“Come on. Maybe be two or three guys in history ever busted the guts out of a ball.
Must be an omen.”
~Squints Palladoras
I grew up dropping the expression “you’re killing Smalls” incessantly in any moment that conflicted with my prescribed expectation of the outcome. Scottie Smalls was the lead character in the generation defining film “The Sandlot” from which the expression was coined. Scottie is the new kid in a California town set in the 1960’s and has failed to become an All-American boy by learning to play baseball. In the course of one amazing summer Scottie learns the fine art of the Great American Pastime and what it means to be a friend.
In what can only be seen as turning point of the story is this moment. Benny “the jet” Rodriguez crushes a ball where all that remains is the rawhide cover somewhere in center field. As the 8 outcast ball players gather round the remainder of the baseball Squints Palladoras says these words:
“Come on. Maybe be two or three guys in history ever busted the guts out of a ball.
Must be an omen.”
Baseballs are composed of two pieces of leather rawhide, stitched with red string over the top of tightly wound yard that covers a rubber core. For years the ball has been composed of basically the same elements. To get to the center of the ball means unraveling nearly 1 mile of yarn to get to rubber sphere at the very core of that baseball.
The movie moment and the ball seem endlessly symbolic of so much in the life of Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez. And truthfully the symbolism spills over into me and you. Our core is often hidden by tightly wound circumstances that keep it unseen. It is only in the moments of unraveling that we truly let the core of our life be exposed and our true self gets seen.
Benny had been the best ball player on the sandlot oftentimes hidden away from the rest of the world. But in the unraveling of the story we begin the see the greatness of Benny “The Jet”. His epic outrunning of The Beast turns “The Jet” into a legend.
It makes me wonder if what has been hidden under the mile of yarn in my life and my core was exposed what would be seen. So often the unraveling of life seems destructive and painful. Yet it is so often in the unraveling that the core of who we are gets unveiled.
Each of us has a core being that longs to be seen. It is our true who, our real identity. Yet life in its tangling keeps it hidden. Exposing what is at your core is risky. Although it is when we live out that true who that exist behind the mile of yard we truly get to live as ourselves.
As the movie concludes with the ragtag bunch of boys who lived in fear of the beast behind the wall find The Beast to be not nearly as scary as they told themselves. And the beast you have been running from that tells you to not be who you are called to be has been nothing really ever to fear.
“You play ball like a girl” – Ham Porter
