Sandlot Days | Urban Living
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Sandlot Days

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Let's turn the clock back 25 years and revisit a gentler time. OK, I had to laugh. When I checked the interwebs for great things that happened in 1993, I got: 1. The north tower of the World Trade Center was bombed, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000; 2. the Feds attempted to raid the compound of the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh in Waco, Texas. After a 51-day siege, 76 members of the religious cult died as their compound caught or was set on fire; 3. a ferry boat in Haiti sank, drowning 900 people; 4. thousands were killed around the world by earthquakes; 5. Bill Clinton was president.

People back then had to go to the library to look up facts and maps because the internet was barely up and running. The only way you could find phone numbers for family, friends or businesses was in huge paper books that were delivered to your doorstep once a year. Smart phones and tablets weren't around to stream Netflix, and computers were pretty basic. An average house in the U.S. cost $113,200, incomes averaged $31,2300 per year and monthly rent averaged $532. Nirvana was hugely popular, as was Snoop Doggy Dogg, Garth Brooks and Whitney Houston. Police were beginning to investigate allegations that Michael Jackson was abusing children.

Why go back 25 years? Well, a little movie called The Sandlot was released in 1993, and the anniversary of this flick brings smiles to many. Cast members and players on the Salt Lake Bees baseball team celebrated the cult classic Aug. 11 by visiting the site of the original lot where the kids in the movie played their baseball games. Today, it's a weedy plot in Glendale at 1388 Glenrose Drive that's not a kept-up ball field or a location quite as famous as, say, the ball field from Field of Dreams outside Dyersville, Iowa. Yet people from all over the world make pilgrimages to the Sandlot locations in Utah.

The movie is a G-rated success about kids coming of age in the summer of 1962. If you want to roll down memory lane, the main film locations are: Lorin Farr Community Pool (1691 Gramercy Ave., Ogden), private residences in Sugar House (2005 E. Bryan Ave.; 1556 S. 2000 East, and 1571 S. 2000 East), Liberty Park and Riverside Park in Rose Park.

Now, say it with me: "You're killin' me, Smalls!"