A Field Of Dreams And Second Chances

We love road trips, and The Greatest Kid On The Planet is the best road trip buddy there is. I drive, and he keeps me laughing and singing along with the best tunes. When he isn’t sleeping.

Whenever we get a chance, we hit the road and head south to Florida. Last week, we went down for Fall break, and it was perfect timing. The moon was full, the sun was hot, and the water was perfect. We spent time with our favorite people doing all of our favorite things. Sometimes when we’re there, it’s hard to leave, but we do love coming home as much as we love going away. There’s something about walking in the door when we get back that feels like a sigh of relief.

Last weekend, we spent Saturday on the road journeying back to Georgia and arrived home ready to watch some college football. With some time to spare before kickoff, we found ourselves flipping through the channels, and we landed on a familiar favorite.

I’ve seen the movie Field of Dreams numerous times over the years. I’m drawn to the story-line, and I have a hard time changing the channel when it’s on. If, like me, you’re not a big fan of baseball, and if you’ve never watched the movie for that reason, you might consider giving it a try, even if only for its superb cast. It stars a young Kevin Costner with a great head of hair, the ever impressive James Earl Jones, and Burt Lancaster in his final movie role.

Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a novice farmer living in Iowa with his wife and daughter and a large corn field. Through the beginning of the movie, he talks about the troubled relationship he had with his father when he was growing up, a relationship that was never healed. And he speaks about his father’s love of baseball, telling the story of his father’s idol, a baseball player named Shoeless Joe Jackson. Shoeless Joe was banned from playing baseball in 1919, along with eight other players from the Black Sox, when he was named in a scandal to fix the World Series.

One day, while Ray is out tending to his corn field, he hears a voice which tells him, “If you build it, he will come.” Notably one of the most recognized lines in movie history.

The voice persists, and, finally, with the help of some visions, Ray is convinced it’s telling him to mow down a portion of his corn field and put in a baseball diamond so Shoeless Joe Jackson can come back and play again. So, that is what he does. He plows down his corn and puts in a baseball field, stadium lights and all. And then he waits, and he waits, and waits. Until one day, Shoeless Joe steps out of the corn field and onto the baseball field.

More voices and visions send Ray to Boston in search of a now retired and reclusive 1960’s author named Terence Mann, whom Ray “kidnaps” and brings to a baseball game at Fenway Park. From there, they both travel to Minnesota in search of another professional baseball player named Archibald “Moonlight” Graham.

When they reach Minnesota, they find that Graham passed away years earlier. In a twist that can only happen on the silver screen, Ray finds himself back in time, and he meets Moonlight Graham, played by Burt Lancaster, who, in the wake of his short baseball career, became a small town doctor. This is my favorite part of the movie.

As a professional ball player, Moonlight Graham played one inning in a major league game, and he never made it up to bat. He tells Ray it was like getting close to a dream, only to see it pass by. Then he says, “You know, we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then, I thought, well there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

When Ray asks Graham to come back to Iowa with them, he declines. But the next day while they’re on the road, Ray and Terence Mann pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a young rookie named Moonlight Graham, looking for a place to play baseball.

When the three return to Iowa, the baseball field is full of baseball players, all whom have previously passed, now returning to Ray’s field for another chance to do what they love.

At the end of their game, the players leave back through the corn field from which they came, and only the catcher remains. When he removes his gear, it turns out to be Ray’s father. In a tear-jerking final scene, Ray finally gets to speak to his dad again, and then they play a game of catch.

I’m a sucker for sappy movies, and this one fits the bill. I love the way it weaves fact with fiction. Shoeless Joe Jackson and Moonlight Graham were both major league baseball players in the early 1900s, and the story of Shoeless Joe’s suspension from baseball is a well known part of the notorious Black Sox Scandal.

But what I love even more is the way the story connects the present with the past, with all that is real and the way our lives look today, with people who are now long gone and all that we can only wish for.

While I think the game of baseball is merely a backdrop for the bigger picture, I love the idea of all those great legends who have now passed coming back for another chance to do what they love – that one last shot to stand in the outfield, at the plate, or on the pitcher’s mound, to swing a bat, wind up for a pitch, or catch a fly ball. It’s that notion of having such passion for something, of loving something so much, that you would give anything just for one more chance to do it again.

It’s something to which I think we all can relate. Who of us wouldn’t love to go back and take that chance we never took, to try something we wanted to try, or to follow a dream we didn’t chase?

But even more so, what wouldn’t we give for just one more moment with the loved ones we’ve lost? To speak to them again about anything and everything or nothing at all. Perhaps to say the things we didn’t say, or even, maybe, to take back the things we did.

So often, as Moonlight Graham said, we don’t recognize the important moments in our lives while we’re living them. Instead, we let those moments pass us by, thinking there’s still time. But the days easily turn into months and years and seasons, and, soon, those moments become nothing more than memories that linger.

I love movies like Field of Dreams that remind us to live fully in the present. It’s too easy to get caught up in our daily lives, and to take our days for granted. But when we begin to understand that some things, once gone, will never come again, then we can learn to recognize what matters most before it’s too late.

No matter how much time we have, it can never be enough. Whether our dreams are of a corn field in Iowa, a baseball diamond, or a small town called Chisholm, Minnesota, we can choose to live our lives in a way that leaves us peaceful and fulfilled, rather than wading in regret.

And while we can always hope for second chances, it’s not often that they come. The ones we really wish for, the ones that matter most, only happen on the silver screen.

M.C. Greene

(Photo by Milada Vigerova)