Do you wanna have a catch?
Field of Dreams is a great father-son baseball movie, but with a little imagination it can be a great mother-son baseball movie also.
I was 18 years old when Field of Dreams came out. At the time, I was nearing the end of my first season of college baseball. I hadn’t played much that year, but did get high marks for chasing foul balls and encouraging the guys who actually played. We had a good season, a playoff-caliber season. With one day left on the regular season schedule, we had already clinched a playoff spot. The last day of the regular season was on a Saturday and we were playing a double-header.
The night before the doubleheader, I went to the movies and saw Field of Dreams. I loved it. I loved the story, the baseball field carved out of an Iowa cornfield, the bigger than life James Earl Jones, and the one plate appearance for “Moonlight Graham.” When I got home that night, my mom told me my coach had called. I would be starting the next day. This only added to my appreciation of Field of Dreams. It was a little piece of magic for me that my coach called to deliver the good news while I was watching a movie about baseball.
To the 18-year-old version of me, Field of Dreams was a movie first and foremost about baseball. I knew who Shoeless Joe Jackson was (and that they incorrectly showed him batting right-handed in the movie). I could appreciate a pilgrimage to Fenway Park. I could even imagine turning a cornfield into a baseball diamond. For all the things about the movie I appreciated, the father-son aspect of the movie didn’t touch me like it did others.
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My father was not an athlete himself and had no interest in sports in general. When I was growing up, I don’t remember ever seeing him swing a bat or throw a baseball. My mother was the athlete. She was a swimmer and diver when she was young and also played baseball with the boys in her neighborhood. She was a tomboy in the 1950s, long before Title IX. She was the lover of sports, the one who came to almost every game I ever played. My father had no use for sports.
The final scene of Field of Dreams, in which Ray plays catch with his father, is very emotional for many people. Some have said, “If you don’t cry while watching this scene, you’re inhuman.” It’s a movie men are not ashamed to admit they have an intense emotional response to. I didn’t have that. I had never played catch with my father, so the scene didn’t hit me the same as most.
One thing that bothered me about that scene for a long time is what Ray says. Specifically, he asks, “Hey . . . dad? You wanna have a catch?” I had tossed a baseball around for years but never heard it phrased as “having a catch.” I would ask my brother or sister if they wanted to “play catch” but not “have a catch.”
That line really annoyed me at the time. It was like the Bruce Springsteen video for “Glory Days.” It always bugged me when Bruce sang, “He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool.” “Having” a catch was like “speedball” to me. They were both grating to my baseball-loving ear. When you’re young, you’re convinced you know everything. I knew with no uncertainty that “having a catch” and “speedball” were just wrong.
Now, many years later, I’ve come to realize I don’t know everything. Maybe “having a catch” is a phrase used in some parts of the country, like some people refer to a soft drink as a soda and some say pop. Maybe some people call a fastball a speedball. Maybe I didn’t know everything I thought I knew back then.
After watching Field of Dreams and learning I would start the next day, I had a restless sleep, the kind of sleep you have when you’re excited for something the next day. A Christmas Eve kind of sleep. The next day I got to start and banged out two hits in six at-bats. My mom was there to see them because she was almost always there to see me play.
It’s been nearly three decades since Field of Dreams came out in theaters and there’s been a bit of a backlash to it in the last few years. Many people still consider it one of the best baseball movies, but some are turned off by it. Some think it’s corny and the lines are strained with overwrought emotion. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is too corny. Or maybe the world has changed enough in the last 30 years that Field of Dreams is a fantasy in which some people aren’t willing to indulge.
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I still enjoy the movie, though. My father is still alive. He’s 82 years old and, as far as I know, he’s still never swung a bat or thrown a baseball. He has other interests. Sports are still not among them. My mother died 16 years ago. When I watch Field of Dreams, I make the switch mentally. If I were to have a Field of Dreams moment, the final scene would be with my mom and I would be perfectly fine with saying, “Hey . . . mom? You wanna have a catch?”