growing up VHS

I think some of the most underrated movies of all time are kids baseball movies. There are some all time classics in this category. Little Big League. Rookie of the Year. Angels in the Outfield. And yes, quite possibly the greatest baseball movie ever: The Sandlot. There are other sports movies (The Mighty Ducks, Little Giants) that had similar appeal but the baseball movies are the ones that we were enamored with when we first saw them as little kids. Seeing someone close to our age involved in the big leagues in some way was simply captivating. The slow motion shots of the baseball in mid air. The seasoned pro that overcomes his disdain for the kid to take him under his wing. When one of these movies appears on TBS or ABC Family or another offbeat station, we forgo watching the latest Real World or World Series of Poker or Chapelle's Show so we can be little kids again for an hour and a half. We have to. Our childhoods makes us. We see how many of the little kids in the movies are actually actors we recognize now. We let out the "oh yea......" as the scenes come that we didn't remember. We still sit on the edge of our seats even though we know that the batter strikes out on the floater, and that Ken Griffey rips a homer, that the Angels win the pennant, and that they find out who lives behind The Beast. We all played little league baseball and home run derby because of these movies. None of us didn't even know what derby meant, most of us still don't, but it never mattered. We just wanted to play baseball. We wanted to watch the movie again. I'm sure there are younger kids now and older adults that enjoy these movies. But for those of us who didn't grow up on the internet or skateboarding or with 3d video games, these movies were more. They were huge. They were all that mattered.

-alex