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Michael Benjamin Lerner as a child

Aug 09, 2010 Web Exclusive By Michael Benjamin Lerner

(Under the Radar’s Summer 2010 Issue is a special issue named the Wasted on the Youth Issue that features musicians and actors talking about their childhood memories and things they loved when they were kids. We’re also posting web-exclusive essays that were not printed in the issue, including this one by Telekinesis’ Michael Benjamin Lerner.)

The Sandlot was my favorite movie as a youngster, and continues to be my favorite movie to this day. I guess I was watching it at a time in my life when I was playing baseball myself, and having lots of sleepovers in the backyards of friends’ houses in the summer, and just feeling so carefree and happy. I just loved each character, as I felt like I also had my own cast of them in my life. Smalls, Benny, Yah Yah, Squints. I most associated with the main character, who loses his dad’s one of a kind Babe Ruth signed baseball over the fence and into the belly of “the beast,” a giant and terrifying baseball eating dog. That was something I could have had happen to me when I was young. And Wendy Peffercorn, oh, Wendy Peffercorn. I had one of those as well, and her name was Nicole Griffin. Oh childhood crushes.

I’ll always and forever love this movie, especially the scene when they go to the amusement park together and chew tobacco and the song “Tequila” is playing, and throw up all over the place. I think this is one of the greatest movies ever made, and it will forever remind me of my childhood. And for that, I am very grateful.

(Telekinesis released their debut album, Telekinsesis!, in 2009 on Merge Records. The Sandlot was released in 1993.)