Fireworks, Baseball, and Ray Charles

The Sandlot’s 4th of July Scene as the Most American Moment in Cinema

There’s a theory, one I just made up, but which feels true in the way that all great pop culture theories do, that every American’s idealized childhood is actually a composite of three things: the taste of a hot dog at dusk, the sound of a baseball cracking off a wooden bat, and the sight of fireworks exploding against a July sky. If you’re lucky, you get all three at once. If you’re really lucky, you get them with Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful in the background. And if you’re a kid in the early ‘90s, you get all of this in a two-and-a-half-minute scene from The Sandlot, a movie that is less about baseball and more about the way we mythologize our own pasts.

There was only one night game a year. On the 4th of July, the whole sky would brighten up with fireworks, giving us just enough light for a game.
-The Sandlot, 1993

It’s the Fourth of July, which is the only day of the year the Sandlot kids can play a night game, because the sky is lit up by fireworks instead of stadium lights. Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez knocks on Scotty Smalls’ door, and the gang sprints to the field, gloves in hand, as the first rockets burst overhead. The narration is syrupy with nostalgia, the kind that makes you want to call your mom and apologize for every time you rolled your eyes at her stories about “the good old days.” And then, as if the universe itself is trying to make you cry, Ray Charles’ America the Beautiful starts to play.

This is not subtle. This is not a scene that’s trying to sneak up on you. This is a scene that grabs you by the heartstrings, dunks your head in a vat of red, white, and blue, and dares you not to feel something. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting, if Norman Rockwell had access to a boombox and a crate of illegal fireworks.

We played our best then because, I guess, we all felt like the big leaguers under the lights of some great stadium.
-The Sandlot, 1993

A few words about Ray Charles for a second. His version of America the Beautiful is a national treasure, the kind of thing that should be played at every major sporting event, every naturalization ceremony, and every time someone tries to convince you that patriotism is dead. The fact that this song, recorded in 1976, is used in a movie set in 1962 is a historical inaccuracy that nobody cares about, because it’s perfect.

Ray Charles he inhabits the song. He makes America the Beautiful sound like a promise and a memory at the same time. When his voice swells as the fireworks explode, it’s as if the entire country is pausing to remember what it felt like to be young, hopeful, and convinced that the world was as big as your local baseball diamond.

The Sandlot is not really about baseball. It’s about the way we remember being kids, and the way we wish we could go back. The Fourth of July scene is the apex of this nostalgia. The boys aren’t playing a game, they’re participating in a ritual, one that feels both universal and intensely personal. The fireworks give them just enough light to pretend they’re in the big leagues, and for a few minutes, they are.

This is the genius of the scene: it’s not about winning or losing, or even about the game itself. It’s about the feeling of being alive on a summer night, surrounded by your friends, with the whole world stretching out in front of you. It’s about the way memory works, smoothing out the rough edges and turning ordinary moments into legends.

If you want to understand America, you could do worse than to start with this scene. It’s a microcosm of the national myth: the idea that anyone, anywhere, can step up to the plate and swing for the fences. It’s about community, about the way a group of misfits can come together and create something beautiful, even if only for a moment.

Benny felt like that all the time. We all knew he was gonna go on to bigger and better games, because every time we stopped to watch the sky on those nights like regular kids, he was there to call us back.
-The Sandlot, 1993

But it’s also about loss. The narrator’s voice is tinged with the knowledge that these moments don’t last. The friends will drift apart, the field will be bulldozed, and the fireworks will fade. The scene is a reminder that nostalgia is always a little bit sad, because it’s rooted in the knowledge that you can’t go back.

Let’s get philosophical for a second. Jean Baudrillard, the French theorist who probably never watched The Sandlot (but should have), talked about “hyperreality” — the idea that our representations of reality become more real to us than reality itself. The Fourth of July scene is hyperreal. It’s not what childhood was actually like; it’s what we wish it had been. It’s the memory of a memory, filtered through a haze of fireworks and Ray Charles’ voice.

This is why the scene resonates, even with people who didn’t grow up playing baseball or celebrating the Fourth of July. It’s not about the specifics; it’s about the feeling. It’s about the longing for a time when everything seemed possible, and the world was as simple as a game under the stars.

There’s a reason this scene gets trotted out every Independence Day (I’m clearly no exception), alongside hot dogs and questionable pyrotechnics. It’s because it captures something essential about the American experience: the belief in second chances, in the power of community, and in the beauty of ordinary moments. Ray Charles’ voice is the glue that holds it all together, elevating a simple game of baseball into a national myth.

The scene is also a little bit of a lie. It’s too perfect, too polished, too drenched in nostalgia to be real. And that’s okay. Sometimes we need our myths. Sometimes we need to believe that, just for one night, the world really was that beautiful.

Every year, as the Fourth of July rolls around, people return to this scene, and not because it’s realistic, but because it’s true in the way that only great art can be. It reminds us of who we were, who we wanted to be, and who we still might become. It’s a love letter to America, to childhood, and to the power of memory.

You see, for us, baseball was a game. But for Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, baseball was life.
-The Sandlot, 1993

And if you don’t get a lump in your throat when Benny The Jet rounds the bases under a sky full of fireworks, with Ray Charles singing in the background, you might want to check your pulse. Or at least your sense of nostalgia. Because for two and a half minutes, The Sandlot gives us the America we wish we remembered, and maybe, just maybe, the one we still hope to find.