Legends Never Die
On Arvydas Sabonis, “The Sandlot,” and the Magic of Storytelling
Bill Walton is prone to hyperbole. The NBA Hall-of-Famer-turned-broadcaster once likened Boris Diaw to Beethoven, predicted Shane Battier would become President of the United States, and compared a Tyreke Evans layup to the work of Einstein, Da Vinci, and Steve Jobs.
He also dubbed former Trail Blazers center Arvydas Sabonis “the epitome of competitive greatness” and, in a 2011 interview with Grantland, offered this recollection of seeing the 7-foot-3 Lithuanian play for the first time, as a 19-year-old.
“He probably had a quadruple-double at halftime…We looked at each other, our jaws just dropping, and I said, ‘You might as well just rewrite the rules of basketball after watching him play for just the first half.’”
Walton continued:
“He could do everything. He had the skills of Larry Bird and Pete Maravich. He had the athleticism of Kareem, and he could shoot the 3-point shot.”
While Walton’s reputation for embellishment might undermine his credibility, others substantiate his praise of Sabonis.
“I told guys, if [Sabonis] was in the NBA, he’d be the best player — possibly ever,” says German-born Detlef Schrempf, who played 16 NBA seasons and saw Sabonis on the court from an early age.
A prodigy, Sabonis joined the Soviet National Team at age 17, lead the USSR to a shocking Gold Medal victory in the 1989 Olympics and, in his first season playing professionally in Spain, averaged an astounding 23.3 points, 13.5 rebounds, and 3.6 blocks per game. While most Americans knew nothing of Sabonis, Europeans saw greatness in the making.
“The legend is unbelievable,” said Bob Whitsitt, former GM of the Portland Trail Blazers, in a retrospective of Sabonis’s career. “You go over to Europe, and people talk about Sabonis in a breath you can’t understand. Clearly, he was one of the most dominant players in the world.”
Unfortunately, Sabonis’s potential never came to fruition, at least before an American audience. He was drafted into the NBA in 1986, but due to Cold War politics, didn’t enter the league until 1995, at age 31. Sabonis mustered seven quality seasons in Portland but, playing far past his prime, was hampered by injuries until retiring in 2003.
Sabonis’s accomplishments — mainly those in Europe — were enough to earn him a spot in the Hall of Fame, but for the player who’s described as a “mythical figure,” “Dirk Nowitzki but 7-foot-4,” and “a man of mystery…trapped behind the Steel Curtain,” the “what if?” looms larger than what actually was. Sabonis was great; his promise was legendary.
Sports has a way of producing tall tales and folk heroes, our real-life Paul Bunyans and John Henrys. In the pros, writers, coaches, and teammates mythologize memorable players or moments. Through oral history, we amateurs do the same of our own careers.
“Phalen, remember that game in sixth grade where you had six 3s?” I recalled during a recent mini-reunion with my childhood friends.
“Yeah, you had, like, seven 3s in a row,” Daniel chimed in.
Phalen himself seemed to remember most vividly. “I scored 24 of our team’s 32 points,” he said authoritatively. “Eight 3s.”
His point total had increased six points in six seconds, almost as impressive as Tracy McGrady’s 13 in 33.
When something amazing happens, we talk about it. And with a little revisionist history, honest misremembering, or benign exaggeration, we turn events into myths, reality into folklore.
Sometimes in sports we experience events so wildly improbable, they seem impossible, almost divine. In these moments, we have no choice but to employ biblical rhetoric: “The Miracle on Ice.” “The Motor City Miracle.” “The Immaculate Reception.” One of my favorite memories as a fan was in 2002. When Craig Krenzel preserved Ohio State’s perfect season with a late-game fourth-down touchdown pass to Michael Jenkins, broadcaster Brent Musburger immortalized the play with two words: “Holy Buckeye!”
As players and fans, our athletic prayers are rarely answered. But as moviegoers, sports cinema creates heroes we can idolize and magical stories we can experience in perpetuity.
In the opening of The Sandlot (1993), Smalls describes how Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series. “That’s pretty much how he became a legend,” Smalls says. “Thirty years later, a kid named Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez became a neighborhood legend.”
“Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player that ever lived,” Benny later explains to Smalls. “People say he was less than a god but more than a man. You know, like Hercules or something.”
Hercules is also the name of Mr. Mertle’s junkyard dog (aka The Beast) that has supposedly eaten hundreds of people and, more importantly to the Sandlot kids, devours every ball they hit into its yard. “He’s a killing machine,” warns Squints, his face eerily illuminated by flashlight.
“When Mertle asked the cops how long he had to keep The Beast chained up like a slave, he said, until for-ev-ER, for-ev-ER, for-ev-ER.”
In The Sandlot, the real blends seamlessly with the supernatural; in typical fashion, legends do legendary things. Benny hits the covering clean off a ball. The Beast hops an eight-foot fence in a single bound. The ghost of Babe Ruth speaks to Benny in a dream.
“Remember, kid,” says The Babe. “There’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.”
The Sandlot is set in The Valley, but it really takes place in the same neighborhood as Neverland or Terabithia, in a place the writer Bill Bryson calls “Kid World.”
“I’d followed them to the Sandlot after school,” Smalls narrates. “I’d never seen anyplace like it; it was like their own baseball kingdom or something. It was the greatest place I’d ever seen anyway.”
The kids played every summer day from dawn ’til dusk, he says. “It was like an endless dream game.”
Kid World is governed by imagination, adventure, and wonder; everything there is a caricature: bigger, better, sexier, scarier. In Kid World, the fantastic is commonplace and dreams become reality. The Goonies (1985) and Hook (1991), for example, live deep within Kid World.
The sports movies that exist in Kid World expertly depict — and fulfill! — athletic fantasies, along with fantasies that happen far from the field. All the great ones offer an epic sports-non sports fantasy duo, for example:
Win the game & get the girl. In The Sandlot, the gang defeats the yuppie, uniformed team from the other side of town, and Squints pulls the most genius — and death-defying — stunt ever, all so he can make out with smokin’ hot lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn. “She don’t know what she’s doin’” — but Squints definitely did.
Win the game & save your family. In 3 Ninjas (1993), Rocky and Colt defeat the playground bullies in basketball and, with the help of their future-diabetic brother Tum-Tum, go on to rescue their beloved grandpa from evil ninjas. In the end, Rocky does, in fact, love Emily.
Win the game & upgrade your dad. In Rookie of the Year (1993), thanks to a freak accident that gives him supernatural arm strength, Henry Rowengartner pitches the Cubs to a World Series victory. Thanks to Henry, his widowed mother dumps her skuzzy boyfriend in exchange for Chet Steadman, the Cubs retired ace. The secret weapon? Hot ice.
“You’re killin’ me, Smalls!” “Rocky loves Emily.” “Hot ice.” Not a week goes by without someone in my life referencing or quoting one of these movies. By talking about these films among friends and family, we keep them at the forefront of our collective conscience. We perpetuate the legends within each movie and the legend that is each movie. I haven’t seen these films in years, but they never feel far away. And thanks to the magic of storytelling, neither does Kid World.
What are your favorite sports legends to retell, either as a player or a fan?
What other movies take place in Kid World? Which moments or characters are most memorable or resonant for you?
What were your childhood fantasies, either athletic or otherwise? Which were fulfilled and which weren’t?
Make Believe Boys explores wonder, beauty, and humor at the intersection of art, sports, and personal history. Join the conversation by writing a response below.
