Baseball "Super Fan" Dorf goes to the East-West all star game. While enjoying the game, Dorf daydreams about being on the diamond himself and inspiring a baseball team to greatness as their coach (ala General Patton). Alas, even in his daydreams he's not entirely successful. Between daydreams, Dorf has his hands full coping with a bratty kid, a smart aleck peanut vendor, and his uncooperative car.
Billy Heywood (Luke Edwards) is a preteen son to a widowed single mom, Jenny (Ashley Crow), and a Little League Baseball player. Billy's grandfather is Thomas Heywood (Jason Robards), owner of the Minnesota Twins.
Young foster child Roger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his friend J.P. (Milton Davis, Jr.) love to sneak into baseball games of the hopelessly dreadful California Angels.
Sportswriter Al Stump is hired in 1960 as ghostwriter of an authorized autobiography of baseball player Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb. Now 73 and in failing health, Cobb wants an official biography to "set the record straight" before he dies.
Last season, the Cleveland Indians won the division title by beating the New York Yankees in a one-game playoff, but they were defeated in the ALCS by the Chicago White Sox.
Al Percolo (Albert Brooks) is a Major League Baseball scout with the New York Yankees who attends a game at a small college to see pitching phenom Tommy Lacy (Michael Rapaport). Al happens to be a fan of the film King Kong and he remarks to his fellow scouts sitting in the crowd that he is looking for the next King Kong.
Henry Rowengartner (Nicholas), 12-year-old Little Leaguer, has dreams of playing in the major leagues. One day, Henry breaks his arm trying to catch a fly ball (he slips on another ball that is lying on the ground) and has to wrap it in a cast. Once the arm is healed, the doctor removes the cast and discovers Henry's tendons have healed "a little too tight," thus enabling Henry to cock his arm back and fire it forward with incredible force.
In the San Fernando Valley during the summer of the early 1960s, protagonist Scotty Smalls moves into a new town with his mother and stepfather, and joins a local baseball team under captain Benjamin "the Jet" Rodriguez. With Benjamin's help, Scotty becomes a proficient player; but everybody learns that more than 150 of the team's numerous baseballs have ended up in the backyard fence of the sandlot, which is protected by an English Mastiff, a legendary ball-eating dog known as "The Beast," who belongs to his neighbor, Mr. Mertle. One day, the team's last ball lands in "The Beast's" possession, and Scotty substitutes one from his stepfather's collection, which is earlier signed by Babe Ruth. When this, too, is lost, the team construct a series of machines (each of them more complex than the last) to recover it remotely; but every time they ultimately fail. Inspired by a dream of Ruth (whom he admires), Benjamin is the first to seize the ball himself, while the others trap "The Beast;" whereupon Benjamin and Scotty return the latter to his owner, Mr. Mertle, who reveals that he himself knew Ruth, and later becomes the team's coach. Over the next three decades, Benjamin becomes a famous MLB player, and Scotty becomes a sports announcer.
In 1988, Dottie Hinson attends the opening of the new All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame. She sees many of her former teammates and friends, prompting a flashback to 1943.
Jack Elliot is an aging American baseball player unsuspectingly put on the trading block during Spring Training by the New York Yankees in favor of "rookie phenom" first baseman Ricky Davis (played by Hall of Famer Frank Thomas), and there's only one taker: the Nagoya Chunichi Dragons of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.
The story begins in 1902 in Baltimore, Maryland, where a seven-year-old Babe Ruth, troubled and not-so disciplined, is sent to the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage. Ruth is sent by his father, George Herman Ruth Sr. (Bob Swan), who cannot handle raising the boy. At the school, Ruth is schooled by Catholic missionaries and is made fun of by other children, because of his large size. Brother Matthias Boutlier (James Cromwell), the Head of Discipline at St. Mary's, first introduces Ruth to the game of baseball. During a session of batting practice, Ruth hits several towering home runs off of Matthias, who is pitching. Brother Matthias and others are stunned by Ruth's amazing power to drive the ball.