Netflix is About to Lose One of the Best Loved Movies of the 1990s

March 5, 2026, 9:00am

As movie genres go, there’s nothing quite like coming-of-age. It’s a type of film that sees its characters go through major life shifts, often going from carefree youth to something a little more mature and a little more responsible because of a pivotal — and often dramatic or entertaining — experience. With themes that often include first love and self-discovery, they’re not only have lasting impact on young audiences but are endless nostalgic. The 1990s was a particularly great decade for these films, giving us movies like My Girl, Now and Then, and more, but one of the best might just be a 1993 sports film and time is running out to stream it.

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As coming-of-age movies go, The Sandlot is pretty much the gold standard. It came out at a perfect time, with the ‘90s not only a great time for coming-of-age-movies, but baseball films as well. Movies like Major League, The Mighty Ducks, and A League of Their Own each did well both at the box office and with critics. What set The Sandlot apart as a sports movie and a coming-of-age film, however, was its focus on ordinary kids with a love of the game and the hilarious misadventures they get into. It’s the film’s simplicity that made it unique and to this day, it remains a beloved favorite, but if you’re wanting to stream it you’ll need to act fast. The movie is set to leave Netflix on March 13th.

The Sandlot is a True Timeless Classic

The film follows new kids Scotty Smalls (Thomas Guiry) who makes friends with the kids who play ball at the makeshift diamond in the sandlot. They all love baseball and they get into the expected adolescent misadventures but things go awry for them when Scotty borrows his stepfather’s prized baseball autographed by Babe Ruth for them to use after one of their own baseballs goes over the fence to where “the Beast,” a terrifying English Mastiff, lives. When that ball, too, goes over the fence, the gang has to figure out how to recover it to save Scotty. There are a lot of shenanigans that ensue — including one of the kids, Benny (Mike Vitar), going on an epic spring to get away from the Beast that ends up earning him a lifelong nickname.

Despite being set in the summer of 1962, The Sandlot is a movie that is perfectly timeless. Over the course of the summer, the group of friends deal with a lot of different things in addition to playing baseball. We see Squints (Chauncey Leopardi) and his budding feelings for lifeguard Wendy (Marley Shelton), the kids dealing with a rival group of boys that can only be described as bullies lite, a little bit of experimentation with tobacco use (and it’s outcome), not to mention Scotty dealing with his family dynamics and trying to find his relationship with his stepfather. The kids also learn lessons about the larger world around them when they discover that there’s more to the Beast than they realized and even more to their neighbor Mr. Mertle, who turns out to be someone important not only to baseball, but ultimately important to the boys.

The idea of one summer being transformational and framed around an adventure with friends is a universal story for many and it’s key to what makes The Sandlot such a classic. This isn’t a story of tragedy or loss, just of one great summer where a lot of fun was had, but still everything changed and set the boy son the paths that would lead them to their adult selves. It’s a story that, like most things in life, ends up important in retrospect which is something that the movie even highlights as we find out about what happened to everyone after that important summer in the film’s conclusion. It’s the rare coming-of-age film that has a perfect ending and is just a homerun throughout as well. It’s a movie that hasn’t been matched since (though some sequels certainly tried and just didn’t measure up) and you definitely want to catch it before it leaves Netflix.

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