At first, the T-shirt wearer was a bit confused — until he looked a little closer, and sure enough, the person standing directly in front of him was the grown-up version of Ham himself, as in Hamilton Porter, the chubby, red-headed, freckle-faced character from the now classic film, “The Sandlot.” And the individual accompanying him was Scotty Smalls, the character in the show who moves into a new neighborhood, is guided to and taught baseball by a newfound friend, drawing close to a group of buddies who land in the middle of numerous adventures.
Two things are significant about that encounter: 1) The fact that somebody was wearing an article of clothing memorializing a fictional character in a fictional movie that had been filmed right here in Salt Lake City and Ogden some 25 years after its release, and 2) The man who was wearing the T-shirt was just 20 years old, meaning he wasn’t even born when the movie came out.