Binge Media Sports: The Revisit-Field of Dreams

Throughout the years, we’ve been treated to so many great baseball movies. Films like The Natural, The Sandlot, Pride of the Yankees, and Bull Durham immediately come to mind. But in April of 1989, two of the most iconic baseball movies were released within two weeks of one another. Early April gave us Major League (which I will revisit later this week), but this week marks the 25th anniversary of arguably the most beloved baseball film of all time, Field of Dreams. Honestly, are you going to tell me that you don’t get a few goose bumps just looking at this? Fresh off the success of the aforementioned Bull Durham, Kevin Costner takes the lead in his second of three baseball flicks (the underrated For Love of the Game being the third) as Ray Kinsella, a struggling Iowa farmer just trying to make a life for his wife and daughter. (Trivia time: Did you know that Tom Hanks was initially offered this role and turned it down?) Struggling to make ends meet and being bullied by his brother-in-law, played beautifully by Timothy Busfield, to sell the property, Ray starts to hear a voice, builds a baseball field, and well, you know where it goes from here. Believe me, I could take you almost frame by frame through this movie, but chances are you’ve seen it already. For those of you who haven’t though, please do yourself a favor and get to it. The true beauty of Field of Dreams is the emotion that it brings out in people. It’s not just a movie about baseball. It’s a movie about family, about tradition, and the dream of a second chance. I honestly can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had through the years about who the best character in the movie is. Some people prefer Costner himself. Some people prefer James Earl Jones’ portrayal of Terence Mann (actually written as J.D. Salinger in the novel). I’ll tell you what though. The scene where Costner and Jones are introduced to each other is priceless.  The choice for most, however, is “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Even in a fantasy setting, this movie still gives you a history lesson. Sure, you could just as easily watch Eight Men Out for the story about the 1919 White Sox, but there’s something in the way that Ray Liotta brings this iconic figure back to life. How many times could he bring out exactly what is great about baseball? “Getting thrown out of baseball was like having part of me amputated. I’ve heard that old men wake up and scratch itchy legs that been dust for over fifty years. That was me. I’d wake up at night with the smell of the ballpark in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet… the thrill of the grass.” If that doesn’t do it for you, then how about, “I used to love traveling on the trains from town to town. The hotels, brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I’d play for nothing!” And you believed him. And you believed in him. All he wanted was to right a wrong from 70 years ago, and this field stuck in the middle of Iowa was the place to do it. I don’t know why, but he still isn’t my personal choice. Maybe I’m just a sucker for Burt Lancaster, but I gotta go with “Moonlight” Graham as my favorite character.  I mean, it’s Burt F’n Lancaster folks! While glorified a bit, the story of “Moonlight” is real and the older version of Graham is played to perfection by this legendary actor. The scene he and Costner share in the character’s hometown of Chisholm, Minnesota (filmed on Main Street in Galena for all of my Illinois readers) is just amazing. It’s dark. It’s quiet. It’s brilliant. As Lancaster walks the streets and then describes his love for baseball gives me chills even 25 years later. “Well, you know I… I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn’t. That’s what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases – stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag. That’s my wish, Ray Kinsella. That’s my wish. And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?” Priceless. So, we’re introduced to and fall in love with each and every one of these characters and the struggles they’ve faced and maybe or maybe not overcome in life…or death. We’ve been taken into these amazing settings like Fenway Park, a ghost town in Chisholm, but we all know where the magic has to happen…right smack in the middle of a cornfield. Will Ray sell or won’t he? And then we get this.

I don’t know if it’s his specific voice, the words that are spoken, the musical score behind them, or the combination of all of it, but there’s nothing quite like that speech from James Earl Jones. It has everything. And you would think that would be enough to end the dispute, that it can’t get any better than that, right? You would be wrong. After another heartwarming scene from Lancaster, iconic enough in itself, we are finally treated to what started this whole thing in the first place.

If you don’t tear up just a little every time you see that, then you might just not have a soul. It’s the little things in life added up that define who we are as people. For Ray Kinsella, all it took was a game of catch under the lights with his father as the loves of his life, his wife and daughter, looked on from a porch swing. That may not sound like much to some people, but it sounds pretty damn good to me. This is what Field of Dreams does to people. It has the ability to take people back to a time where things were a little simpler, the grass was a little greener, or your own personal heaven was right outside your door. You know, a time that reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.