Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1518: The Field of Dreams Debate

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller revisit Sam’s tradition of viewing the beloved and despised 1989 film Field of Dreams on the eve of Opening Day (or in this case, what would have been Opening Day) and examine how their perceptions of the movie have evolved, what makes Field of Dreams the most divisive baseball movie, […]

🎵 Good morning and welcome to episode 1518 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast at Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our patreon supporters i'm sam miller of espn along with ben lindbergh of the ringer hello ben hello how are you holding up i'm doing all right okay you have to ask we have to start every conversation that way these days i know because i'm doing it myself yeah yeah you want to hear how the peru ended up? Yes, please. All right. I know that these stories are very common. This is not a special story, but the suspense and the ending to me make it worth telling. So, all right. So the background is that our friends went to Peru on a anniversary trip. They left actually the same day as the directive that Major League Baseball shouldn't use fans pens so that's that's

when they left when it started getting really serious autographs were in jeopardy yeah and they were going to be there for like a couple days a couple weeks and so six days before that and they were out in remote remote areas of peru and so six days before they were due to get back was when the nba canceled season. Five days is when Major League Baseball postponed it. Four days is when our kids' school got canceled. And so that is when they started to get nervous. And so they started calling and trying to move their flight up, but they couldn't move their flight up unless they were in Peru. And they were not in Peru, they were out far away. And so they kind of had to wait. And so they get to Peru. And

the morning before they're going to leave is when Peru, which had something like 70 cases at this point confirmed. So very small, it wasn't a huge story for the most part while they were out there where they were abruptly says tonight at midnight, all flights grounded, airport closed. And their flight was the next day at like 9am. So now they're panicking right now. They're really in a panic mode. They're trying to find any flight, any flight to any part of the world that can get out of Peru that day. And so they're in the airport. They're talking to every airline. They're calling their travel agent. People here are on the phone with airlines trying to find anything available they call their travel agent they have friends who are pilots who are like

working the the scene behind the scenes trying to find anything nothing can be found they're like hopeless they have they have lost hope they are going to be away from their kids for weeks okay so that's basically where we pick up right right? That's the backstory. So they call a different travel agent. And this travel agent finds a plane that nobody else knows about. And so the story of this plane is the day before. So the day before the action is happening, two days before their flight, a plane was taking off. And while it was, I guess, taxiing on the runway, it crashed into a catering truck. And this plane, I'm not quite clear on the details, but the plane still took off. But

for some reason, they had to take off with 40 fewer passengers. So 40 people had to stay behind in Peru. This flight goes off. But the airline promises these 40, don't worry, we'll come back tomorrow, we'll get you. And this is before the closures has been announced. And so they have promised these 40 people. And my friends find out through a second travel agent about this plane and they get on a flight to Fort Lauderdale and they fly from Fort Lauderdale back to Long Beach and they end up making it home a day late and totally broke. Always get a second opinion. Yeah. Like a 12th opinion. Right. So, so they made it. That's great. Catering truck. Get out of here. That's what I Catering truck. Get out of here. That's what I'm saying. Meanwhile, I've barely left my apartment that entire time.

Yeah, but I see you've reached the point of quarantine where we start writing about bidets. Didn't even take that long for me. No, you were writing it. You had it ready to go by day one, I bet. Yep. This is it. It's finally my chance to talk about bidets. Yep. Would have been writing about spring training stats right now, probably, instead of bidets.

You know, a bunch of podcasts lately have been doing commercials for, I think, for bidets, for a better toilet. And I believe it's a bidet-based toilet. And I always hear these reads, these podcast hosts doing the reads and they all seem you know like kind of a little bummed out that that's the ad read they have to do but you're just at home going why did i why did i choose to start an ad free podcast i know i could have been the bidet reader i could do those live reads totally genuinely send me your copy i'll just put it out there for free so it is it's like when we did the Play Index ads and it

didn't feel like an ad because we were truly genuinely willing to do Play Index promotion for free. All right. So it is now more or less the eve of opening day. It's three days away, two days probably by the time you listen to this. Have you ever in your life had any opening day rituals, opening day rituals, opening day traditions, things you did every year, either before or around or on opening day? Nope, not really. Just watched baseball.

Okay, I had one. So when I was a kid, I went and saw Field of Dreams when I was eight years old, and my dad took me to see it, and I loved it, absolutely loved it. Thought it was the best movie I'd ever seen. And so we got it on VHSs and for most of my childhood it was the only movie that we owned a video of we my family was sort of philosophically against owning movies that my parents would say what are you really going to rent that movie 10 times because otherwise it's not worth it and so field of

dreams was the exception because it did genuinely seem like otherwise we might rent it 10 or more times. So we had a copy of Field of Dreams. And every year on the night before opening day, I would watch Field of Dreams. And so for most of my childhood, it was my favorite movie. And then I was thinking about that in the context of my baseball journey, my larger baseball journey. And when I was throughout my childhood, I was a baseball fan as like a key part of my identity. All my Christmas presents from grandmas and aunts and uncles, they would just be, you know, just get a baseball thing, you know, a baseball potholder, doesn't matter, just give him a baseball thing and he'll be happy. And I would start every conversation by proclaiming my love of baseball. And then, you know, I, when I started, when I went to college, I know that I followed baseball.

I know that I watched games. I was aware of who was on what teams, but there was this period in college where it quit. I don't know. It ceased to be my identity. I don't really remember like loving it. I watched it, but I don't remember having like particularly strong emotions about baseball. And I don't really remember watching it. I'm sure I did. I know I did, but I don't remember being obsessed with it or anything like that. And there was this kind of lull, this gap as I became an adult. And then when I became an adult, I went, you know, I graduated college and then Moneyball came out and my, I became, again, baseball became part of my identity again, but in a very different way. This was almost like a new, a new storyline where it was all about being like really progressive and smart with my baseball fandom. I was really into the stats and I was really into reading baseball perspectives.

And I was into this idea of being like kind of part of the niche of like smarter baseball fans. And then eventually that merged into, you know, my career. And so the gap in college, though, makes my my childhood field of dreams, my childhood baseball fan experience separate and different from my my sort of older baseball fan experience, separate and different from my sort of older baseball fan experience. And as I was an adult, when I became, you know, an adult, an adult baseball fan, as opposed to an adult baseball fan, with a hyphen there. What would that be?

