If you build it, he will come

“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, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
–James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams


There are several unwritten rules that pertain to being a guy. Well, there’s about to be one less. Because its about to be written down.

Reasons for which it is acceptable for a guy to cry:
-Death/Funeral
-Loss of a major sporting event in which you are involved (This is not always true, it depends on the situation and the person, but for the most part is generally true)
-Any situation involving heartbreak/confession of infidelity/breakup with a girl (once again this depends on the situation and the person)
-The end of Field of Dreams

And that’s about it. Now of course not everyone agrees with these restrictions. I for one think guys should able to cry whenever they damn well feel like. Nevertheless though, what is listed above is kind of the standard universal law of “guydom”. Why I bring it up though is because of the 4th thing listed. The top 3 make sense (well if you’re not a guy then the sports thing probably seems silly, but if you’re not a guy then you cry like daily anyway so get over it.). But Field of Dreams? I mean it’s just a movie. A guy would never call a guy out for crying at the end of a sappy and manipulative scene about a guy playing catch with his dad? He wouldn’t call him a “sissy” or a “pansy” or worse still, a “girl”? No. Because he’d be too busy crying himself.

This crying-at-the-end-of-Field of Dreams phenomenon was really driven home recently when I watched the extras on the brand new Special Edition Field of Dreams DVD. Grown men of all kinds tear up, one after another, just talking about the movie. We’re talking about like, baseball players- young and old- men whose entire jobs revolve around hitting objects and acting manly who are tearing up just talking about a movie. Coaches, actors, even a cameraman who worked on the film all become visibly emotional just even thinking about the movie. There are stories told on the disc by the producers about how they would go around to theaters when the movie first came out and movie would end and guys not be able to leave their seats because they didn’t want anyone to see that they had tears in their eyes, and also about how guys would tell each other to make sure to not go with a date because you didn’t want to be caught dead crying in front of some girl you were interested in. Growing up I had never really thought that there was anything weird about this whole crying phenomenon because it made perfect sense to me. I mean its freaking Field of Dreams, what other reaction could you have? But after talking to people over the years about the movie, specifically girls, I started to realize that a lot of people just didn’t get it. Then while watching all the reactions of all these guys to the movie after having being away from the movie myself for a few years, I finally realized that the whole phenomenon was kind of strange, unique, and more than a little interesting to consider. It is now definitely on another list

Things that if you don’t innately understand or grasp the greatness of, you never will no matter how much someone tries to make you understand
OR
Things whose greatness can’t be explained, it just IS (a very partial list):

-Ben Folds
-Why pirates are cool
-Steely Dan
-The movies of Christopher Guest and Co.
-Field of Dreams

I mean, Field of Dreams should be all counts be a mediocre to bad movie. The acting ranges from decent to horrible (Amy Madigan is definitely in the running for worst performance by a lead actress in a great movie along with Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire and Andie McDowell in every movie she’s ever appeared in.) The movie features Kevin Costner. The direction is pretty pedestrian. The movie now looks very badly dated. The script and plot are incredibly cheesy and should seem completely ridiculous. But that’s the thing. They don’t. It all works and its mostly because of the last scene.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie and don’t mind having the ending spoiled for you, it ends with a scene of Kevin Costner’s character playing catch with his dad who has returned from the grave, while the camera pans out to reveal a line of cars stretched for miles full of people coming to visit Kevin’s baseball field that he gave up everything he owned to build. (wow that sounds even cheesier written out…) But this works and the movie stands to this day as the only real “male-weepy” or “guy flick” (as it has been referred to) because it taps into something very deep within any guy who has:
A. had a Dad with whom they had a relationship of any degree of closeness
B. played baseball as a child

Because you see, if you played sports at all, then baseball was the first sport you played. You started Tee-Ball around the same time you started school. It was the first thing you and your dad really did together independent of the rest of the family- your first bonding experience. It’s also the only sport you learned primarily from your dad. You learned basketball from your friends and football from your coaches, but it was your dad who taught you how to play catch and how to hit off a tee. These fact are all pretty universal. So to recap: baseball is the sport most closely tied to your childhood and to your dad.

As you’ve grown up you’ve lost touch with both of those very essential things. And this will only continue to a worse degree until inevitably you can barely remember your childhood and your Dad will be dead. You know this, and yet due to the fact that your Dad is your Dad, and therefore a guy, you can’t ever actually sit down and tell him that you think he’s swell. And so it always goes unsaid. But then you see Field of Dreams and it is like the ultimate wish fulfillment. To have your dad come back from the grave but as a younger version of himself, the version you never got to know, and to play catch with him which is symbolically communication on its most basic level- I give, you receive, you give back, I receive, repeat endlessly- well, its about the most powerful image and idea imaginable, and one that brings even the most hardened guy to tears every time.

As Louis Armstrong once said, “There's some folks, that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em”. Well, if you don’t get why Field of Dreams is one of the most powerful movies ever made then I guess I just can’t tell you. But that’s a damn shame because you have no idea what you’re missing.