Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Baseball has one advantage over football and basketball—mythology.  Other sports have their Halls of Fame, legendary players, and iconic heroes, but only baseball has Gods.  MLB’s governance in recent years seems to have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the commissioners of the NFL and NBA have been able to tap into, but that’s partly the nature of the game; in the NFL, every week is an event, while in baseball, every game is just 162nd of the trudge to the finish line.

Where baseball’s advantage shows up is in movies.  Pick the greatest baseball film of all time, and you’ve got Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out, The Natural, A League of Their Own, and the Kevin Costner trifecta of Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and For the Love of the Game.  All these films revere the game of baseball, and most got Oscar nominations.  The best football movie of all time is probably North Dallas Forty, which is cynical and hardly holds the sport up to any ideal.  Basketball does have Hooisers, but after that the next best basketball film is either the original Space Jam or The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh.  The best soccer film of all time is Bend it Like Beckham.

During the regular season, it is hard to focus on any single baseball game as an event worthy of attention.  Back when only one team from each league made the post-season, a sample size of 162 was needed to sift the wheat from the chaff.  Now that 10 teams make the post-season, maybe a smaller sample size would accomplish the task.

August 12^th was the first in-season event (other than the All-Star Game, which has come to rely on the Home Run Derby for noteworthiness more than the actual game) the MLB has attempted in a very long time.  They linked the event to a movie that was released before most current players were born, 1989’s Field of Dreams.  They staged a baseball game in an Iowa cornfield, and it was a game that counted in the standings and not an exhibition, like football’s Hall of Fame Game.

A lot could have gone wrong.  Baseball’s reliance on nostalgia could have been misplaced.  Recollection of the movie could have been weaker than MLB anticipated.  The visual of baseball players walking out of a cornfield and onto a baseball diamond could have come off as, well, corny.  But it worked.  Everything worked. 

For those unfamiliar with the movie, Field of Dreams was based on a fantasy novel by W. P. Kinsella about a farmer in Iowa who hears a voice in his cornfield tell him to plow under the corn and build a ballpark.  The farmer, played by Costner, obeys the voice, because who wouldn’t obey a disembodied voice?  After he builds the ballpark, a ghostly figure in a baseball uniform emerges from the remains of the cornfield, and it is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the legendary ballplayer who was banned for life for participating in the fixing of the 1919 World Series (debate still rages over whether he actually participated in the fixing, or if he meant to but was really bad at trying not to be great).  Other former baseball greats join him, and eventually there is a phantom baseball game every day.  The bank threatens to foreclose on the property, but James Earl Jones delivers one of the greatest monologues in movie history about how people love baseball’s past so much they will pay to watch old time ghost players. Capitalism saves the day.

The film was a breakout hit for director Phil Alden Robinson, who was nominated for an Oscar for adapting the screenplay.  The film also picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture and for Best Score.  The studio had such low expectations they opened it in only 4 theaters, but it went on to gross $64 million in the United States. The movie was also the last screen appearance of Burt Lancaster.

The Field of Dreams Game, planned for 2020 but postponed because of, you know, recreated the ball players emerging from the cornfield. Unfortunately, they replaced the fences for the game, which was understandable, but I had been looking forward to outfielders disappearing into the stalks chasing homers. Because there were no bleachers in the outfield or along the first base side attendance was limited to around 4,000.  Both teams, the visiting Yankees and home White Sox, flew in that day and left that evening, to resume the series in Chicago Saturday.

It helped that the game was entertaining, with good pitching early on then fireworks late.   The Yankees came back from a three-run deficit in the 9^th inning on home runs by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, but in a Hollywood ending the White Sox won the game in the bottom of the 9^th with a walk off homer by Tim Anderson.  Two other games Thursday featured one team scoring 17 runs; thank goodness the Field of Dreams Game had better pitching than that.

I still have faith that baseball will continue to connect with fans, even though the ubiquity of “three true outcomes” makes it difficult to appreciate the game.  One of the biggest problems is that during the season baseball fades into the wallpaper, while ESPN shows have talking heads argue over football and basketball year-round.  This was a major step that baseball can come up with ideas that put its best foot forward and continue to create mythology for another 150 years.