I think Emma Spann wrote about that. When I became an adult, I was sort of aware that field of dreams was considered very very bad by by the baseball writers that i was into it was i think the conventional wisdom among baseball prospectus writers and the circle around them in the 2000s that field of dreams is a very bad movie it's a it's a it's kitschy and treacly and you know just sort of dumb and that it's not one of the good baseball movies i didn't i don't really remember reading any of the explanations for why people hated it but i was aware that it was not cool to like field of dreams and i because you don't casually see movies, like the same is true of Centerfield, the John Fogerty song. But of course, a song, you hear songs through the course of your life.

So I've heard John Fogerty sing Centerfield 30 times in the last 20 years. And I've been able to reassess it because I've been exposed to it. But you don't necessarily stumble upon a movie and accidentally watch the whole thing. And so I haven't really revisited Field of Dreams. I didn't really remember a lot of things about it, and I did not have a grown-up opinion of it, which is all to say that on the eve of opening day, I decided last night to watch Field of Dreams with my eight-year-old, as well as with my wife who's never seen it to see if it's good to see if the movie is good i know it's very controversial this

is a question that has a lot of very strong some people i know do still like it and they love it they still love it the most divisive baseball movie there is i think i think thank you that is i think correct and there is not a lot of necessarily a lot of middle ground certainly in the way people discuss it and so i was prepared to hate it i was prepared to love it i was prepared either way to be surprised by having strong emotions but i was kind of just curious to see what i thought of it and also what my family thought of it and so i'm telling you now that i've watched it and we're going to talk about whether it's a good movie so okay so you didn't read the boat rocker by terence man when you were 14 and you told your dad kevin costner's a criminal and you're never watching field of dreams again

and you turned your back on it forever you just sort of drifted away naturally and then now have returned to it that's very specific that so I guess that means that you have seen it recently enough that you remember. Yes, I also watched it yesterday. Oh, you did? My wife, and she had not seen it before. I did not watch it with my eight-year-old because I don't have an eight-year-old, but we watched it together with our dog because I hadn't seen it since, I don't know, in its entirety, probably not since high school.

And I was never a total Field of Dreams head. I liked it the first time I saw it. I had a positive impression of it. And I was aware that the opinion of it, the critical consensus had curdled maybe in the years since. But I hadn't really revisited it other than just some scenes that you see all the time because they're famous in Field of Dreams. So I didn't have perfect recall of it either. But yes, now I've seen it recently enough that I can cite Terrence Mann's opus.

Very good. Did you know that Terrence Mann was actually J.D. Salinger in the book? I did know that. I have not read the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, but I have come across that fact in my reading. There are some things that changed either in the book or from reality. And it's interesting to think how significant the change is because Terrence Mann as a character is very different than J.D. Salinger as a character. And if you imagine all the same scenes, but with J.D. Salinger, does it and if you imagine all the same scenes but with J.D. Salinger does

it change the meaning of the movie does it change the the character that Kevin Costner plays does it change any of the themes that are in it if you think of it as as Salinger and not this sort of like more like almost civil rights icon that Terrence Mann plays or I don't know a kind of a 60s activist icon that terence man plays as opposed to just a surly you know literary hermit that that's sort of salinger became it's very different right anyway the other thing that changed i'm jumping ahead here but they changed a few of the biographical details of of moonlight graham and like they changed the year he died from 1965 to 1972 and the year he debuted or that he played from 1905 to 1920 or 1922 maybe. And I've been trying to figure out what the purpose was of either of those changes.

Why go through the effort of changing that unless it's a significant reason to change it? And I can't really think of a significant reason that they would have changed it thematically no i noticed that too i guess maybe i don't know is it just to make the years line up well or something because uh he actually died in 65 which is before ray goes to visit him in the movie but i don't know why it would really matter that he played in 1905 instead of 1922 or whatever because it wasn't like he was a favorite of Ray's dad or something

and they had to make the timeline work out. None of them had ever heard of Moonlight Cram before they see the message flashed on the scoreboard at Fenway. So no, I'm not sure why they would have done that. My guess is that the reason that they did it is that they wanted him to die after the 60s because so much of this movie it like the subtext of this movie is really all about the 60s which we'll probably talk about but it is it is almost more

of a love letter to the 60s than it is or at least to the idealism behind you know that that the director saw in the 60s then it is a baseball a love letter to baseball and it is, or at least to the idealism behind, you know, that the director saw in the 60s, then it is a baseball, a love letter to baseball, and it is really a love letter to baseball. And so by having him die in 72 instead of 65, oh, by the way, we're going to spoil some things. Yes. Then you A, you get him dying around the time that Ray's dad died instead of a decade before. I don't know if that matters but for like you know balance uh you have him dying i don't know right after a bunch of the

players on the field seem to have died around 1970 like chick gandall and gil hodges who for some reason appears and so there might be if you were to break down the players who showed up especially the players that they had a choice about who to put in, I don't know, Melod, I'm not sure, you might see a real cluster of like early 70s deaths by choice. Anyway, and so by having him die in 72, you also have him dying after the 60s are over. And not just after the 60s are over, but even after, like, even after the culture of the 60s had really petered out, which you could argue didn't happen until around 72, or maybe even slightly later.

And then if you're going to have him die in 72 instead of 65, then you might need to have him playing in 1922 instead of 1905 so that you can have Burt Lancaster playing him instead of a 92-year-old man. All right, we've dawdled long enough. Should we lay out the summary or the premise just for people who somehow haven't seen the movie and i mean i'm not familiar with the broad strokes here we definitely could do that i will do that i will do that but first i just i want to get this out of the way one word answer okay in your opinion is this a good movie yes but i will say that at this like the conversation has become so polarized that

there aren't really any field of dreams moderates anymore it's just people who think it's the most beautiful love story baseball and romance and fathers and sons in america and it touches your heartstrings and makes you cry or there are people who think it's just a manipulative, mawkish mess and makes no sense and contradicts itself and is just overdone in the worst possible ways. And I agree with elements of what both of those people say. And so I feel like it's almost like the most radical take now is just that, yeah, it's pretty good. It's not the best movie and it's not the worst movie. Even if I were just ranking baseball movies, you know, it probably wouldn't be like in my top five, but it also wouldn't be on my baseball razzies or anything. I like it.

I'm generally fond of it. And yet it has many flaws, which we can discuss. It has many flaws, which we can discuss. So I don't feel moved to stake out one extreme position, which I don't know that there are that many of us moderates left. But I don't know. Maybe there's a silent majority of people out there who just think Field of Dreams is okay. Yeah. I thought that it was pretty good. I also am in that moderate lane.

