Revisiting “Field of Dreams” What a 60-Year-Old Sees That a 22-Year-Old Couldn’t

Ok, in full disclosure I turned 59 this week, not 60, but “watching Field of Dreams at 60 just has a better ring to it doesn’t it?

Anyhow, as it was only my 59^th birthday we kept the celebrations fairly low key. I’ve been missing my hometown of Detroit of late so arrived home from work to discover my wife Tammy had decorated the living room with some pics of Detroit landmarks and then wonderfully recreated authentic Detroit style pizza right in our own kitchen. OMG. So delicious! If you have never had Detroit styled pizza you have an experience in store!

Then, eating our Detroit styled pizza, we settled in to watching my favourite baseball film, Field of Dreams!

Now, perhaps it was the nostalgia of yet another year passing by but I found the eyes I was absorbing Field of Dreams through at (near) 60 were not the same eyes that I had first watched with back in the spring of 1989 at the tender young age of 22.

The stories in the film had changed!

Ray Kinsella

Yes, of course there are the obvious emotional elements that I had always noticed. Kevin Coster’s Ray Kinsella is a man haunted by regret; the memory of an estranged father who died before any reconciliation between them could occur, and wresting with the guilt knowing just how much his youthful ignorance and immaturity had caused that estrangement.

Of course at 22, I certainly enjoyed the movie’s end with Ray having his dream of reconciling with his dad over a game of catch but I had no emotion back then beyond cinematic wonder. That’s because when I was 22, my own father was still a plucky young 48-year-old with many great years yet ahead of him. I mean HIS father was still alive so how was I expected to truly appreciate that end scene when Ray’s father comes back and they have a game of catch together.

But now at 59, my father has been passed away for a few years now. The memories of dad showing me how to field a ground ball or pop fly are all I have and I would give just about anything to have a game of catch together with him in the backyard just one more time (I’m getting misty eyed just writing this)

Terrence Mann

And Terrence Mann? What was his story? As a 22 year old he was just the grumpy old guy who softened up a bit on a road trip with Ray and was rewarded with an invitation out beyond the cornfield. His connection to baseball was limited. He had no wife, no kids. He was simply a disaffected child of the ‘60s that seemed to me a million miles from the story unfolding in an Iowa cornfield.

Or was he?

I see the Terrence Mann story differently at 60. Here was a man who longed for justice. To see a world free from violence & hatred. He rode the hope of a 1960’s decade that promised an Age of Aquarius only to see those hopes dashed upon the rocks of consumerist ‘80s America. Now Mann lives as a embittered recluse, cynical of the very hope he gave to so many others.

But an encounter with Ray Kinsalla, baseball, and an Iowa cornfield become the vehicle to restore Terrence Mann. At the movie’s end it is he who gives Ray the hope that “People will come” just before he received his dream; to enter the cornfield and see a world where justice lives and the nations make war no more. A 60 year old Steve now sees Mann’s story arc personifying Jesus’ words; “Blessed are those who hunger for justice, for they will be filled”

Archibald Graham

And finally there is Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, the elderly doctor who for one brief moment got to play in major leagues as a young man but missed his big chance and never got to play there again. As a 22 year old viewer of Field of Dreams I had no frame of reference for the Archie Graham story. I didn’t yet know how a life time of decisions can weigh on a person unless you learn, as Graham does, to make peace with those decisions. See, at 22 my whole life was still in front of me.

Endless possibilities.

Endless choice

In 1989 I had no idea who I would marry, where I would live, or what I would do for a living. (To be fair most folk that know me close still wonder what I will be when I grow up)

In 2025 however most of those “endless possibilities” in my life have now become “choices made”. Over the years there is a temptation when things go wrong or life gets a bit bumpy to look back and wonder “what if I had made another choice”? What if things had been different?

The Archie Graham story is the triumph of man who has no regrets and chooses not to live in the past. He owns the decisions he made. When he is offered the chance to become a doctor again to save a girl’s life, he re- affirms his life’s decisions without a second thought.

Graham’s story speaks to me now in a way my 22 year old self wouldn’t have been able to understand. I’ve made my choices…and like Graham I own them not only without regret, but with genuine gratitude.

And now, I better get going or else (wink) Tammy may think I got a girlfriend.

Peace,

Steve