Probably my favorite sports movie of all time is “Field of Dreams,” a film baseball romantics can point to as illustration for why they love the game with such passion. The characters, the story and especially the language draws out the heart of the game that has drawn adoring fans for more than a hundred years.
The movie, released in 1989, stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, a struggling Iowa corn farmer who hears a mystic message one day: “If you build it, he will come.” Ray takes this to mean he should build a baseball field on his land in the hopes of bringing back his dead father’s favorite baseball player, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson of the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox. Sure enough, Jackson returns to play the game from which he was banned. Ray is sent on more baseball and soul-searching quests, ranging from easing the pain of reclusive author Terence Mann, fulfilling the dream of long-dead ballplayer-turned-physician Archibald “Moonlight” Graham and even finding a way to save his family’s farm.
The movie was based on W.P. Kinsella’s 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe.” The two share the same basic plot elements, with a fair amount of the usual adaptation alterations. One big change is in the author character. Mann, played wonderfully by James Earl Jones, is a fictionalization of the true character from the book, J.D. Salinger, author of “Catcher in the Rye.” In the book, Kinsella drives to New England and, rather calmly, compared with the movie’s version, takes Salinger with him to Boston’s Fenway Park and then to Minnesota to find “Moonlight” Graham. Salinger’s character is much less radical and more of a thinking, ponderous man on his quest than Mann, who from the outset is portrayed as a very angry man and whose softening and light-hearted nature is drawn out over the journey.
Characters in the movie seem more fleshed out than in the book. Ray’s wife, Annie, is a former ’60s rebel and shows fire and passion in the movie, whereas she is more of a pixie without a care in the book. Her family, while sticklers and naysayers in both versions, feels a little more human in the movie, especially her brother, Mark. He works in finance and is out to buy the rights to the farm. In the book, he is heartless and ruthless, going as far as to bring his partner with an ax to tear down the bleachers at the field at one point. In the movie, he is played more sympathetically, showing signs that he really cares for his sister’s well-being and is just doing what he feels is best for them. The movie also leaves out the old man Ray bought the farm from, Eddie Scissons, who calls himself the “Oldest Living Chicago Cub,” and Ray’s twin brother. Neither character’s impact feels lost in the movie.
The movie also changed how the former baseball players come back to play on the field. When “Shoeless” Joe first comes, he is the only corporeal player seen taking part in a game against grey shades. This is because Ray doesn’t build the entire field at first; he only builds left field for Jackson. As Ray constructs the rest of the field, the other shades in the field become the rest of the Black Sox. In the movie, Ray builds the whole field at once, then after Jackson comes, the rest of the Black Sox join him. After Ray returns with Mann and Graham, other greats of the early baseball era have come to play against the White Sox.
One of these new players plays a special significance to Ray: his father, who was a short-time catcher for the New York Yankees. The movie touches on their relationship throughout, opening with a narration from Ray on how he grew up with baseball — his father being a large part of that — and culminating with their improbable reunion, one of the biggest scenes that gets the audience a little misty.
In the book, Ray and his father had a relatively normal relationship. In both, Ray’s dad died fairly young, beaten down by the years, but this isn’t really elaborated upon in the book. In the movie, the audience gets to know more about Ray’s father and their relationship by hearing him talk about it. The subject hardly ever comes up in the book until his dad comes back to play with the White Sox — which takes place with about a hundred pages to go. Jackson tells Ray the team is in need of a catcher early in the story, and Ray mentions that he had one they could look at (his father). Jackson obliges, and soon enough, Ray realizes the shade behind the plate becomes a solid figure. He (and his twin) don’t strike up the nerve to talk to him until the end of the book, but it’s unclear why they would be hesitant to do so because their relationship is largely unknown.
The movie tugs at the heartstrings and plays up the sentimentality of baseball more than the book does. While the book didn’t set out to be a baseball novel, the movie isn’t primarily about the sport, either, and it better succeeds in getting its message and emotions across. It’s also one of the few adaptations in which such lyrical dialogue sounds more natural on the screen than it does on the page:
