You don’t have to love baseball to enjoy “Field of Dreams,” but it sure doesn’t hurt.
Yes, the 1989 Kevin Costner film, which celebrates its 30th anniversary April 21, is a paean to the summer game, and it helps to know a little about Ty Cobb, Fenway Park and the 1919 Chicago Black Sox.
But that’s primarily (pitch-)framing for a story that digs into themes everyone can understand: hope and loss; parents and children; dreams, deferred and denied; and, in the end, the chance for redemption.
“Field,” adapted from W.P. Kinsella’s 1982 novel, “Shoeless Joe,” is literal fantasy baseball. Costner’s Ray Kinsella is living with his wife, Annie (Amy Madigan), and daughter, Karin (Gaby Hoffmann), on an Iowa corn farm when a mysterious voice speaks one of the best-known lines in film history: “If you build it, he will come.”
Ray builds a beautiful diamond, attracting long-dead Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and his Black Sox teammates – who were banned for throwing the 1919 World Series – from some netherworld in the cornfield. Other players arrive, and so does Ray’s father, estranged from his son for years before his death.
It’s not the best baseball movie – that would be “Bull Durham” – but it’s close. There’s a sweetness that can border on cloying, but the emotions are authentic and gentle humor keeps it grounded. Plus, there’s a doubleheader’s worth of acting legends: Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones.
There’s one unfortunate strikeout: The celebration of the national pastime – “The one constant through all the years has been baseball,” as reclusive author Terence Mann (Jones) says – mostly steers clear of the game’s ugliness, especially its long history of segregation. (Mann’s admiration of Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color line, at least acknowledges the issue.)
That said, here are nine innings worth of reasons – and enough talking points to get you through a 40-degree April blowout – why you should settle into a box seat and enjoy the action:
1st inning: Baseball and America
Football is clearly today’s dominant sport (at times, brutally and oppressively) and basketball is fast, fun and has its pulse on contemporary culture. Baseball, by comparison, has a slower pace and a more pastoral nature – which director Phil Alden Robinson captures expertly – and a deeper, longer connection to U.S. history. “Field” makes a winning argument that baseball remains the best of the team sports (I’m biased).
2nd inning: Take us out to the ballgame
Nothing beats catching a game outdoors on a warm summer evening, and “Field” evokes that beauty: the sights (a gorgeous greensward), the sounds (the smack of a bat on the ball) and the smell (grass in the summer).
3rd inning: It’s under two hours
One of the biggest and most legitimate complaints about baseball is the length of games. “Dreams,” at a crisp one hour and 45 minutes, would get you out of the ballpark by the 6th inning of an average major-league game (4th inning, if it’s Red Sox-Yankees).
4th inning: Costner is a baseball (movie) star
Costner, then in his early 30s, looks like an athlete, and he brings a passion and sincerity to his two best baseball movies, 1988’s “Bull Durham,” a true classic (with great performances by Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, too), and “Field.” He later ably depicted an older pitcher hanging on for dear baseball life in 1999’s “For Love of the Game.”
5th inning: Fenway Park
Boston’s legendary playing field gets a cameo when Ray and the reclusive Terence attend a game at the oldest ballpark in the major leagues. It’s still doing boffo box-office 107 years later. How many movies can say that? And if you’re partial to Chicago’s Wrigley Field or any other stadium, the main point is the same: There’s always a sense of wonder when you walk through a portal and take in the beautiful green expanse.
6th inning: Getcha red-hot memes!
“If you build it, he will come” remains one of the most memorable movie lines ever – and that will probably still be the case 30 years from now. But there are other great lines, including the best state tourism slogan ever, born from a brief conversation between Shoeless Joe, who marvels at the cornfield ballfield, and Ray.
Joe: “Hey, is this heaven?”
Ray: “No. It’s Iowa.”
7th inning: All-star double play
Watching the great Lancaster in one of his final roles, as a wonderful old doctor who laments never batting in the majors, offers another tie to (film) history. And Jones is wonderful as an irascible recluse based on J.D. Salinger. His iconic baritone provides depth but also humor, as when Terence bellows at Ray, “You big jerk!”
8th inning: Great team depth
Madigan is wonderful as Ray’s supportive wife and Hoffmann is cute and smart as his daughter. Liotta brings healthy swagger to Shoeless Joe, whom the film depicts as caught up in the bad acts of his Black Sox teammates. But there’s a glimmer of the great bad guy he would become in 1990’s “Goodfellas.”
9th inning: A father-son reunion gets the save
In the end, “Field” is about family connections, regrets and second chances, as when Ray gets to play catch with a youthful version of his estranged and long-dead father toward the end of the film. Playing catch has long been portrayed as a stereotypically male activity, even more so in 1989, but it could be a father and daughter, or a mother and son. What really comes through is the yearning for connection with a lost loved one.
That scene, like many in the film, is sentimental as all get out. It makes me tear up every time I watch it, but the emotion feels like it’s coming from a real place, so I’m just going to unconditionally surrender and wave the white flag, er, tissue.
Play ball!
