I don’t know who bought, I mean won, last year’s World Series. Over the course of the past 47 years the only World Series stories I recall are the Red Sox winning one, the Astros cheating and the earthquake in 1989. My years of being consumed by baseball ran roughly from 1971 to 1979, the first year in my lifetime the Pittsburgh Pirates won it all, to the last time they won it all.
When it comes to football, I am more a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers than I am the NFL. Once the Steelers are eliminated from contention, I tune out. With baseball it’s a bit different. Because though I don’t much pay attention to the games, the game itself has a forever hold on me. Baseball, in itself, is too glorious, too wonderful, too platonically pure to be destroyed by free agency, billion dollar payrolls, steroids or frenetic mascots. It’s baseball.
Which may explain two cinematic wonders. First, there has never been a bad baseball movie. There’s been not great ones, but not a single bad one. Go ahead. Try to think of one. You can’t do it. Second, Field of Dreams. A top 5 movie of all time that rockets to the top on the juice of baseball. Every bit of legend and lore, every father and son relationship tapped to the root, all captured by the voice of America in an Iowa cornfield:
Mann: Ray, people will come, Ray.
They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.
Mark: Ray, just sign the papers.
Mann: And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.
Mark: Ray, when the bank opens in the morning, they’ll foreclose.
Mann: People will come, Ray.
Mark: You’re broke, Ray. You sell now or you lose everything.
Mann: The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.
America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.
Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.
Spring training us up and running. Opening Day is just weeks away. I didn’t want you to forget. Baseball.