That popping sound in The Sandlot
I’ve seen The Sandlot at least a dozen times, and it was on the third or fourth viewing that I noticed a popping sound in two scenes. The first is when the boys tell Smalls to walk over to the fence and peek through the hole. The second is when the boys are looking down at the ominous busted baseball.
To me, it sounds like bubble gum popping. We see the boys chewing gum throughout the movie. The sound could easily be one of them popping a bubble off-camera. But somehow, the sound doesn’t seem like it’s part of the film.
I like to think that the popping sound is supposed to be part of the world outside the film, part of the audience. Maybe it’s the narrator, popping his gum during a quiet moment in the story. Or maybe we’re supposed to imagine the sound coming from an audience member, someone else in the theater.
I haven’t decided where this falls on the scale of Creepy to Cool.