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Mr. Mertle is a former professional baseball player. He is the owner of Hercules (The Beast) and Goliath (The Great Fear). Mr. Mertle was portrayed by the late James Earl Jones and by Herb Muller as young Mr. Mertle.

Baseball was life! And I was good at it... real good

-Mr. Mertle (The Sandlot).-

History []

When Mr. Mertle was younger, he was a professional baseball player in the Negro League in times of Babe Ruth, and he was a friend of Ruth himself. He was a real good player until his career ended after a hit by a stray pitch hit his eye and blinded him.

Retirement and new neighborhood[]

When his career ended, Mertle moved to a neighborhood outside Los Angeles. He settled his house just in front of the sandlot and opened his junkyard. When he started having problems with the thieves, he bought an English mastiff puppy and named him Hercules. When both aged, Mr. Mertle closed his junkyard and at some point, later on, kids then started spreading rumors about him being the meanest old man that ever lived and Hercules being a massive and ferocious dog called The Beast.

The Pickle with Hercules []

During the summer of 1962, young Scotty Smalls and Benny Rodriguez arrived at his back door and said that they lost a baseball signed by Babe Ruth in his backyard, and when they tried to recover it, they collapsed his fence and released his dog. Mr. Mertle then said he would have returned the ball if they had just asked him. He gave Smalls a ball signed by Babe Ruth and the rest of the 1927 Yankees in exchange if the boys came to visit Mr. Mertle once a week to talk baseball with him.

Events of 1972 and Goliath[]

Hercules lived to be 199 years old in dog years and had nine puppies. Mr. Mertle sold all of them but kept one and named him Goliath, who became Mertle's new guardian when Hercules passed away. A little wilder than his siblings, Goliath once got out when Mr. Mertle forgot to lock the back gate and chased a little boy named David Durango that was cornered and bitten by him. Feeling a little artistic, Mr. Mertle built a giant fence and then kids started spreading a new rumor, the rumor of the beastly mutated dog in Mertle's backyard named The Great Fear.

Battle for the Shuttle[]

By 1972, all of the sandlot kids had left the sandlot and a new generation began. Johnnie Smalls (Scotty's little brother) lost a Space Shuttle in Mertle's backyard. Like the first gang, they tried everything to recover it but ask for it. When everything ended, Mr. Mertle gave up on building a new fence because he's tired of kids thinking he's grouchy. Goliath had five puppies with his girlfriend Tiny, and Hayley, Jenny, and Penny took one for themselves, and Mr. Mertle kept two.

1976 []

By 1976, nobody was sure of what happened to Mr. Mertle. Some people said that he had died but others said that he had just vanished. The night when Tommy Santorelli and his team entered Mr. Mertle's abandoned house to get some old baseball equipment, they found the house filled with booby traps so it's more likely he moved away after all the trouble he had.



Trivia

· His blind sunglasses look like The Professor's in Gilligan's Island Operation Steamheat.


Gallery[]

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