An Ode To The Greatest 4th Of July Scene In The History Of Cinema

It's the most wonderful time of the year, my friends!

No, not Christmas!

We are talking Independence Day, a time when we get to reflect on everything we love about this great country.

Hot dogs, fireworks, cookouts and baseball; it doesn't get much better than that summer combo to show our appreciation for the good old US of A.

Plenty of movies serve up plates of patriotism in large quantities, but none of them do so more effectively or organically than the 1993 classic, The Sandlot.

The Fourth of July "night game" scene in particular is, in my humble opinion, the greatest cinematic love letter to our nation's birthday that has ever been put to film.

Watch this two-minute and twenty-eight-second masterpiece and tell me you don't get a red, white, and blue-tinted tear in your eye.

Everything about this scene is pure American perfection.

The very opening, with Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez knocking on Smalls' door to get him to join the team, is crystallized nostalgia, right down to Smalls telling - not asking - his mom he's going to play ball, hearkening to a time that has long passed us by when kids could stay out until after the sun went down.

Not a phone in sight!

The narration, provided by David Mickey Evans, is warm and inviting, adding to the nostalgic overload.

The whole scene, being underscored by Ray Charles' sublime rendition of "America, The Beautiful" gives us the perfect soundtrack to what could be the greatest night game of baseball ever played.

The climax has to be Benny hitting an absolute frozen rope that gets lost in the same fireworks that paint the night sky and allows our team of misfits to have their "one night game a year."

As Rodriguez rounds the bases, his teammates look on in awe, first at their prodigious teammate's 80 grade hit tool, then at the display of firepower dotting the late summer atmosphere.

We've all been kids playing baseball at our local park, pretending to be our favorite big league hitters and imagining we are digging into the batters' box at a cathedral like Yankee Stadium or Wrigley.

That's why this scene, and this movie as a whole, works so well.

It speaks to every red-blooded American boy's summer break, playing ball, crushing on girls way out of our league, skinning our knees and getting into trouble, all with friends we swore would be our best buds for life.

Of course, those times didn't last, and that's what makes The Sandlot beautiful.

Those days are over for a lot of us, but every summer we can bust this slice of perfection out and relive all the best parts of our childhood.

God bless The Sandlot, God bless America, and happy Fourth of July, everyone.