A delightful romp through the history of cinema, American history, and baseball culminates tonight (in Iowa)
Try not to cry
I haven’t fully bought back into sports after the panic shown by every single league across the entire globe in 2020 and 2021.
It’s incredibly sad what has become of the world and the sporting world, specifically. It will likely never be the same again.
They killed something that I thought was an untouchable refuge within society. It may be slowly regenerating, but it is still like a part of me is missing.
Sports are no longer a priority, but I still enjoy watching when I get the chance.
Tonight’s game in Dyersville, Iowa between the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds is one of those games I will tune in for.
I’m no fan of the Reds, though I was a big Cubs fan as a youngster. I watched nearly every Cubs game for a good portion of my childhood. But this isn’t the same Cubs team as I grew up with.
I have a friend who works in the Cubs organization, so there is a rooting interest there.
But it isn’t the point. The game tonight is the “Field of Dreams Game” that we first saw last year between the Yankees and the White Sox. The Sox won 9-8.
Based on the 1989 movie starring Kevin Costner and the late Ray Liotta, the plan is for the film site to host a major league baseball game every year—literally—amongst the cornfields of Iowa, adjacent to the fictional Kinsella family farm where the “ghost ballplayers” from the 1919 Chicago White Sox and others played and practiced.
“People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come,” Terrence Mann told Ray Kinsella in the movie. And now they have. As of a half-hour before game time, tickets were available “as low as $482.”
This is a huge game on the national scene tonight, no matter the result. It is the event that is so wonderful.
The “Kinsella ballfield” has been a tourist attraction for decades now, but it wasn’t until last year that people came to watch big league baseball.
Last year’s game was awesome to see on television. A select few, including at least one of our newsletter subscribers had the good fortune of attending that game.
I re-watch Field of Dreams on occasion, and it has its flaws like any other movie, but I probably enjoy it more every time I watch it. Especially the Boston scene, where Ray is in his red and white VW van—I keep trying to figure out if he drives by my old apartment. Twenty-five years after I lived there, I am still not sure…a lot of urban Boston looks the same.
Field of Dreams is a movie about fathers and sons, but also father and daughter, family, baseball, literature, and more—all things I am passionate about.
I don’t generally cry when I watch it, but without a doubt, my body’s saltwater system gets primed several times by the film’s conclusion.
Ray Kinsella: I’m scared to death I’m turning into my father.
Annie Kinsella: What’s your father got to do with this?
Ray: I never forgave him for getting old. By the time he was as old as I am now, he was ancient. He must have had dreams, but he never did anything about them. For all I know, he may have even heard voices, too, but he sure didn’t listen to them. The man never did one spontaneous thing in all the years I knew him. Annie, I’m scared that that’s what growing up means. I’m afraid of that happening to me. And something tells me this may be my last chance to do something about it. I want to build that field. Do you think I’m crazy?
Annie: Yes. I also think that if you feel you really have to do this … then you should do it.
I love this scene. Ray has a crazy idea and knows it will work, he’s just not sure how, but he is determined to make it happen. Some of us have the need to do things that others think are crazy, but to you are totally within reason.
“When the primal forces of nature tell you to do something, the prudent thing is not to quibble over details,” Ray explained (perhaps pleaded) to Annie.
Ray struggles with the memory of his father and that may really be what the film ultimately tries to address. Unlike Ray, my father was my hero when I was growing up. He taught me baseball and I liked the teams he liked, the Red Sox and—because we watched them so much on television—the Braves and the Cubs.
Later on, we had our issues, but “the one constant through all the years,” as Mann tells Ray, “has been baseball.” So it was with us.
Mann’s soliloquy continues: “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 … it’s a piece of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good. And that could be again. People will come. People will most definitely come.”
The scene between Ray and his “ghost ballplayer” father near the end of the movie can open the lachrymal ducts if they haven’t spilled out already.
JOHN KINSELLA: Is this Heaven?
RAY KINSELLA: It’s Iowa.
JOHN: Iowa. I could’ve sworn it was Heaven.
RAY: Is there a Heaven?
JOHN: Oh, yeah. … Heaven’s where dreams come true.
RAY: Then maybe this is Heaven.
Niagara Falls.
I can probably see my old man playing ball on some converted cornfield somewhere. That would have been right up his alley.
The love of baseball has now passed through the generations. A couple of months ago we were back visiting Oregon, and I took my five-year-old son Finbar on a walk by the pasture where we have about a dozen head of cattle.
Finbar: Papa, this would make a really great cornfield. Get some really tall corn!
Me: Why do you say that, pal?
Finbar: Did you ever see that show where the guy has a cornfield and makes it into a baseball field?
Me: Of course. Field of Dreams.
Finbar: This would be a perfect baseball field.
Me: [tears up … just a little]
Clearly, there’s something in cornfields that helps to catalyze the love of baseball between fathers and sons.
It is real. The joy that it brings is palpable.
And if this type of “corny” stuff gets me back into loving professional sports, I am all for it.
And if, by chance, you are going to have a catch with your father or your son, you should also be concerned with improving your throwing mechanics at the same time.
There is no better tool to do that with than the CleanFuego. Almost every big league team uses these things now.
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Yours,
in baseball,
Brian O’Leary