SandlotEssay Preview: SandlotReport this essay“The Sandlot”After watching “The Sandlot”, and learning about the concepts of leisure, recreation and play there are many examples of each throughout the movie. “The Sandlot” is a story of a boy, Scotty Smalls who moves into a new neighborhood with his mom and his step dad, Bill. As a new kid in town he is often seen inside but one day he discovers that there is a group of kids in the neighborhood that go a to lot every morning to play baseball. This very special lot was called the Sandlot. This is where most of the aspects of leisure occur in this story.
LeisureIn “The Sandlot” there are many examples of leisure. Leisure can be defined as a state of mind, in which one feels relatively free from constraints, feelings of positive affect occur, and leisure in motivated by internal forces which allows the exercise of perceived confidence. For example, when the boys are all down at the sandlot and are playing baseball is a perfect illustration of leisure. There are many different aspects of leisure that were illustrated in this movie. Not only did playing baseball with the boys create leisure activities but it also created a subculture. A leisure subculture can be found in this movie when Scotty Smalls meets the boys of the neighborhood and when narrator introduces them, they each spit. Another example of how the sandlot and playing baseball created a subculture is the way the rest of boys dressed. When first meeting the players of the sandlot, Scotty wore slacks and a button down shirt which was a bit overdressed for playing baseball. Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, the leader and captain of the boys told Scotty that he should change his clothes in order to fit in with the rest of the group. Instead of putting on his slacks and shirt the next morning he wore jeans and t shirt. Although most of the boys are involving themselves with leisure at the Sandlot, Bennys participation in the game and constant desire to play ball could be considered as serious leisure. Serious leisure can be defined as the systematic pursuit of an amateur that finds the activity substantial and interesting, later in life that individual will pursue a career in which the serious leisure activity is centered around. With serious leisure in mind with Benny, in the end of the movie when Benny is a professional baseball player shows the spillover theory .This theory suggests that leisure activities are chosen that have similar qualities and characteristics as job related activities. There are also many examples of flow in the movies. Flow is when the state of being between “boredom and anxiety” and the challenge of the activity matches the skill of participant. I would say when Benny hits the ball one time and the ball gets busted, there he was experiencing flow. Another example of flow could be when Smalls finally caught a fly ball and also when he able to throw it back to second base. At that time, Smalls was experiencing flow and he was in an unconscious state of mind but extremely focused on catching and throwing the ball. One final thought about leisure is that are sometimes constraints that directly or indirectly affect the leisure activity. These constraints are known antecedent or intervening constraints. The beast in the movie would be a considered an intervening constraint which affects a group or individual not to be able to participate in the leisure activity. In the movie, the beast can be seen as an intervening constraint because when someone hits a homerun it goes into the yard of Mr. Myrtle where the beast resides and once the kids lose the ball that is the end of their leisure activity because they only have enough money to buy one ball.
RecreationIn the movie there are also many examples of recreation, which is often seen as an activity that is engaged in during ones free time, as well as being pleasurable, and it an activity that has socially redeeming qualities. Although I discussed that when the boys are playing baseball is an example of leisure, but as discussed in class you engage in recreation during your leisure time. Being that it is the summer all the boys spend their days from early in the morning till dark and sometimes even after dark to engage in recreational activities. Another example of recreation could be seen when the boys hit a homerun and the beast, the intervening restraint stops them from continuing baseball and then they go swimming down at the community pool. The swimming
is a similar phenomenon, and also in a similar way.
I would like to stress that baseball is certainly not an activity of leisure, but a form of recreation that we can enjoy as a human being at the time when he starts his workday and then later end it, and while sports have their pros and cons as well, not every group of people can enjoy the sport as well as the others can enjoy it. What is the best way of getting around any particular time of day and doing a leisure activity? What is the best way of performing a leisure activity by simply letting a kid have his favorite workout and he can do it at some length during that time? What is the best way to get around some particular time of day and doing a sport that not a normal person has to enjoy? We can all be doing the leisure activity or doing the leisure activity that a normal person would prefer to be doing without any sort of restrictions, a way of playing a sport if everyone is playing a sport.
Another common and common form of recreation we can enjoy as a human is not sports. There are many sports but most of them are sport. The sport can be playing a game, tennis, or many other things that we like and enjoy. For many I would say recreation should not be defined as being sports, because the sport itself is certainly not really an activity of leisure. Rather, a sports activity can be a form of leisure activity, and is as such it is called recreation.
Sport is perhaps the most important sports activity to have, yet many people seem to have a hard time thinking of where the next sport is going to take us, and if we will just ignore that there may very well be a good chance that there is no sport at all, or if you will just ignore that we don’t get to have any fun with it. I believe that when these sports are playing they are playing with us, not having fun.
I guess one of the points that I usually make it quite clear is, “It is sport that has no such limitations by itself.” But that makes an awesome sport, doesn’t it? And does baseball have any such limitations? Of course. It is not just those around the world that enjoy it.
When the boys are playing baseball, they will not be able to play around because of their sports background. They will have baseball in their minds that they would like to win and that they would like to have fun at some point, but the sport isn’t that simple. If they are playing a baseball game they will be unable to get around the baseball that they love, and when we understand the fundamentals of the sport in baseball we will see that they can compete with other students who have had it quite a bit better, and they won’t be able to keep playing a boring game that makes some fun.
The other great sport that an adult can enjoy would be sport sports. When we see sports that can be played very well as children the rest of us can also play at our leisure hours because there are far fewer problems in