I thought it was pretty good, but i also did not like it i would say that yeah like it was like if you were giving it five stars by quality i'd say three and by by by me liking it i'd say two i yeah there are parts of it i really despised to baseball and if i didn't like baseball i'd probably think it was garbage oh well well that's interesting i'm going to i think probably later i'm going to make the opposite case. All right. So yeah, real quick, the summary of it. When there's a man who in the 80s is living in Iowa, he's a farmer, but he is not naturally a farmer. He's naturally a city boy. He was raised by his baseball-loving father, they grew apart as he reached adolescence and had a rift that carried through most of his adult life. That's all in the prologue. While he's working in the farm in the first scene, he hears a voice that says, If you build it, he will come.

This voice is unexplained. Nobody else can hear it. And repeats itself until Ray sees a vision of a baseball field and then another vision of a baseball player who he amazingly recognizes as shoeless joe jackson somehow recognizes this man as shoeless joe jackson because we all have in our head an image of shoeless joe jackson well it was his dad's favorite players so then he uh he becomes convinced that this vision is telling him that he needs to build a baseball field and he follows through on it with the support of his wife he builds the baseball field and then after waiting a while

baseball players start showing up from the ghost world including shoeless joe jackson and the rest of the 1919 chicago white socks this leads to more voices and visions. He goes on a hunt for this, you know, Salinger-esque author in Boston, who then accompanies him first to a baseball game and then in pursuit of a player named Moonlight Graham, a real player who played one game in his career but did not get to bat. And then they go back to the field where more baseball ghosts are playing. All the while, he's losing his farm to bankers. And then at the end, one of the baseball players turns out to be his ghost father. They have a catch.

Oh my gosh, this movie sounds bad. They have a catch. And as the bankers salivate over the farm that they're going to get to foreclose on, I'm simplifying, but then suddenly cars begin to show up in the gloaming, apparently to pay money to see ghost ballplayers. And that's that. It's completely preposterous. It's just an utterly ridiculous movie.

My wife, who had not seen it before, enjoyed it, but she said, this is a strange movie. And it really is. It's so strange. Nothing anyone does makes any sense. No one acts in a rational way or even in a necessarily internally consistent way. It's just this guy wandering around a cornfield. He hears a voice. He does whatever the voice tells him to do. He goes and brings this author who really,

I don't know that Terrence Smith actually needs to be in this movie. No. At all. He just really has no purpose in this movie, which he actually acknowledges in a scene. He's like, well, we know what everyone else is doing here i don't know what i'm doing here and uh annie says the same thing to ray she's like he's my favorite writer too but what's he got to do with baseball i don't know it says in the script that i've got to go kidnap him none of them need it's weird because there's three visions he pursues each of these visions and yet we are told at the end that the visions actually are all about his dad and so are we to believe that that shoeless joe wasn't supposed

to be there either or or did this did the voice was the voice working on two levels and each one was a crafty basically a craftily ambiguous statement that could work on both an a plot and a b plot at the same time it is very odd you're right terence man has no no real role in the plot except to a be entertaining he's by far the most entertaining character yes by far and then to to die uh at the end he he just walks to his death where which the weird thing is that he essentially to the normal well all right to the normal person he got kidnapped right like he's he goes the last person he's seen with is ray canzella he goes in ray's weird hippie van without a suitcase or a change of clothes to minnesota his son is worried that he is missing.

And in fact, there are reports in the local newspaper that famous author Terrence Mann is missing. And then he goes to the cornfield and disappears for good. And no one's going to arrest Ray Kinsella for this. It seems like they are. My wife also thought that it was very odd. These are direct quotes that i wrote down when shoeless joe shows up she says this is weird and then later when melott shows up she said this movie's so weird it and then she paused and said it actually works for me but it's very strange

was she upset that shoeless joe wasn't batting lefty oh that's the other thing so oh here's another one it's a very strange movie she said that later yeah yeah it it is another thing they changed this is like maybe the most common complaint among baseball fans is that shoeless joe of course is a uh batted lefty and through righty and they cast ray leota who batted righty and through uh lefty and who rather than being a south carolinian hick was a i mean he's ray leota yeah playing ray leota it's he you know like he plays a game and then he goes down to the copa like there's this is like the worst casting it and so for some reason, they just didn't think it mattered. Like they have this whole love letter to Shoeless Joe Jackson and they're like, but change everything about him.

Which is very odd. Yeah. So the story I was thinking about a lot, if you want to get into the strangeness of it, the weirdness of it, there's a very strange premise. And then there's the very strange way that the movie fails to hold its internal logic. And my wife gave me a good defense for the latter, and we'll get into that. But as for the premise, the thing I kept thinking about as this movie went on was the story of Abraham in the Bible. Do you know the story of Abraham? Mm-hmm.

Good. All right. So Abraham, of course, has a child at 100 years old, Isaac. And then one day he gets a voice, basically, God telling him to sacrifice his son on an altar. And Abraham is sad by this, but he believes that this is God telling him to do it. And he packs Isaac up with a bunch of sticks and he goes to burn him to death.

And then the Lord, seeing that he, um, that Abraham was obedient and feared him says, you don't have to do that. Here's a goat instead, or a ram instead. And so this is a story about, you know, it's a story that is taught in Sunday school is a story about obedience and faith to the voice. And, you know, it's always been a really tricky story because there's been, you know, if you can be a, I mean, look, no, I think, I think no matter how faithful you are, if you hear a voice saying, burn your child to death, the appropriate thing to do is to say, well, I've gone crazy and I'm going to get some help. I'm going to have, I'm going to have myself institutionalized so that I can't hurt somebody.

Like it is, if you could be, you could have more faith than anybody in the world, but I, you know, you gotta like, you're almost on guard to voices telling you to do things like that in your life right and so abraham has always been a really odd story for that reason like it you know in the telling of it we know that the voice was god that's the story is that it actually was god but if confronted with in real life you'd say like abraham's crazy keep him away from the sticks and this movie is about a man who hears a voice and then proceeds to bankrupt his family while ignoring please to stop and all for like for what for a thing that hardly makes any sense at all yeah all for like the chance to play ghost ball it's it's very odd and the story that it tells i i mean i kind of found it troubling because i i don't know there is a way that

like movies throughout time and stories throughout time have had a real tendency to be about how uh you know a man it's a man, gets some call to adventure that is sort of often appears selfish or crazy, but he puts society aside to pursue this crazy thing, and then at the end he is revealed to not be crazy at all. But, I mean, to, you know, in real life like you'd think no man you like you're definitely crazy you need to fight this voice like if a voice is telling you to plow your corn and build a farm so that your ghost dad will come like that's a voice that you really need to resist and and in the movie it's not like everybody who hears this goes, oh, yeah, no, we support that.

