Field of Dreams, Baseball, and the Enormous Potential Energy of Hope

Field of Dreams, Baseball, and the Enormous Potential Energy of Hope

As a lifelong gamer and baseball enthusiast, I can’t help but draw parallels between the game of dreams and America’s favorite pastime – baseball. Just like a good game of baseball, dreams are all about potential energy, patience, and seizing your moment to shine.


Baseball is a game of potential energy. 

Baseball is a leisurely summer sport, where the languid heat of the day encourages a more measured pace. Unlike basketball or football, which are constantly in motion, baseball provides moments of respite between plays. It’s a game that requires patience, with seven players strategically positioned on a diamond while a pitcher, batter, and catcher engage in an intricate dance around a small, spherical ball – red and white in color – that holds the power to alter the course of the afternoon with a single, decisive move.

Baseball relies on turning stored power into the ideal opportunity. It’s about what you can bring into fruition, and perhaps even more crucially, what you wish for to occur. You wish that the ball will find the perfect spot in the strike zone, just where you desire it to be. You wish your line drive dips into shallow center field instead of soaring into a glove. You wish the wind assists enough to steer your potential home run away from the foul line.

Dreams, the positive ones at least, are similar to a game of stored energy. During the night, they aid you in organizing and making sense of all the chaos within your mind, hopefully sorting through it while you sleep. By day, they offer opportunities for you to choose when to act, to envision what you can achieve and focus on what you aspire will occur. Dreams empower you to be a powerful hitter, standing at the batter’s box, waiting for that ideal pitch to send soaring out of the park.

Occasionally, when you exert enough force, it signifies that you’re cultivating your cornfields and constructing a baseball stadium right in the heart of Iowa.

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How Field of Dreams Captures the Potential Energy of Dreaming

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Field of Dreams, released in 1989 by Phil Alden Robinson, is currently streaming on Peacock. This heartfelt film beautifully combines the power of baseball and dreams, creating an enduring tribute to the idea of patient optimism that resonates in both America’s beloved pastime and its heartland. Thirty-five years later, it continues to be a strikingly authentic portrayal of hope’s profound influence, making it an ideal choice for a relaxing summer evening, particularly if you’ve just returned from a baseball game.

The core concept of “Field of Dreams” is straightforward and widely recognized, making it understandable to individuals who haven’t watched the movie. The character Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner), initially a farmer with reservations due to his family history, experiences an enigmatic voice in his cornfield. After interpreting the voice as a command, he decides to construct a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, believing that a mysterious force will bring Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) back from the afterlife for one final game. His wife Annie stands by him during this expensive endeavor, and eventually, Shoeless Joe arrives, leading to events that permanently transform the Kinsella family.

The opening part of the movie revolves around Ray deciding to construct a baseball field, its consequences, and what transpires when his vision comes true. However, it seems that either due to the film’s age or the dilution of the idea through frequent pop culture references, many viewers appear to have overlooked how deeply Field of Dreams transcends beyond the initial act, the initial impulse to heed the voice. The voice, symbolizing Ray’s subconscious yearning for a life unlived, persists. It continually nudges Ray not only about his passion for baseball but also about his father, a man who became a parent late in life and was never truly known by Ray. It resonates with James Earl Jones’ character, an activist-writer who has long withdrawn from public concern, stimulates Annie’s memories of her own activism, and awakens dreams within their daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann) in a way she hadn’t experienced before.

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Essentially, the iconic phrase, “If you build it, he will come,” is merely the initial vision or attempt, similar to the first pitch in baseball. This opening dream holds immense potential like the first at-bat of an inning. However, both in the movie and in real baseball games, success depends on timing. Ray’s initial effort, his leap of faith in building the field, needs patience. He must wait for the next sign and seize the right moment to take another swing.

That’s the real dramatic arc of the film, much like the dramatic arc of a really good ball game. Baseball is all about potential energy and unleashing it at the right moment, which means it’s also about knowing when to hold that potential energy back for the next pitch or the next inning. Field of Dreams is a movie about a family who have to learn how to harness their own potential energy, first through getting it back after settling into a mundane life, then through taking those big swings when it really counts. There are plenty of payoffs along the way, but the real emotional power of the film doesn’t kick in until the bottom of the ninth. The Kinsella family, even if they don’t realize it, inherently understand that’s how their dreams work, because that’s how baseball works. That understanding, and their ability to act on it, makes the film not just a great movie about baseball, but a great movie about the greatest form of potential energy: hope. 

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2024-08-21 21:31