1. “You mean that’s the same guy?” – Scotty Smalls

2. “If my dog was as ugly as you, I’d shave it’s butt and make it walk backwards.” – Hamilton Porter

3. “You’re killing me, Smalls! You chew it, of course!” – Hamilton Porter

4. “Hurry up, batter. It’s gotta be a short game, then I gotta get home for lunch.” – Hamilton Porter

5. “Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.” –

6. “There’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” – Babe Ruth 

7. “Face it, I’m just an egghead.” – Scotty Smalls

8. “Some lady named Ruth—Baby Ruth.” – Scotty Smalls

9. “Anyone who wants to be a can’t-hack-it pantywaist who wears their mama’s bra, raise your hand.” – Benny Rodriguez 

10. “Benny would’ve played ball all day and all night. Rain, shine, tidal wave, whatever—it didn’t matter. Baseball was the only thing he cared about and everything else was just a waste of time.” – Narrator

11. “Man, this is baseball—you gotta stop thinking! Just have fun. If you were having fun, you would have caught that ball!” – Benny Rodriguez

12. “You mix your wheaties with your mama’s toe jam!” – Hamilton Porter

13. “He had kissed a woman, and he had kissed her long and good.” – Scotty Smalls

14. “It’s about time, Benny. My clothes are going out of style!” – Michael Palledorous

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15. “The Beast was the most perfect junkyard dog that ever lived. A true killing machine. But after a while, the cops started getting phone calls from people reporting all the missing thieves, the ones the Beast had killed.” – Michael Palledorous

16. “What are you laughing at, Yeah-Yeah? You run like a duck.” – Benny Rodriguez

17. “This pop isn’t working, Benny! I’m bakin’ like a toasted cheese-it! It’s so hot here!” – Hamilton Porter

18. “That wimpy deer?” – Hamilton Porter

19. “See, there’s just some things that are, ya know—stuff that it’s better not to talk about because thinkin’ about it just makes it worse.” – Michael Palledorous

20. “Is that your sister out there in left field, naked? She’s naked?” – Hamilton Porter

21. “Ham, you idiot! Now we can’t play no more!” – Benny Rodriguez

22. “Oh, God. He looks like a dead fish.” – Bertram Grover Weeks

23. “Maybe the shock of his first homer was just too much for him.” – Scotty Smalls

24. “There was only eight of them, so they didn’t have a whole team. So even though I didn’t know how to play, I figured I could be the ninth man—and maybe just stand in the outfield somewhere and take up space.” – Scotty Smalls

25. “Okay, well chuck it like you throw paper. When your arm gets here, just let go. Just let go, it’s that easy.” – Benny Rodriguez

26. “Hey, hey. I’m just trying to have a little friendly conversation.” – Hamilton Porter

27. “They never kept score. They never choose sides. They never even really stopped playing the game. It just went on forever. Every day, they picked up right where they left off the day before. It was an endless ‘dream game.’” – Narrator

28. “You call that pitching? This is baseball! Not tennis!” – Hamilton Porter

29. “I take it back. You’re not in trouble, you’re dead where you stand.” – Mr. Mertle

30. “I just got here, so how can I have some more of nothing?” – Scotty Smalls

31. “Hey, you wanna s’more?” – Hamilton Porter

32. “That’s the way I play—100%. All the time.” – Mr. Mertle

33. “Think she’d go out with me?” – Hamilton Porter

34. “Smalls, is the greatest baseball player that ever lived. People say he was less than a god but more than a man. You know, like Hercules or something. That ball you just aced to the Beast is worth, well, more than your whole life.” – Benny Rodriguez

35. “Bertram, well, Bertram got really into the ’60s and no one ever saw him again.” – Narrator

36. “So, it seems like you’re in trouble.” – Mr. Mertle

37. “We all knew Benny was different. We knew that he was gonna go on to bigger and better games. Because every time we stopped to watch the sky that night like regular kids, Benny was there to call us back.” – Narrator