We live in a world where ghosts are constantly coming back and voices are constantly telling us what we need to do for our self-actualization. Like this world follows the same basic rules that our world does where people it is. It is not suggested that everybody's hearing voices that tell them what they need to do in order to feel to resolve their relationship with their dad. So he's the only one like he is special, that this is happening to him. And for that reason, I mean, you just have to think you need to think why why me? Why? Why would the this break in the universe exist solely for me, one man, one very unexceptional man, to resolve a relationship with my dad? Like, why would this be where the universe chooses to break all of its precedent? It doesn't really make any sense, you know, to a sane person. Yes. Well, he feels some conviction, obviously. It doesn't really make shouldn't question it. a couple acres of his field and built this ballpark, which looks immaculate, by the way,

even though he built it by himself seemingly in about a day. I don't know, maybe there's a montage there that's supposed to hide a longer passage of time. Yeah, but he tells, the whole montage takes place over the course of one story. I know. He starts a story about Shula's Joe hitting 358 or whatever. And it's just like every sentence follows the other. So it really does kind of imply that either he's been telling the same story. I read recently, I read a great line about how insanity is only having one story. That you just keep repeating the same story over and over and over. And that's how you can tell someone is losing their mental bearings is they can only tell one story. And so maybe, in fact, he built it over the course of 14 months.

And every day he woke up and told the exact same story. And his family just nodded and went, yeah, it's telling the Shoeless Joe story again. Three. Yeah. OK. Offerman on the podcast, it is completely beyond belief that tearing down the two acres or so that it would take to build a ballpark would actually bankrupt this person's family, this farmer, because farms are big. This is a tiny little fraction, presumably, of his farm. Either it's such a tiny farm that I don't see how he possibly could have broken even anyway, because his farm's like four acres large, or he's raising just such a tiny little percentage of his crop here that this

really should not be a make or break thing. So maybe his wife was just like, well, whatever, it's two acres, go ahead. Except that we know that's not the case in the universe of the movie, because it's very clear that he is risking their financial future and jeopardizing everything. So that doesn't make much sense. But he does at least get confirmation that this is not all just in his head or at least that, I don't know, it's in the water supply or something and it's affecting his whole family. Because as soon as Shoeless Joe shows up on the field, his wife can see him and his daughter can see him. And so by the time he goes off to find Terrence Mann, he at least knows that he was not totally imagining this. And so that maybe is somewhat reassuring and encourages him to continue pursuing this.

But I will say that the relationship between Ray and Annie, who is played by Amy Madigan. There are aspects of it that I don't love, but I do like the relationship on the whole. I like Amy Madigan just as an actress in this role. And yes, you're right that he is the one who gets to just jet off and irresponsibly put his whole family in danger while she stays to talk to the bankers and worry about being foreclosed on it does seem to go both ways a little bit like he has i guess followed her passion to a certain extent up to this point because he's the city boy he's not the farmer but he has moved out to where her family is and taken over this farm and he's trying to make a go of it so he's at least tried to do things her way for a while.

And I feel like one of the things that it shows is that it's important in a relationship to sort of indulge your partner's passions and support them. Maybe not necessarily if they're hearing voices and also jeopardizing your whole family's future, but at least to a certain extent. If they generally are pretty responsible and take care of you, then maybe from time to time you let them indulge themselves. Although she is very understanding, probably more so than she should be. And also he is not very supportive when she has her big moment at the PTA meeting. And she manages to shout down this woman who wants to ban Terrence Mann's book and she puts this big speech together

and gets the whole crowd behind her and she's feeling the spirit of the 60s and then he basically just ignores her whole triumphant moment because he knows that the voice now wants him to go see Terrence Mann so that wasn't the most considerate moment. But on the whole, I like their relationship. And I do kind of like the idea that it's never too late to change, that you can keep trying new things even after a certain point. Again, not necessarily this new thing, not like total midlife crisis slash mental breakdown, not running away from your obligations and responsibilities, which he does do, but just the idea that, hey, opportunities could come along and they could be something special, which in this case it turns out to be, and you should at least listen to that

voice that's telling you to try, as long as it's an internal voice and not a voice coming out of a cornfield okay so it is true that at her suggestion they moved to iowa and start farming corn which he did not expect to have ever been doing but if you put i mean the equivalency between what she suggested the family do and what he suggested the family do is it really does show i think an imbalance in the i don't know the expectations that movies put on on their men and their women as far as hewing to the rules she he you know it seems kind of clear to me that the the larger the larger psychological thing going on here, besides between him and his dad, is that he doesn't want to provide for his family.

He is stuck in, it is not a dead-end job in the, you know, necessarily the traditional sense, because he's farming, he's doing corn, but he doesn't want to do that. And so rather than put his head down and work hard because he's an adult and that's what you have to do when you have responsibilities, he wants to run from those responsibilities. And that's a, that's a classic, that's a classic trope in stories. The young man feels confined by the strictures of society and the responsibilities that are put on him and so he goes chasing some crazy adventure and at the end of it we celebrate because now he's like

the drummer for led zeppelin or something but these are all like really unrealistic dreams that we should quit encouraging do your work man and it is like i mean you can i think you can look at the plowing up of the farm as a very hostile act toward his wife and his family. And by the way, I just want to jump in here real quick and note that this whole thing is about getting him the chance to have a catch with his dad. And he never has a catch with his daughter the whole movie. What is this guy? that's a good point yeah i don't know how old she is she's pretty young but she seems like of an age where you could play catch i'm more of a play catch guy than a have a catch guy but uh that's just me six or seven year old gabby hoffman by the way pretty good in this movie has karen kinsella raised

daughter and so that the reason that i did not personally like watching the movie is because I really hated his decisions and his dreams. Now, on the other hand, he did hear the voice and he did see the visions. And if this had been a movie where he was much more tortured by the fact that he felt this calling that he resisted it he never resists it that's the thing he just like goes and chases it immediately it takes very little he's got to hear the voice three times and that's it like that's the whole that's the only restriction he puts on his going off and doing whatever. If he had really felt like the story of Abraham is ultimately about this man who feels incredibly tortured by the responsibility. He hates that he's doing it.

