 Every time somebody thanks me, or whatever they have to say, or appreciative words about the movie, I got this intense sense of satisfaction that the bad parts of my childhood weren't for nothing. Okay? My little brother and I were close when we were kids. We were both born in Pennsylvania. My blood father left, my mom got in a car and drove across country with these two little kids and went to come out and find him, found him, and he had moved on with his life, if you will. And she ended up marrying a man who became our stepfather. He was not a very nice man. We got bullied on our own block. We got bullied at school. We got bullied all the way back from school. And when we get home, we got bullied. We were new in the block anyway, right? Some of the reasons that we were kicked out of the house on a daily basis was to make friends, go get dirty, have a good time. Right, right. Little did they know there was a war zone out there. Me and my little brother lived on a street where we were not very popular. We never invited to play or made part of a team or anything like that. During a particular baseball season, my brother went down into the block where they were playing baseball. There was a notorious house with a big brick wall around it and in the backyard was a dog named Hercules. It was vicious and known to bite kids. So they knocked the baseball into that backyard and they told him, you go over and get that baseball back and we'll let you play with us. Is this it? Is it the same height? This is it right here. Wow, this is like strange, let me tell you. When I got up, I looked over and there's a dog in that back corner. When I was sitting here, I put my palms on the top and I see the cam going in. I pushed myself up and I landed in a big cloud of dust. I leaned down on my right hand to get the ball and his slobber and dog breath all over me. And I looked back and the guys were there and they said, Ron, so I was able to grab the top of the fence with my left hand. Right. I was in that ball when I jumped. The dog jumped. It's after you. Right? So he latches on to my thigh. I think that's where I found you, right there. And I almost made her home because it's only three houses down. Yeah. Even to this day, it boggles my mind. How could they not know what a bunch of just complete and utter bullies they were? They were horrible. Many years later, those guys were still in my head. I was giving them a whole lot of space where I could put something more positive, you know? The very first paragraph of the original screenplay says they're more than friends. In fact, they might be the best buddies in the history of the world. I never thought about those guys again, ever, after that paragraph. The sandlot is essentially me turning all of my villains or bullies from my childhood into heroes. Yeah, I had a bad childhood. Guess what? I'm going to change it. So I did. I changed it. I changed history. It's not the way it was. Not for me. It's the way it should have been. That's the sandlot.