"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has 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 of us of all that once was good and it could be again."
-Terrence Mann, Field of Dreams (1989)
Perhaps of all of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams leaves me feeling the most vulnerable (not vulnerable in the "oh please do not let me see a dead rabbit on the street today, I am still very sensitive and upset about a break up and will probably cry over the fuzzy little guy," but vulnerable in the sense that "WOW I just saw field of dreams and think all of my dreams can come true" vulnerable). There are many reasons why, but I want to focus on a select few right now:
Terrence said it best in the quote above. I think it is impossible to try and put that idea in better words than Terrence did. The Great Depression, World Wars I & II, the Civil Rights Movement (we'll get to that later), Vietnam, The Gulf War, Bush, September 11 (I am sure I am missing a few big events in our history but I never said I was a history guy so shut it)...and baseball is still here. In fact, in the last twenty years, even baseball saw a moment in its history where people wondered if the game can ever be the same again with the steroid era. But here we are, not five years past that, and already we just witnessed "the year of the pitcher." There is no parallel to baseball in the way it has stood the test of time. Baseball has never seen an entire season lost due to lockout. Baseball has always been there for when the kids get out of school for the summer, when the weather is perfect for being outside for hours tossing a baseball.
For those of you who have not seen Field of Dreams: 1) shame on you. 2) please contact me immediately and I will schedule a viewing, but for now all I can say is ***SPOILER ALERT***. "Doc" Graham wished for a "Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag...That's my wish." For those of you who have never played a game of baseball (softball counts in this context, too), perhaps "Doc's" words will give some sort of description for that unmistakable feeling when you are playing. To trot out to your position, take a grounder from the first baseman, feel the dirt and gravel run through your fingers as you guide the ball into the pocket of your mitt...to bring your glove - ball and all - up to your chest while your fingertips feel for the seams...and to send it right back to the outstretched arm of the first basemen...all in the most routine fashion just to do it again a moment later, and, if you are lucky, have the throw back beat the base runner...there is really no feeling in the world like it.
A few weeks ago, my father found his father's old baseball glove. (To call it a glove would be a gross overstatement, as it was more like one of those foam fingers you cheer with at ball games - except instead of foam it is made of 100 year old leather and has no big finger that you can make look like a middle finger if you are awesome enough. It really looks like this, but black.) I asked my father if we can have a catch with it, and though you have to use two hands instead of one to catch the ball, something hit me...that glove felt as natural in my hand as my own glove does now. How is it, that a difference of 100 years of technology, leather, and use was as second nature to me as is my glove is? The answer, I realized, lies not in the shape of the glove, or the size of it; the answer is that having a catch comes naturally to all American boys. I guarantee that if I gave anyone else that glove to have a catch with, it would not have been any different - they would have been able to use that over sized leather hand. After teaching a baby how to walk on his/her own, what is the next activity done to help improve motor skills and coordination? Tossing a ball to him/her, then having he/she toss it back! "Catch!" We are all brought up being taught how to play catch. It is in our blood. Now, I am not a crier. It is not a Macho Man thing, I just really do not cry anymore. (Ok maybe it is a Macho Man thing) But, at the end of Field of Dreams, this scene always makes my eyes raaiiiinnnn. When Ray turns to his dead father, and asks him to have a catch, just like he was a boy, THAT is the beauty of baseball. It connects generations. It buries grudges and feuds. It can make two people into best friends in the time it takes to round the bases. When you step on that field, you feel as though nothing in the world can stop you. I still go out and pretend that I am Robin Ventura, taking a bare hand from third base and throwing on the run to gun the runner out...even though there is no runner. Baseball allows for dreams like that; in fact, it is encouraged to dream in baseball.
They say a baseball is the perfect object for a man's hand, that you cannot throw anything faster than a baseball because of its perfect shape and size. If that is not a sign that it is a game rooted in more than just men, but our hearts and souls, I don't know what is. While writing this post did make me tear a little, I do hope it got how I felt across: that baseball is more than a game. Like Ray Kinsella said, when standing on his home-made baseball field..."Maybe this is heaven." I think it is Ray, I think it is.
Ilan Weitzman
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