He's not giddy. He's not happily plowing up a fire pit. Like this, he sees that this sucks what he's being asked to do. And it is fear that drives him. It specifically says like, I don't remember what name God is going by at this point in the Bible. I forget. But God says, you know, when he relieves him of the burden, he says, I see now that you fear me. It's the fear.

And this movie does not grapple with the fear. Kevin Costner is just all too willing to do it. And he doesn't doubt his sanity. I feel like you could have made most of this movie but thrown in more emotional turmoil. Yeah, there's no threat if he doesn't do it. It's true, too. Nothing's at stake. It's not, I'm going to kill your daughter. Right. It's not, if you build it, he will come.

If you don't, he will come. Yeah, right. Lay out the downside for me here, disembodied voice. All right. lay out the downside for me here disembodied voice all right as for the the weird unrealistic inconsistent way so i'll just give you one example to stand in for all the inconsistencies of how dream world works so at one point chick gandall who again died in 1970 he's throwing the ball around and he's like he's like i died in 1970 i haven't had a smoke in 18 years like to explain so he knows that he knows you're trying to place where where are

these guys mentally yeah and what do they understand about what is happening exactly so he confirms there that they know their life they know they died and they've been in some sort of purgatory waiting for the chance to walk onto a baseball field but they for their life they know they died and they've been in some sort of purgatory waiting for the chance to walk onto a baseball field but they for some reason they still get their peak playing body and now they're out playing ball whereas for moonlight graham he's hitchhiking he doesn't even walk through the cornfield they pick him up hitchhiking and he's a kid before his pro career has even begun and he remembers none of this and so there's like these like all these logical inconsistencies there's many many many

more than that i'm just establishing one so that you understand all right so my wife gave me i feel like she salvages the movie for me with this interpretation of it which is you need to think about the name the name is field of dreams right right? And the book, the original title, I did not realize this. This is according to Wikipedia, I think. The director did not want to call it Field of Dreams because it's based on a book, Shoeless Joe. But the studio said, no, we need a better name, Field of Dreams. And he didn't like it. And the author, W.P. Kinsella, revealed that he actually had named the book Dreamfield originally.

And then the publisher didn't like it and said, call it Shoeless Joe. All right, so Dreamfield, Field of Dreams. If you think this is a field where dreams come true, then it's a really sappy movie. Like if his dream is to maybe have a catch with his dad, and the dad's dream is to play ball against the best in the world, and Moonlight Graham's dream is to get ball against the best in the world and Moonlight Graham's dream is to get on a bat against a major leaguer and Shoeless Joe's dream is to not be banned from

baseball and play it's a very sappy movie but if you think of this as an actual dream where all of it follows dream logic so that you can deal with psychological turmoil in your own mind, then it feels very much like, you know, the way that we experience dreams and the way that we sometimes act out the day's psychological drama in dream world. So as she put it, I'm going to just read. I dream a lot about the relationships I had in high school. And I think this is because it was such an emotional period. And there are some negative emotions there that never got turned into positive ones. The negativity, disappointment, hurt, shame sits repressed in my brain, and when I am asleep and dreaming, these feelings churn

into barely comprehensible plots in dreams. A quote normal dream is one in which the dream plots have the characters doing something that made me feel the way I remember them making me feel. A, quote, good dream, an exceptionally satisfying one, is one in which the dream plots, the characters, act in a way that makes me feel the opposite of the true memory. For example, an ex-boyfriend apologized for something he did. He's friendly to me. He expresses admiration for the better life I now have without him. So, how is Field of Dreams a dream story?

Ray is regretful, maybe ashamed, that he was hurtful and unappreciative toward his father. He will never be able to repair that relationship because his father has died. But his brain can't stop processing that negative emotion. The movie's plot is a dream plot in which he shows his father how much he actually likes baseball, how he actually appreciates his father's stories, how he will make personal sacrifices to please his father how much he actually likes baseball, how he actually appreciates his father's stories, how he will make personal sacrifices to please his father, and how his father will reciprocate his actions with love. The message of this story is not follow your dream, where dream equals a hobby or aspiration, but a psychology lensed idea of only in your dreams are you able to work out

your emotions. And I think that's that to me. She mentioned this theory, I think, like two thirds of the way in the movie. And from that point on, I appreciated it a lot more. OK, yeah, I like that interpretation. It's not really clear to me like the the origins of the fracture in the Ray and John Kinsella, his dad relationship. We get a little bit of insight into that, that John was essentially like an overbearing little league dad, I guess, and was just pushing Ray to be a baseball player. And at some point, Ray decided he didn't really want to be a baseball player. He was just feeling too much pressure to be a baseball player. And so he rebelled against his dad

and he should have just done what his dad wanted him to do, even if that wasn't his dream and his aspiration. Because if his dad's whole thing is, well, I didn't make the majors, so I'm going to mold my son into a major leaguer, that's not really something I would condone. You've got to let your kids find their own path and introduce them to things and encourage them. But if that's not what they want to do, then lay off a little bit. So I don't know

if the whole message is just like, gee, I should have just done what my dad wanted me to do and now I'll go back and play catch with him. Or whether it was just that, well, we could have found some middle ground and he could have bent a little toward me and maybe I didn't have to call Shu a shujou criminal and ruined our relationship. You know, at some point I could have called him between the time when I was 17 and left home and the time he died. I don't know. Yeah, his dad is definitely a jerk. Yeah.

And the relationship is not in any significant way redeemed. It's not even clear no whether his dad realizes they don't talk they don't work it out exactly all it is the only thing that happens between them so there's a line oh my gosh this line the first half of it is everything i hate about this movie this character the second half though is what i'm talking about i can't think of one good reason why i should but i'm 36 years old i have a wife a mortgage and i'm scared to death i'm turning into my father oh that is like the premise for so many movies and bad decisions that are lionized in movies all right but then the next part i never forgave him for getting old and really the only thing that happens in this movie to resolve the relationship is that kevin costner is older than his dad on the field

and he no longer resents him for getting old apparently and they can have a catch with kevin costner now in the sort of more powerful position and that's it that's there we go that's i guess we're resolved now yep by the way here here's another line in this, which this I think goes, I think this is the movie's kind of basically the thesis statement, if my wife is correct. And so he's talking to his wife and he says, I've just created something totally illogical. And then his wife says, that's what I like about it. And if you think of this as a dream field where a dream is occurring then in the same way the illogic is crucial to the movie being good and fun and if it were too logical if they had actually made a more logical movie that held together and that didn't have all these sort of like

eye-rollingly inconsistent things it would actually be kind of a worse movie and i i will say that a lot of what drives the movie is that kevin gossner doesn't know what's going on and he is curious to know what's gonna happen like he's following this voice with no idea what he's gonna find at the end of it he builds the field but he doesn't know what's gonna happen he goes to see terrence man but he doesn't know what he's supposed to do there and you really do feel the same curiosity along with him of like what is going to happen like this movie does not set up that what's going to happen is going to make sense and so you're like holding your breath like what's going to happen my favorite line in the movie is not like one of these big dramatic speeches with the stirring music and all of that, which just tends to be kind of cringy.

