AP story on Fox about minor league baseball player John C. Odom, last traded for 10 baseball bats, who died of what’s called an “accidental overdose from heroin, methamphetamine, the stimulant benzylpiperazine and alcohol” back in November. He was 26.
Way down in the middle of the story, there’s this paragraph:
Baseball isn’t always the warm and fuzzy game of “Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams.” It can also be cruel and unforgiving.
Well, no fucking shit. Apparently the AP writer has never seen either movie…because both of them make that pretty clear. Baseball is pretty cruel and unforgiving to Crash Davis in “Bull Durham”. And “Field of Dreams” — Black Sox, Moonlight Graham, John Kinsella — need I say more?
“Field of Dreams” is the most maudlin baseball movie I’ve ever watched (except maybe “The Natural”), and Kevin Costner delivers every line like he’s reading it off a TelePrompter, and even so I unashamedly admit that I get all weepy at the end of it every fucking time I watch it. “Hey Dad…wanna have a catch?”
But the only warm and fuzzy part of “Field of Dreams” IS the end. And, well,
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.
Thank God spring is almost here. I need my Cubbies. Maybe This Year™.
There’s a little more to like about Field of Dreams. Burt Lancaster’s cameo as Moonlight Graham is fantastic. Ray’s initial encounter with Terence Mann in his apartment, as played by the imcomparable James Earl Jones, is hilarious. I agree that Costner is pretty much horrible in the movie. The only thing worse is the wretched Amy Madigan as his wife.