38. “Just stand out there and stick your glove out in the air. I’ll take care of it.” – Benny Rodriguez

39. “I seen a guy once that threw like that. I mean not that bad, but at least so bad that he hadda move in the fourth grade ’cause they nicknamed him ‘Bloomers.’” – Michael Palledorous

40. “There was only one night game a year. On the Fourth of July, the whole sky would brighten up with fireworks, giving us just enough light for a game. We played better then, too. Because, I guess, we all felt like Big Leaguers under the lights at some great stadium.” – Narrator

41. “Man, base up, you blockheads!” – Benny Rodriguez

42. “Yes, Babe Ruth signed that ball.” – Scotty Smalls

43. “Now, the key to this game is that you got to keep an eye on the ball no matter whether you’re in a field or on the bed. Eye on the ball, okay?” – Bill Smalls

44. “This kid is an L-7 weenie.” – Michael Palledorous

45. Benny Rodriguez: “Man, you think too much! I bet you get straight A’s and shit!”

Scotty Smalls: “No, I got a B once. Well, actually it was an A minus but it should have been a B.”

46. “Where have you guys been? We’ve been waiting here forever already.” – Benny Rodriguez

47. “Shut up, Tommy!” – Timmy Timmons

48. “How can I have more of nothing?” – Scotty Smalls

49. “You play ball like a girl!” – Hamilton Porter

50. “Count on it, pee-drinking crap face!” – Hamilton Porter

51. “You eat dog crap for breakfast, geek!” – Phillips

52. “You bob apples in the toilet, and you like it!” – Hamilton Porter

53. “Oh yeah, the Great Bambino. Of course! I thought you said the Great Bambi.” – Scotty Smalls

54. “Oh man, he’s in deep shit!” – Timmy Timmons

55. “Even though none of us had ever seen a Playboy magazine, which we constantly lied about, we figured going to the pool was the next best thing to being there.” – Scotty Smalls

56. “I said shut up. I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.” – Michael Palledorous

57. “I’ve been coming here every summer of my adult life, and every summer, there she is oiling and lotioning, lotioning, and oiling—smiling. I can’t take this no more!” – Michael Palledorous

58. Hamilton Porter: “Benny, why’d you bring that kid?”

Benny Rodriguez: “Because he makes nine of us.”

59. “Sure, we’ll just hop over and say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Beast, sir, could we have our ball back? Oh, and please don’t kill us while we’re here!’” – Michael Palledorous

60. “Everybody gets one chance to do something great. Most people never take the chance.” – Babe Ruth

61. “George Herman Ruth got his nickname because his died when he was just a little kid, and he hadda go live in an orphanage.” – Benny Rodriguez

62. “Crack! Boom! Outta here! You see the looks on their faces? Did ya? It was like, ‘Duh, so that’s how you play baseball.’” – Benny Rodriguez

63. “I learned that more than 150 baseballs had gone over that fence—and not one of them was ever seen again. Even when some brave kid worked up enough courage to peek over the fence.” – Narrator

64. “We all lived in the neighborhood for a couple of more years—mostly through junior high school and every summer was great. But none of them ever came close to that first one. When one guy would move away, we never replaced him on the team with anyone else. We just kept the game going like he was still thernother one among us would have ever in a million years even for a million dollars have the guts to put the move on the lifeguard.” – Scotty Smalls

66. “We all expected something to happen right then during that game. What we had just witnessed was bordering on the supernatural. We knew that greater hands than ours were at work.” – Scotty Smalls

67. “It is the ‘Law of the Sandlot.’ Anything that goes over that fence becomes property of the Beast!” – Michael Palledorous

68. “Your tongue was hanging out of your head and you was swooning.” – Yeah-Yeah

69. “I was dead meat. I knew it. They knew it. We had thought that those cards Benny had gotten meant that something great was going to happen.” – Scotty Smalls

