Patrick Renna knows exactly what line fans are going to shout when they see him in public.
“You’re killing me, Smalls!” he recently told Parade with a laugh. “That’s definitely the number one.”
More than 30 years after The Sandlot hit theaters and became a favorite among ‘90s babies, Renna still holds a special place in the hearts of moviegoers who grew up loving the film. For Renna, who played the wisecracking Ham Porter in the 1993 classic, it’s surreal to watch the film’s impact cross generations.
“It’s very humbling when multiple generations come up to you and say that they’ve seen The Sandlot,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll see grandparents and their grandkids say they’ve all seen the movie. That’s pretty special.”
Now a father of two (with one on the way), Renna admitted that becoming a dad was always part of the plan.
“I always wanted to have kids,” he said, while acknowledging it’s “one of the most challenging things I've ever done.”
“Fatherhood and parenthood changes everyone because you start really living for someone else for the first time,” he added. “It’s a completely different life.”
Recently, Renna brought The Sandlot back to life by recreating the infamous vomit scene with his son at the L.A. County Fair as part of a campaign with Advanced Herbals Ginger Chews, from the makers of Dramamine.
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“If only we had Advanced Herbals Ginger Chews back then to set our tummies at ease, it wouldn’t have been so horrible,” he quipped.
The campaign also includes a sweepstakes running through August 31, and invites fans to share stories of trips ruined by nausea for a chance to win a dream vacation do-over and a year’s supply of the chews.
“It was kind of a no-brainer partnership,” he said. “I had a blast doing it with my son.”
Renna has leaned into his role as a dad both on and off camera, including through the release of his new children’s book, A Little Slugger's Guide to the Unwritten Rules of Baseball and Life.
“I think having two boys and knowing how wild they get for bedtime, I went, ‘All right, let me write something that maybe helps parents make it a little shorter — the old bedtime routine,’” he explained.
The book is steeped in the same charm and nostalgia that defined his character from The Sandlot. And yes, there’s some baseball thrown in, too.
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While The Sandlot continues to be a touchstone for American childhood, the idea of a Disney+ reboot had been floating around, until it was confirmed in 2023 that the project had officially been shelved. But Renna still has a vision for what could make a future revival work.
“I think it can be similar to Cobra Kai,” he said of the successful reimagining of The Karate Kid franchise. “I don’t think you could do a remake or a movie. I think it would compete with the original too much. I could see a TV show that has us all at our age now — and we’re parents.”
He added: “It’s been 30 years, so we would all be in our 40s and have young, somewhere between 8 and 15-year-olds, so our kids would literally be the age that we were [in The Sandlot].”
Since The Sandlot was set in the summer of 1962, Renna imagines a reboot set in the '90s, making it a nostalgic trip for a whole new generation.
“It’d be retro in itself,” he said with a laugh. “You’d be able to go back to Blockbuster and have all the amazing things in the ‘90s. It’d be nostalgia within nostalgia.”
Would he be down to return? “If the right people were making it, yes,” Renna said. “I wouldn’t want to do it just to turn it out,” he continued. “I’d want to do it to really entertain people and hopefully bring them back to a semblance of what they loved about The Sandlot.”
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