But when he's watching with his wife, the players on the field just practicing, and he goes, this is really interesting. I love that line because he just seems like a little kid again. It wasn't even in one of the scripts I looked at, and it doesn't even seem like it would be that good a line, really. It's not like a movie type line, and it's obviously sort of understated. It's more than really interesting. These are long dead baseball players playing in your ball field that you created out of corn. So it's more than really interesting. But I just like that he's like lost for words and kind of overwhelmed and is transported back to being a little kid again. And all he can say is this is really interesting.

So I like that one. Yeah. At one point, he also tells someone, I swear to God, I'm the least crazy person I've ever known, which is only a crazy person. There's another line. Probably the second most famous line in the whole thing, in the whole movie, is when I think Shula's Joe turns back or maybe one of the White Sox turns back and says, hey, is this heaven? And Kevin Costner says, no, it's Iowa. And that line is very famous. And I thought that it was like, I don't know, famous for being good.

But in real life, oh, it is Joe who says it. Because in real life, he says, no, it's Iowa. And then the camera cuts to Shoeless joe who just gives him this dead stare like yeah is that supposed to be funny like why did you tell me like what is that are you trying to be cute right now i'm a ghost just like expressionless the entire movie yeah he was very the most illogical thing it really does go out with like the fireworks finale where at the end, the players all go away. The players all go to the ghost world except for his dad. And it's afternoon and he and his dad play catch for three or four hours apparently.

And his daughter as well as Terrence Mann have prophesied that this field will somehow make money because people will show up to watch the baseball players. And you know, that hasn't happened yet. And there's no like publicity for this or anything like that. But after they're playing catch, the camera like sort of pans up to like a helicopter shot. And you can see that just like a hundred yards from the field,

that just like 100 yards from the field, a line of traffic miles long has shown up to the field, somehow called as one to this thing. But there's no players. They're showing up at night to see him play catch with his dad. And he's going to gouge them $20 a piece. I know, it's so weird what Terrence Mann's like. He's like, it's magic and baseball and you'll reconnect with their childlike memories and then you can charge them 20 bucks

and you can really you can jack up the price on bottled water you can charge them for parking right did you can you even imagine right the parking the parking? This is the plan. This is literally the plan. The secondary market for these tickets. Yeah, it doesn't make any – I mean, I guess it's realistic in that, like, baseball is this sort of magical thing for a lot of us, but it is also a business and a money-making venture. So I guess I appreciate that they didn't try to completely paper over the fact that, like, you have to pay money to go to a baseball game. paper over the fact that like you have to pay money to go to a baseball game and in this case it's like saving his family's farm and all that and he won't have to give it up to the bank but still it is really there's a dissonance to that speech and the whole like magic versus commerce thing yeah terence man has this speech where he lays out the um the plan the business plan

and then he covers up with a whole bunch of like romantic thoughts about baseball so that you don't dwell too much on the business plan but here is here's the actual business plan ray people will come ray they'll come to iowa for reasons they can't even fathom all right i'm not sure we might need to to focus group that for reasons they can't even fathom look what these two guys just did for reasons they couldn't fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. Of course, we won't mind if you look around.

You'll say, it's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it's money they have and peace they lack. Oh my gosh, that just got super duper dark. and he gives this speech while the play has stopped and all the players are watching this yeah he's like a televangelist

or something and my wife goes my wife goes what do the ghosts think i can't read them do they want to be tourist attractions it really isn't clear how they feel about this are they there to play in front of tourists or not oh man this movie yeah i mean well we have to talk about the the terrence minn aspect that i think it probably would have been better if it had been salinger a because maybe it would have been a little more comprehensible what his pain was that that he wanted to have eased because it doesn't really seem like this is easing Terrence Mann's pain. All Terrence Mann wants is to be left alone and to program kids software, and instead he's getting kidnapped and driven across the country. So I think it might

have made more sense from that perspective. But also, as many people have pointed out, one of the big flaws in this movie is that there are no black players on the field, no Negro leaguers. It's all white players. And this is supposedly a field that is giving a second chance to people who didn't get one in life or they can't go to heaven because they still have something that they didn't straighten out or experience yet. that they didn't straighten out or experience yet. And of course, I mean, the best possible people you could have are the people who were banned from playing when they were alive. And yet there are no Negro leaguers here, which is doubly incomprehensible because Terrence Mann,

civil rights icon, doesn't seem to think anything of this. His whole dream was to meet Jackie Robinson, right? His whole unspoken thing was that he what he didn't get to go to a dodgers game in ebbets field because they moved or something and you know he's uh highly aware one would think of the history of baseball and he has this whole speech about baseball and its role in american society or which just completely overlooks the fact that for much of baseball history, many Americans were not allowed to play. And you'd think that might occur to him. Meanwhile, he's super pumped to see Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Who he also recognizes. Yeah. Shoeless Joe. He can't believe it. This is not someone he has a particular attachment to, as far as we know. His dad didn't care about shoeless joe why is he not like where's jackie robinson or you know where's oscar charleston or where's cool papa pell or where's josh gibson or whatever it makes zero sense why does mel ott get to come back what is what does mel ott have to straighten out here he played forever so i don't really understand that that whole aspect of it is just the fact that it is terrence mann and not jd salinger i think makes that even more glaring because you could

maybe imagine salinger not finding that as personally a grieving for something as as terrence mann would but that whole thing is very discordant and it personally i just object to the way that this movie and eight men out of course really just kind of you know applies the cinematic coat of paint to the black socks and makes them seem super sympathetic and oh poor joe jackson and poor buck weaver and because of those movies and the books they were based on i think there's this very persistent and enduring belief that those guys, they didn't know what was going on or they weren't in the meetings or they were kind of railroaded or talked into it or whatever. And that's just not the case. that's shown that yeah maybe there are varying levels of culpability there but buck weaver and joe jackson like those guys lied through their teeth for the rest of their lives about what they had done based on the best information we have so it's not like they were really repentant at some

point in their lives they lived for a long time and they kept making up stories and distorting what they had done and this movie even goes into the whole, like, well, Shoeless Jackson had good stats in the series. And so, of course, he couldn't have been throwing those games. But if you actually drill down into the numbers there, there's some pretty compelling evidence that he only had his hits at moments when it didn't matter or in the games when they were not throwing them. And in high leverage moments or games when they were not throwing them and in high leverage moments or games when they were throwing the games, he did nothing and he made mistakes. And so I think that whole persistent idea that those guys were innocent or they got a raw deal or something, I think is very much exaggerated. And so I'd have more sympathy for the idea that the Black Sox deserve this second shot at redemption if they, A, most of them had not been pretty terrible people, but also if they'd shown more contrition during their actual long lives after this moment.