65. “They’d just meant my life was over.” – Scotty Smalls

70. “Baseball was life! And I was good at it—real good.” – Mr. Mertle

71. “First you take the graham. You stick the chocolate on the graham. Then, you roast the mallow. When the mallow’s flaming, you stick it on the chocolate and cover it with the other end. Then, you scarf.” – Hamilton Porter

72. “Smalls, you mean to tell me you went home, swiped a ball that was signed by Babe Ruth, brought it out here and actually played with it?” – Timmy Timmons

73. “I want you to get out in the fresh air and make friends. Run around and scrape your knees. Get dirty. Climb trees and hop fences. Get in trouble for crying out loud. Not too much, but some. You have my permission. Now how many mothers do you think say that to their sons?” – Scotty Smalls’ Mom

74. “Once we got over trying to be big shots, we just stuck to what we could handle and swore off the hard stuff forever. When we finally got back together for some baseball, something amazing happened.” – Scotty Smalls

75. “It wasn’t really the pool, honeys. Like we said—because if any one of them had come up to any one of us, we’d have just peed our pants. We all went because, well, because Wendy Peffercorn was the lifeguard.” – Scotty Smalls

76. “Honey, I want you to make some friends this summer, lots of them.” – Scotty Smalls’ Mom

77. Benny Rodriguez: “That’s really nice of you, but that ball really is signed by Babe Ruth.”

Mr. Mertle: “So is this one—with the rest of the 1927 Yankees.”

78. “Quiet. Are you trying to wake it up? It just went to bed.” – Michael Palledorous

79. “Yeah, yeah, so does my sister, but I didn’t bring her along!” – Hamilton Porter

80. “The king of crash!” – Bertram Grover Weeks

81. “It was great! So I went around and pretended like I was selling prescriptions to magazines. And the people asked if they should pay me now. So I said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ pay me now! And they did!” – Yeah-Yeah

82. “We play on a real diamond, Porter. You ain’t good enough to lick the dirt off our cleats.” – Phillips

83. “Face it, Benny. It’s not a fit day out for man nor beast. We gotta call it for the day.” – Michael Palledorous

84. “C’mon, Benny, maybe two, three guys in history have ever busted the guts out of a ball. That’s what the omen was.” – Michael Palledorous

85. “I said, you shouldn’t even be allowed to touch a . Except for Rodriguez, you’re all an insult to the game.” – Phillips

86. “George signed this?” – Mr. Mertle

87. “Throw that hat in there, man.”  Benny Rodriguez

88. “Mom, guess what!” – Scotty Smalls

89. “For-ev-er! For-ev-er! For-ev-er!” – Michael  Palledorous

90. “Little pervert!” – Wendy Peffercorn

91. “We gotta get that ball back.” – Scotty Smalls

92. “The sultan of swat!” – Kenny DeNunez

93. “Are you outta your mind? Mr. Mertle is the meanest old man that ever lived! He’s the one that sicked the beast on the toad!” – Michael Palledorous

94. Scotty Smalls: “It was my stepdad’s. I stole it from his trophy room. It was a present or something. Somebody gave it to him, but we gotta get it back. He’s gonna kill me!”
Michael Palledorous: “Listen to me, Smalls. This is a matter of life and death. Where did your old man get that ball?”

95. “I don’t know. Some lady gave it to him. She even signed her name on it—Ruth. Baby Ruth.” – Scotty Smalls

96. “It was the heater. Low and outside, just how I like it!” – Hamilton Porter

97. “It was salt in an open wound. Even my own mom, who was only a grown-up girl, knew who Babe Ruth was.” – Scotty Smalls

98. “First, we survey the enemy’s environment. Then, we make note of the surrounding terrain.” – Michael Palledorous

99. “Yeah, yeah. He looks pretty crappy.” – Yeah-Yeah

100. “Okay, we need 98 cents. So, everybody spread out and found some soda bottles and cash ’em in. We need a new baseball.” – Benny Rodriguez

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