A Look Back At ‘Field of Dreams’ (1989)

Well, we’re coming up on the World Series, so why not look back at one of my favorite baseball movies?

If you’ve seen this one, then you probably don’t need a detailed recap. However if you haven’t seen this film then I won’t spoil it, because it really is an enjoyable journey. I’ll just offer the setup and some overall thoughts.

Released in 1989, the film stars Kevin Costner as an Iowa corn farmer named Ray Kinsella. One Evening while walking through his cornfield, he hears a voice whisper "If you build it, he will come." After eventually seeing a vision of a baseball diamond in the field, he decides that he has plow down his crops and build a baseball field. Finally one night, after a couple of months pass without anything happening, a mysterious man in a Baseball uniform appears. It turns out that the man is deceased baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by Ray Liotta). He asks Ray if it’s ok to bring others to the field to play, and returns the next night with other deceased players. 

As the film moves along Ray receives other cryptic clues like “ease his pain”, “go the distance” and even the statistics for a player named Archibald Graham, who played one game for the Giants in 1922, on a scoreboard. This takes him from Iowa to Massachusetts to Minnesota and back to Iowa in search for the ultimate meaning to it all. As stated earlier, it’s all about the journey. There’s some good drama, a few surprises, and a really satisfying ending.

It’s a solid, enjoyable movie and I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

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