I don't really feel like they deserve this cornfield moment here. So I guess you could say that everyone you know, everyone makes mistakes. And so it's a shame and they could have made a different decision. And this is giving them a chance to not go down that road or something. But of all the players in history who really deserve to have this moment on the cornfield, I don't think it's Chick Gandel and Swede Risberg. Maybe it wasn't about the players at all. Maybe it was about the two umpires who had unresolved. Maybe they had earned the right. Why are there umpires? What are umpires doing there? Like, I know that you need umpires to play a game, but how did they get in baseball purgatory? What did they do that was unresolved? Like they just always dreamed about umpiring

another game. I don't know. Yeah. You just have to have umps i guess they were probably in heaven and they had to come off the sidelines to umpire this game yeah so the whole terrence man thing just it doesn't make any sense and does he think he's dying when he walks off into the cornfield he seems to think he's gonna come back with a great book i don't know if if he realizes what he's getting into here but i'm this seems like a one-way trip. But he seems to think he's going to come back and write a bestseller about this. So anyway, I kind of forgive that because James Earl Jones is great. And so the interplay between him and Ray is one of the redeeming parts of this movie, even though that character really has no business being in this

movie. And I don't even know if Costner's a good actor or not. I've kind of been going back and forth on that for years, but he is a likable one and he clearly loves baseball. So I'm inclined to be sympathetic to him, except for all the reasons he laid out about how his character is horribly irresponsible. Yeah, he does. I also wasn't sure about his acting there were some some good lines and some bad lines but one thing that he does well he's a you know at the time he was a real hunk and a star and he's very cool and yet when the players show up he really does convincingly become a giddy kind of dork like he's like really he's flustered by the players around the farmers he's like clearly out of place and out of his depth and intimidated by these people who are laughing

at him because he heard a voice in the cornfield yeah yeah that movie does no favors to iowans yeah it's like the the things when amy madigan madigan goes in and she's like standing up for democracy because they want to burn books like the things that the woman before her is saying are like they're like really truly ghastly things and everybody in the audience is just nodding along and i mean it really feels like they're loading they're they're loading the scales a little too much in this one to be realistic. So poor Iowans all look really, well, anyway. Yeah. And Burt Lancaster is just like, he's overacting to just an incredible degree here.

And the actor who plays the young Moonlight Graham, he bats right-handed too, even though Moonlight Graham was a left-hander. It's just everyone gets turned around to the right side in this movie. And the score, the James Horner music is just very cloying and intrusive. And there are so many lines. I actually just scoffed or chuckled at a few lines while I was watching just because of just how overdramatic they are. But I don't know. There's still something I like about it. And there are people who will say, I've seen people defend this movie by saying, oh, well,

if you've ever played catch with your dad or something, then you understand. And that's why either you've had that experience or not. And that's kind of the passport you need to enjoy this movie. And I haven't really had that because baseball was not a big part of my family life or my father-son relationship. It's not a way that I have really interacted with my father. And so I have no particular emotions surrounding that. And their relationship itself is just not very clearly drawn. And as we've noted, they don't really seem to resolve anything.

There's no real catharsis here except that they play catch. And yet, I don't know, there's some element of it that appeals to me. And as manipulative and maudlin and melodramatic as the whole thing is, I kind of feel like it's misguided. It's not well planned out, but it's heart is sort of in the right place. Like I don't, I don't really feel like the movie is trying to manipulate me in a cynical way. Like I feel like the movie makers believe in the message and maybe they believe in it a little too much and they think it will just excuse all the flaws, but i don't feel like someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes as i watch this i feel like someone is a true

believer is really actually trying to impart some love of baseball to me is that so is that is when you say the message what is the message is Is the message simply that baseball is part of our lives and that's it? Like baseball is a big thing to me? Well, it does sort of seem to be like what it wants the message to be. And that's kind of what I was getting at earlier when I was saying that if I didn't care deeply about baseball, I would think this movie was garbage. Because when Shoeless Joe says something like, you know, he gives his sort of crack of the bat, green of the grass type speech and he says, the sounds, the smells, did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face? And Ray says, yeah. And you can tell that he's experiencing that sense memory.

And I was also experiencing it. I was sort of flashing back to being a kid and holding a glove over my face and inhaling that rich Neatsfoot oil smell. And yeah, maybe that's sort of a cheap tactic just to evoke that memory in me, but it does work because I have that history. And I don't mind some corniness in movies. Like, you know, you see there's a clip from Harvey in the movie and they're kind of drawing a parallel between jim stewart seeing the big bunny rabbit and kevin costner hearing this voice and people make the comparison between this and other jimmy stewart movies and like frank capra movies and i like frank capra movies and i like jimmy stewart so i i'm kind of okay with a certain corniness and patness that I guess I'll accept in this movie, even though so much of me

rebels about everything in it, really. And I went back to read Roger Ebert's review, which I love Roger Ebert's reviews, and I miss Roger Ebert almost every time I see a movie, because that used to be my tradition. Every time I saw a movie, I'd go read Ebert's review. And you can still do that with old movies, but not with new ones, sadly. So he loved this movie. And everyone loved the movie at the time, or at least the critical consensus is good. The Rotten Tomatoes score is high. It was nominated for Best Picture, for goodness sakes. Yeah, 86% approval rating. That's why when you said if you weren't a baseball fan, you don't think you'd like it. But the people who love this movie, I mean't even notice. So there is that. But yeah, I think maybe our minds have been kind of colored by this Twitter debate about the movie,

which probably doesn't reflect the real life consensus. I think it's still probably a pretty popular and well-liked movie in the world at large. Anyway, what Ebert said, and I sort of sympathize and agree with this, I think. So he says, as Field of Dreams developed this fantasy, I found myself willingly drawn into it. Movies are often so timid these days, so afraid to take flights of the imagination, that there is something grand and brave about a movie where a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can materialize out of the cornfield and hit a few fly balls. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed and James Stewart might have starred in, a movie about dreams.

