“Sandlot” Child Star Reveals the 1 Cast Member Who Always Gets Recognized: 'People Scream at Him from Cars'
- - “Sandlot” Child Star Reveals the 1 Cast Member Who Always Gets Recognized: 'People Scream at Him from Cars'
Virginia ChamleeNovember 11, 2025 at 10:09 PM
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The Sandlot cast -
Chauncey Leopardi is recounting his time on the set of The Sandlot — and how one of the cast members continues to get recognized, all these years later
Speaking to PEOPLE, Leopardi said one of the actors from the film "is so recognizable, people scream at him from cars"
Leopardi himself is also sometimes recognized, though only when he puts on one iconic accessory
While there are many memorable lines and characters from the 1993 classic The Sandlot, there's one cast member who gets recognized the most: Patrick Renna, who played "Ham" Porter in the film.
In a recent interview with PEOPLE, Chauncey Leopardi — who played Michael "Squints" Palledorous in the film — said: "Pat is so recognizable, people scream at him from cars."
Leopardi's character — a bespectacled smart aleck who nurses a crush on an older lifeguard — is also recognizable, though the actor said he can stay under the radar while his glasses are off.
"I can move around pretty easily. For me, it’s like a Superman thing. He takes the glasses off and becomes Superman, I put them on and become Squints," Leopardi, 44, joked.
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Chauncey Leopardi, The Sandlot
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Based in Los Angeles, Leopardi is a father of five who now works in the cannabis industry and still takes on the occasional role.
He spoke to PEOPLE about some of the most memorable on-set moments, like when the child actors all snuck into a showing of the R-rated film Basic Instinct, or when actor Shane Obedzinski (who played Tommy "Repeat" Timmins) "punched Renna and they got into some little fight."
"Patrick then went up to his mom and said, 'Your son just hit me,' and she said, 'Good, you probably deserved it,' " Leopardi recounted. "You get nine rambunctious, 10-14 year-olds...some of us are going at it."
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Patrick Renna, The Sandlot
He and his fellow castmates, he told PEOPLE, are still close and were, at one point, in talks about a Sandlot spinoff television show. He says they are now mulling the idea of one day launching a podcast, where they could share their stories as child actors — and secrets from the set.
"We have multiple group chats. They’re funny, they'll hit you at random times," Leopardi said. "Also, we’re together a lot — Sandlot is an interesting project because it hits so many things in the culture — we do big national sports signing and we do pop stuff and comic con type things."
He continued: "At the end of the day, it's something that has given people genuine joy, so I feel like if that's my life and that character has to be something I have to keep alive, then that’s a blessing. It makes people happy and offered us all tons of core memories."
As Leopardi told PEOPLE of the film: "It's one summer, set in 1962, that can live forever."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
