Fifteen Years of The Sandlot

I'm back again this week with my tribute to one of my favorite baseball movie ever, The Sandlot. Two of the starting nine players have already been posted in RF Tommy Timmons and 1B Timmy Timmons. Let's get right to player #3 of my tribute to the starting team of the sandlot.

BERTRAM GROVER WEEKS - The starting second baseman for the squad, was easily one of the more original characters in the movie. Even though each player had their own originality, Bertram was a dick, cool, an athlete, dorky looking, a rebel, and an individual all at once. Though he was tall for a second baseman he made up for it with his range. On top of that, he had the quickest release of the baseball in the county (note him turning two with "Yeah Yeah"). He was one of the biggest haters of Smalls making the team but quickly learned to deal with him. I don't know how he ever got the chewing tobacco and you know what I don't care. Just the fact that a kid his age was able to score some wins points from me. Also, let it be known that he was one of two players that rocked the black high top Converse kicks, which means to me that the kid's family had some money. His most famous lines of mine are easily:

"Beat ya!", when he slides into second in the big game. And:

"Let's ride!", with a big hunk of chew in his mouth.

Bertram was played by child actor Grant Gelt who was one of the few actors that didn't make his final appearance on the big screen, but it wasn't for long and nothing that major. The current 28-year-old that lives in California (pictured below), had minor roles up until 1999 with a stint on the tv show Boy Meets World and the movie Mutant Species. Before that, he made on the big screen in the 1990 films Avalon and Marked for Death, and in the Young Artist Awards was nominated for Best Young Actor Guest Starring in a TV Series for his parts in Northern Exposure and Eerie, Indiana. As the story says, Bertram Grover Weeks got really into the 60's and no one really ever saw him again. My guess is that he never touched a baseball when he became a freshman and was thrown out of the house at some point in high school and became that kid that everyone talks about who had so much potential. He got really into the 60s because he tried every drug in the book and finished his life in Las Vegas.