And then he ends almost with Field of Dreams will not appeal to grinches and grouches and realists. It is a delicate movie, a fragile construction of one goofy fantasy after another, but it has the courage to be about exactly what it promises. If you build it, he will come, and he does. In a baseball movie named The Natural, the hero seemed almost messianic. And I sort of agree with that. I don't think that you have to be a Grinch or a

Grouch not to like this movie. I think there are a lot of... What about a realist? Well, maybe. But I don't think it's even that. I don't think that people who don't like this movie are saying, I just don't like any fantasy in my movies. There may be some people who are saying that, who are just saying, I want to see a sports story. And what is this voice and imaginary ghosts and stuff? And I'm not so sympathetic to that because I like fiction and sci-fi and fantasy. And so I'm inclined to like that sort of thing.

And so I'm inclined to like that sort of thing. But there are very valid, legitimate reasons not to like this movie, apart from the fact that there's fantasy in it. It just doesn't make any sense. And it's not very well made in certain ways. And yet, I do sort of agree with Ebert that at least it has the courage of its convictions like maybe its convictions are off but it is just laying it all out there it's very earnest it's not dialing it back at all it probably should have dialed it back a little bit more than it does but i kind of admire that it's just going for it yeah i will uh yeah so let's bring it to an end i will uh summarize my thoughts thusly i thought thought that the silliness of the plot was very enjoyable. I thought that there were a lot of great moments, that there is a real sense while you're watching that you want to see what's next, and that there is a lot to like about it, and I did not come away despising it. I thought I did come away despising a very central premise of the main character and i thought that that could have been resolved with better writing and that a more conflicted character

a more doubtful character a more fearful character would have made this a lot more enjoyable and i would have put the heroism in the right place and i think the fact that it was made in 1990 doesn't do it a lot of favors just because that was sort of peak mawkishness a lot of the production elements of it contribute to it just being really sappy in a way that i think if it had been made in 1960 or 1950 you'd uh forgive those if it had been black and white for instance or maybe if it were made more recently and i don't know there's a lot of some of the aesthetics are cringeworthy at this point in time. But otherwise, you know, I thought it was pretty good as a movie.

I thought that while I did not like it, I enjoyed it. And I probably will see it again. And you don't think, as best you you can tell that it was your nostalgia speaking to some extent that liked it or that didn't like it that liked it no i don't think any of the nostalgia kicked in at all i saw hook the other day hook was my favorite my other favorite movie when i was a kid and for years i've been like dumbly saying like well you know spielberg's real best movie is hook like sort of like sarc, like obviously that's not true, but like I really loved Hook and I couldn't believe that it had 26% Rotten Tomatoes.

And then I watched it and now I cannot believe it got 26% Rotten Tomatoes. That movie is bad. All right. Well, I generally agree with those sentiments, I think. So last thing I'll say is that regardless of Reynolds's scenery truing, Moonlight Graham is just such a cool character. Not a fictional character, obviously, a real man, but he was really popularized and brought to the nation's attention by the book and even more so by the movie. And I do really like that line where he says that

we don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening, and that when he got into his one game, he thought, well, there'll be other days, and he didn't realize that was the only day. And that's very poignant, and yet he also says that the worst tragedy would be if he hadn't become a doctor. So that sort of puts things in perspective. You miss out on one dream, and you end up gaining something that you didn't even know you wanted. So love that character, and glad that this movie really brought Moonlight Grimm into the lexicon. Anyway, I'll link to some of the more strident writing that has been done about this movie. And there have been valid takedowns of many aspects of it by Steve Goldman and Craig Calcaterra and Rob Neier and Joe Pesnanski has risen to its

defense on multiple occasions. So there are people on both poles here. But I guess we've kind of charted a middle ground here. So if you're a Field of Dreams moderate, then hopefully you enjoyed this. And if you have staked out one of the extreme stances, then you probably think that we're wishy-washy and we should have condemned it or wholeheartedly endorsed it. But I think you can dislike parts of it without utterly despising it. And that seems like something that a lot of people can't do. They are just 100% against every aspect of it.

They have almost like a nausea that they feel when they watch it. And I don't have that. All right. Maybe if there's any other movies that are similarly divisive, maybe we'll do this. And I don't have that. All right. Maybe if there's any other movies that are similarly divisive, maybe we'll do this. But I don't think there is. Maybe The Natural.

Probably The Natural is the only one. All right. All right. By the way, another great complaint that Nick Offerman had about Field of Dreams was that Kevin Costner is ostensibly an Iowa farmer and he wears no belt, which having heard Nick say that,

I could not not notice as I rewatched this movie. Everyone wears a belt. Kevin Cost he wears no belt, which having heard Nick say that, I could not not notice as I rewatched this movie. Everyone wears a belt. Kevin Costner, no belt. But I actually forgive this. I think it's okay because that word ostensibly is doing a lot of work there because he's not really a farmer. He has no idea what he's doing. He wasn't part of this life. The lack of a belt sort of signifies that he doesn't belong. I mean, we wear belts in the city too, so it's sort of strange regardless. But as another sign that he's not at home here, I think the beltless look actually fits. Anyway, feel free to write in and share your thoughts on Field of Dreams and any other comments or questions you have, because we'll probably be doing an email show next time. You can reach us

at podcast.fanagraphs.com or use the Patreon messaging system if you are a Patreon supporter. Speaking of which, you can become a Patreon supporter and help keep this podcast going while getting yourself access to some perks by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up. Kevin Matz, Stuart Joyce, Anil Rao, Sam Raker, and William Marshall. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

If you're looking for a little reading material, and we just spoiled Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella for you, you can pre-order the paperback version of my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. A little behind-the-scenes, Field of Dreams-related tidbit for you. We actually discussed calling the book, or at least a chapter within the book, If You Build Them, since this is a book about player development.

But the publisher nixed that, and maybe it was for the best. Anyway, the paperback has a new afterword, which we worked hard on over the offseason. So go pick it up. It comes out on April 7th. We'll be back to talk to you a little later this week. © transcript Emily Beynon