Scotty Smalls is the new kid in the idyllic small town with his mom and stepdad. He's an awkward kid who wants to play baseball with neighborhood kids. There were 8 of them, and he hoped to be the ninth. Their best player Benny Rodriquez takes Smalls under his wing. Over the summer, the group has great childhood adventures together. It all culminates to a story of a lost baseball signed by Babe Ruth and a feared dog named the Beast.

This is more than just a kids movie. You can easily overdose on the innocence of it all. There is the group of kids. They are perfectly casted with amazing chemistry. Each one is an iconic child type. As a period piece, they picked an era just before the world goes into revulsion. In the sport of baseball, they have accentuated the childhood love of the game.

This is a kids movie for the whole family. That's not a cliché. It has the feel of a timeless classic.

I remember that for most of my childhood, all the way to graduation, I played baseball. I was never a varsity player, but my friends and I spent our whole summers doing pickup games. This movie captures a time that doesn't exist any more. Adults have organized so much of the fun out of sports that kids don't get to just play for fun any more. League. League. League. Here we have a ragtag bunch of kids who are all over the place talent- wise. One is fantastic. The rest just love the game. But there is more than the game. There is a mysterious place where balls disappear and a dog the size of a walrus holds forth. There are stories and bragging and all kinds of kid things. There's James Earl Jones, who is feared by the kids through most of the movie until..... See this. It will delight you.

This is a truly amazing film. It's a very good family film that can be enjoyed by BOTH your kids and yourself! That's rare, as often "family films" have too much smutty language or sexual situations for kids OR are so saccharine sweet that sane adults would prefer suicide over watching the films (think Disney in the 1960s).

The film isn't quite a comedy, though there are really funny moments in it (such as the evil dog that eats baseballs). And, it's not exactly a drama. It's more like an occasionally surreal slice of life film about the good old days of the late 50s-early 60s. It's about a group of kids that live to play baseball--and that's all they ever seem to want to do! Despite this very simple plot, somehow the excellent acting, direction and writing make you really care about the kids and it engages you from start to finish.