chunk: He then learns that many of the team's baseballs have ended up in Mr. Mertle's junkyard over the sandlot's back fence, which is protected by a giant dog known as "The Beast", who had allegedly eaten a kid foolish enough to enter it. One day, when Benny hits the hide off of the team's last ball, Smalls substitutes one from his stepfather's prized collection. When this ball is also lost over the fence, Smalls reveals that the ball is special. To the team's horror, they learn the ball has Babe Ruth's autograph, making it valuable--something Smalls didn't know when he took it. The team constructs a progressively complex series of machines to recover it remotely, but each attempt ends in failure and the ball itself grows increasingly damaged due to attention from the Beast.