© Zach Boyden-Holmes/T | 2021 Aug 13
The “Field of Dreams” game sure was something. It was quite personal, actually. Look at MLB, exposing baseball fans all across the land, asking the key question: Are you a cynic, or are you a hopeless romantic?
If you’ve spent at least one half-a-second on the Jock Blog through the years, you know where this soft mushy old man lands. I’m actually always quite surprised when I meet someone who hates “Field of Dreams”. Of course I loved it — even though Ray, Annie and Terrence actually do *The Wave* at one point.
Now that’s love, to overlook “The Wave”.
(Funny enough, the novelty of The Wave in 1989 made it less intrusive. Believe it or not, I wasn’t filled with a bilious, white hot rage when they did it. Besides, it came during the Moonlight Graham game, when Doc hits the sac fly. How could I be mad?)
And even though I think Kevin Costner is just north of a mannequin in 90 percent of his films, he somehow cobbled together the performance of a lifetime to portray Ray Kinsella, the accidental farmer who somehow navigates a baseball and family and life odyssey with just the right mix of confusion, befuddlement, joy, awe, wonder and love. Considering how many wooden-voiced eggs Costner laid after this one, “Field of Dreams” was his acting equivalent of Mark Fidrych’s 1976 season.
Actually, I owe Costner an apology. His work in “McFarland, USA” and “Bull Durham” give him at least a podium of performances. I was just efforting a riff to get that Fidrych line in.
Back to Thursday night: Costner speaking at the game caused Paulie Mac to unload a barrage of one-liners, but I’ll accept the two minutes for Ray Kinsella to talk in front of the White Sox, Yankees and a national audience. After all, he built the field out of corn and not once asked, “What’s in it for me?” Hey, oh!
The players coming out of the corn could be considered ludicrous, or awesome. While acknowledging your right to find it ludicrous, it’s my belief that life is too short to not employ a little willful suspension of disbelief. Let ‘em come thru the corn. One of the best aspects was seeing the players of color bursting through. There was no one in the film looking like Eloy Jimenez, popping his gold chain and hulking frame, coming out of the corn. If director Phil Alden Robinson could do it all over again, he’d have made the film better by bringing back Josh Gibson and Jackie Robinson, for starters.
That’d be the end of my quibbles, excepting of course the elephant in the room on the phrase “have a catch.” We all know how unfortunate that was. Otherwise, all you need to do is cue the French horn of James Horner’s score, and I’m in. Funny how much music means to a movie. Imagine “Rocky” without Bill Conti’s work; or “Star Wars” without John Williams. Horner was as important to the film as Shoeless Joe’s legacy.
My general point being, I am sort of stunned baseball got something right. I thought commissioner Rob Manfred was genetically incapable of doing anything well, as I just saying to my buddy at a seven-inning doubleheader.
Then again, if you tap into baseball’s intrinsic romance — long summer evenings, a timeless pace, Little League memories, a hot dog with your Mom and Dad at a game, the finality of October — you can’t go wrong. Ever. I sensed a majority of Americans bought in to all that on Thursday night. I went to the Giants game that night, and the big screen showed hundreds and hundreds of kids in their 20s having a blast in the bleachers, dancing in between innings. I was in Milwaukee last week, and the pleasant wafts of bratwurst-heavy tailgates and crowds of 35,000 renewed my faith.
Is it possible baseball is having a good summer?
For a dying sport, that’s pretty cool. I don’t think an NBA game at Hinkle Fieldhouse or an NFL game at a Texas high school stadium could conjure up the same feels as the Yanks and White Sox and, yes, Costner and the corn, conjured up.
If you hated it all, I’m not mad. You don’t go around bursting my bubble, I won’t go around bursting yours.