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He may not have been the lead of the cult children's film The Sandlot (1993), but Patrick Renna was the star of the show. Patrick Renna's Hamilton "Ham" Porter has become something of a sports icon in his own right, with Kevin Durant having used the character for his Twitter profile pic and the character's semi-improvised trash-talk generating more than its fair share of classic lines. Renna announced himself in a big way on The Sandlot as a naturally gifted comedic actor.

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A Strong Start

Born March 3, 1979 in Boston, Massachusetts, Patrick Renna started his career in a big way. Where many young actors will feature in hundreds of TV commercials and small parts on sitcoms before getting their first major role, Patrick Renna wasn't acting for long before he was cast in The Sandlot as Hamilton, the catcher and heavy-hitter for an informal sports team in the San Fernando Valley.

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The movie instantly became a baseball classic. Though set in 1962, the movie's portrayal of small town American childhood proved universal, and 90s kids found a lot of their own experience reflected in the film. The film followed a structure along the lines of the coming-of-age classic Stand By Me (1986), with a series of vignettes strung along a central plotline. In the case of The Sandlot, it was "Ham" that set that central plotline in motion, hitting a home run with a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and knocking the ball into a back yard guarded by a vicious looking dog, leading the gang to develop plan after plan to retrieve the ball. In the meantime the film explores experiences of adolescence like first crushes, experimenting with chewing tobacco, and of course, playing baseball with your neighborhood pals.

"I think it really has an effect on people. It has that nostalgic feel and it’s something that people really respond to."

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The film spawned two sequels, The Sandlot 2 (2005) and The Sandlot: Heading Home (2007), with a prequel being announced to be in development in 2018, and a TV series rumored to be in development at Disney+, which would reunite the original cast.

Following The Sandlot, Renna showed up in the Pauly Shore film Son in Law (1993), Beanstalk (1994), and the horror sequel Sometines They Come Back... Again (1996). In 2001 he had another iconic children's entertainment role voicing Jerome in Recess: School's Out (2001), and had a memorable turn on The X-Files (2008) in the episode "Bad Blood."

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Written by future Breaking Bad (2005-13) creator Vince Gilligan, "Bad Blood" was the series' "Rashomon" episode, with the main characters each remembering the episode's events differently. The story begins with Patrick Renna playing a vampire who is promptly killed by Fox Mulder. On closer inspection it turns out that Renna is not, in fact, a vampire, but a man wearing vampire dentures. Given the confusing nature of the encounter, Mulder and Scully are then forced to consider the events of the night and determine what actually happened. The episode was praised for its make-up effects, with Renna wearing actual glowing contact lenses, and for Renna's performance as a dim-witted wannabe bloodsucker.

Getting The Band Back Together

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In 2018, the cast of The Sandlot did a reunion event at LA City College, playing baseball together with Renna even delivering a little trash-talk to his old co-stars. While the Disney+ series reports may turn out to be just rumors, the cast proved at their reunion that they still have the same charisma almost thirty years later.

"We caught up and talked about deep seated things, some non-important things, family, politics and sports and it was fantastic. I realized then why the movie was so great, because we all got along."

Renna's biggest role in recent years would be his turn as Cupcake on Netflix series GLOW (2018). Cupcake is an obsessed fan of the female professional wrestlers on the show, and winds up a major component of the second season as he's drawn into their circle, at once living the fanboy dream and being taken advantage of by the less scrupulous members of the group, eventually marrying one of the stars as an on-air gimmick (but actually to save her from being deported). Renna shows his natural gift for comedy on GLOW, playing a character who's endearing, a bit of a sad sack, and just the slightest bit creepy all at once.

As for Renna's own reputation in team sports, he admits that he's a bit of a "Ham" in real life.

"If you ask me, I would say I’m a team player. But if you were to ask some of the guys that I play with, they’d wholeheartedly disagree with me. So you choose what you want to believe. But I might be a slight trash talker on the basketball court."