First published through my Water’s Edge Press newsletter
I have many ties to the movie Field of Dreams. In my high school years, I lived in Dyersville, Iowa, the site of the farmhouse and field used in the movie. Major League Baseball built a ballpark in Dyersville, adjacent to the movie site, in 2020. Annually since then, an exhibition game is played there. Some of my high school classmates are involved in the big event.
In the early 2000s, my mom and I stopped there. We were visiting an old friend of hers and made a stop at the movie set. It is a distinctive memory. We both said that standing there really did feel as if the movie was happening all around us. Imagination conjures magic at times.
In 1992, when I was a student at Lakeland College studying education and writing, W.P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, the novel from which the movie was adapted, was on campus for the Great Lakes Writers Festival. Later, I taught Kinsella’s short story “The Thrill of the Grass” in my sophomore English classes.
Finally, I just love the movie. I’m a sucker for almost all movies about baseball, from Field of Dreams to The Natural, which might be my favorite.
I’m not sure why. I grew up in places with no major league baseball teams. As an eighth grader in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a teacher put the World Series on the radio while we sat at our desks, working on math problems. I had never even heard of the World Series before then, but my teacher’s delight and fascination with the game as it played out on the radio made an impact on me.
Then, in 1977 I married a Milwaukee Brewers fan. We started going to games and that “thrill” of the game made sense. We took our kids to games when they were young. There was nothing like being at the ballpark. One year we had partial season tickets and our seats were only feet away from where the great Bob Uecker called the game. “Get up, get up, get outta here!” If you know, you know. (Rest in Peace, Bob. The world is not the same without you).
So when James Earl Jones, as Terrence Mann in the movie Field of Dreams gives his famous speech, I was primed for it, for all the eloquent romanticism of it all. Baseball as literary metaphor!
“This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray,” he says. “It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
Watch the Ken Burns film, Baseball, to see the truth of these words. From its earliest days, baseball is the thing that ties us together. Not that I think baseball is perfect. Hardly. Shoeless Joe, himself, is only one example of historic corruption. The steroids years were a big blemish.
But boy, this is a great year to be a Milwaukee Brewers fan. The team is kind of magical. They play hard, like kids on a neighborhood field, having fun. Pat Murphy, their manager is one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen. He’s a joyful person, but he expects excellence from the team. And Milwaukee fans, those near and those far, like me, are feeling part of something wonderful.
These days, we need baseball more than ever. Luckily for Water’s Edge Press readers, a new poetry anthology called The Songs of Summer: Poems About Baseball is set to be released just in time for the World Series, on October 14. (See below for more about this book).