This year is the 25th anniversary of the release of Field of Dreams, the greatest baseball movie ever made. It was an adaptation by director Phil Alden Robinson of the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. Unbelievably the script was shot down for several years and the recluse writer character had to be changed. J.D. Salinger, the character in the book, threatened to sue if the movie used his name. It was changed to Terrence Mann, and James Earl Jones became the actor of choice. It was a fortunate break, because Jones gave a most memorable performance. When another movie stalled, the producers then had their lead, Kevin Costner, and the rest is cinematic history.
Our love of baseball never comes from just one reason or influence. Mine started with my family. My mother, father, and both grandfathers all loved this great game. I grew up on their knees, hearing the legends of the ‘Boys of Summer’. The heroics of Pee Wee and Jackie’s Great Brooklyn Dodgers, the swings of the Splendid Splinter and Hammerin’ Hank and the take-no-prisoners attitude of Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale.
Other sports are just that. Baseball is a religion. Other sports give us great memories of games and seasons won and lost, baseball’s gift is the stories of the people that made the game. The natural break between each pitch, lends itself to these stories being told. Whether it’s from the broadcast on television or radio or the person next to you sharing those tales. Baseball is people. Baseball is legend.
I was just learning the greatest continuous story, when Field of Dreams hit the theatres in 1989. It would change my life profoundly. That movie made me realize that many had just as great of a love affair with America’s pastime as myself.
In the scene where ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) asks Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), “Is this heaven?”, as he first arrives to the baseball field Ray had built in his backyard, it becomes more than just a baseball movie. Jackson adds later “There are others”. That’s when our imagination’s door swings wide open and goose-bumps explode. The dream of any and every great in baseball’s legendary lore, coming back to a hallowed ground, fuel the movie’s engine. It’s what Michelangelo would have painted on a Sistine Chapel in Cooperstown.
If we got goosebumps when the players’ ghosts started appearing from the cornfield to play once again, we had goose-mountains when Terrence Mann ( James Earl Jones) gave his speech to Ray on why he should keep the field, and why people will come: “Ray, people will come, Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it.
They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. “Of course, we won’t mind if you have a look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it; for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”— Terence Mann (James Earl Jones)
The theme of how difficult it is for a father and son to relate, is one that resonates with baseball and non-baseball fans a like. “If you build it he will come” and “go the distance” from the voice in the field makes Ray Kinsella think it’s to bring back the baseball heroes. When Ray realizes that it was not to bring back great players, but to bring back his father. It is then that the universal theme takes over. During the journey Ray risks everything. His farm, his livelihood and his family. He risks all of this to bring back the game and the father he misses dearly. To reconcile the relationship that was ruined between he and his father. To bring back his father’s ghost to the ‘Field of Dreams’. The final shot of the movie shows Ray and his dad playing catch in the most iconic of all scenes. The headlights of cars from miles back, are heading to the ‘Field of Dreams’. Grown men still weep to the sight of that game of catch, every time. We can all relate to that movie. It does not matter if you’ve never played the game or not. And that’s why this masterpiece has passed the test of time. What I’d give for just one more game of catch with my hero, my father. I might just start plowing my own cornfield today.
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