the intervening years, MLB has made some major changes to the rules and the game. Sure, it’s still nine innings, with four strikes making an out and four balls making a walk, but other alterations made to the game would seem to the kids from The Sandlot as though they didn’t belong.
In honor of baseball’s nine innings, here are nine things about baseball that would be entirely new to the Sandlot kids.
1. More Teams Than You Can Count
1961-62 is known as “the expansion era” because during that time, a total of 10 teams were added to Major League Baseball, including my beloved New York Mets. The sport was already divided into two leagues, the National League and the American League, and the expansion era put 10 teams into each league. Today, each league has 15 teams, for a total of 30, and they are further subdivided into East, West, and Central divisions based on their locations.
Some of the historic teams the boys might remember from 1962 have moved, changed names, or disbanded, so while old standbys like the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees would still be familiar, the Washington Nationals or Atlanta Braves would seem misplaced, and they’d have never heard of the Colorado Rockies or either Florida team.
2. Ghost Runners
For some reason, the people in charge of baseball decided that it was too long and slow, especially if it went into extra innings beyond the regulation nine due to a tie. One of the changes implemented to streamline and shorten the game was the “ghost runner,” which is an automatic baserunner who takes the field for the batting team if the game goes into overtime. While some games in the past have gone on for several hours and dozens of innings, the ghost runner rule wasn’t made a permanent part of the game until 2023.
The Sandlot kids probably used ghost runners themselves to compensate for the fact that there were only nine of them, but the only purpose they have in MLB is to shorten the game by giving each team a small boost in extra innings. The argument in favor of the ghost runner is that it cuts costs and saves time, while the argument against is that it ruins the purity of the competition. One wonders what the boys would make of the ghost runner rule.
3. Three Strikes, Yer Out?
Umpires, the referees of baseball, have been known throughout the years to make some serious errors that have cost teams important games. They are responsible for determining officially if a pitch is a ball or a strike, and it used to be that they had the final word. For fans, getting mad at the umps was as much a part of the game as pitchers and batters and bases.
Starting in 2026, MLB is using the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System, which allows an umpire’s call to be challenged.
Each team only gets two, and if the challenge fails, they lose one. Whether it’s a pitcher who thinks he threw a strike or a manager who thinks his batter was just dealt a ball, teams still need to be careful how they use ABS challenges. The only reason ABS challenges can exist is that technology has evolved way beyond what the Sandlot boys might recognize, allowing each pitch to be analyzed for its position relative to the batter, something that used to rely on an umpire’s eye.
4. Pitches Are Limited-Time Only
Once upon a time, pitchers could take as long as they wanted to deliver a pitch. This resulted in tension between the pitcher and batter as the two stared one another down until the pitcher finally decided what to throw, making each pitch high drama.
In 2023, the pitch clock was implemented, which limited the amount of time the pitcher had to decide on his pitch to a mere 15 seconds (18 if there are baserunners).
The purpose of the pitch clock was to shave more time off the game, and it did result in runtimes decreasing by an average of 25 minutes. But the high drama of the duel between pitcher and batter is an aspect of the game the Sandlot boys would miss.
5. Stats for Everything
Baseball statistics used to be simple: how many strikeouts did a pitcher get? How many hits did a batter get? These statistics were general and imperfect, however, and the computing era of the 1970s and 80s saw a new system called Sabremetrics used to analyze the game.
Sabremetrics made the existing stats, like home runs and batting averages, a little more precise by adding metrics such as on-base percentage (OPS), which included batters who got on base without hitting the ball (such as by a walk or being hit by a pitch). This improved the understanding of each player’s contribution to the team, particularly in the case of pitchers.
As technology further improved, a second era of statistics arose, called the Statcast era. Today, there are statistics for how fast a ball is hit, how many times a batter is expected to make it on base, and even how valuable a player is to a team compared to an average player in his position. The mountain of new statistics is dizzying for many long-time fans, but maybe professionals like Smalls and Benny would understand them.
6. Designated Hitters
The idea of a player not batting for themselves would be alien to the Sandlot kids. Until 1973, even pitchers went up to bat, traditionally ninth in the lineup.
Then, the American League introduced the idea of the designated hitter, a batter who replaced the pitcher’s turn and could be added anywhere in the lineup; many teams would put in a slugger who didn’t play the field but only batted.
The National League persisted in having pitchers bat until the designated hitter rule was made universal in 2022.
Now it applies to all teams, and only rare pitchers get up to bat. While the designated hitter allows pitchers to focus on their craft and adds an element of strategy to the batting lineup, the tradition of the pitcher batting last is something the boys would have grown up with.
7. Expanded Playoffs
Since 1903, the World Series has been a contest between the best teams in both leagues, National and American. This was determined by which teams in each league had the best win-loss records.
In 1969, after the expansion era, the leagues split into divisions, East and West. Already, the Sandlot boys are in unfamiliar territory, as the semi-final round, known as the playoffs, was introduced.
The teams with the best records in the East and West now compete for the league title and the right to continue to the World Series. In 2026, there are 30 teams, and each league is split into three divisions, meaning there are even more playoff games as more rounds were added to contest ties and accommodate the expansions.
These days, the National and American leagues each have six teams that play post-season: the top in each of the three divisions, and three “wild card” teams that place based on their win-loss records.
While sometimes this can be confusing and means that the “best” don’t always make it to the end, it also adds more competition to the final rounds and allows teams that had good seasons a chance at the finals. Who knows what the boys would make of all these post-season games. To me, they’re bonus baseball.
8. Instant Replays
The instant replay has long been a staple of football, hockey, and basketball, so it was surprising that baseball didn’t start using it until 2008, and didn’t start using it regularly until 2014.
As with many of the other calls the umpires were responsible for, the instant replay gave managers and players the chance to have the action reviewed on video to determine if a call was right.
These days, there’s an entire center in Manhattan that is responsible for reviewing plays and confirming or overturning bad calls. While this has improved the game (and also showed which umpires actually were bums), fans and players alike have spent a century criticizing umpires, and even today, a good argument between a manager and an ump is celebrated by fans.
The more mechanical part of the boys’ baseball thinking would probably appreciate the instant replay, but whether they would like it as fans is another question.
9. The Decline of Starting Pitchers
Once upon a time, it was very common for pitchers to pitch all nine innings of a game. Relief pitchers and “the bullpen” were available, but not such a common part of the game as they are today (remember, back then, pitchers also batted).
However, as more sophisticated statistical metrics were added to the game over the years, teams began to notice trends in pitching performance, such as a drop-off in efficiency on the third time facing the nine-man batting lineup. Starting around the late 1980s, teams began to rely more on their bullpens.
In 2026, it is very rare for a pitcher to complete a game, as starting pitchers are limited in the number of pitches they are allowed to throw and relief pitchers are put in to counter specific types of batters. The Sandlot boys might enjoy the strategy of the bullpen, but they come from an era when many great pitchers dominated the game, and that era is no more.
Professional baseball has been around for over 150 years and has seen a lot of changes, for better or worse. In 1962, when The Sandlot takes place, baseball was still more or less in its nascent form, with only the addition of new teams to change it. As baseball has gotten televised and more teams have been added, the game and its rules have changed in ways that cut costs and make it more broadcast-friendly. Whether the boys from The Sandlot would like or despise these changes is up for debate, but one thing is for sure: baseball is not the same sport they played together during that memorable summer.
For a look back at the good old days of baseball, The Sandlot is streaming on Disney+.
