The history of baseball is in many ways the history of America itself. Its very nickname — America’s pastime — goes beyond the simplicity of a game, evoking a grandiosity that channels fundamental images of Americana. Baseball legends hold their place in the annals of history next to presidents and national heroes: Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron. When I think back to my own life, it’s filled with memories of the game — I spent my childhood playing catch and watching Tigers games on the TV.
And if baseball and America are intertwined, then the history of baseball is also in many ways the history of movies. The game’s surge in popularity in the 1920s coincided with the rise of the film industry, shaping how we view the sport through the screen.
Many of the most iconic baseball movies contort the sport into something of mythic proportions. These are movies that treat baseball as bigger than a game, which is very fitting for baseball, a sport that has an unmatched reverence for its legends of yore, superstition and myths. By definition, they are almost the most iconic of all baseball movies, forming the enduring images associated with the subgenre.
These two baseball films share some superficial similarities: a tendency to focus on the history of the sport and elements of childhood nostalgia. But most of all, they center on an idea that baseball represents something deeper about life and America. Two movies provide a glimpse into this type of movie and their characteristics: “Field of Dreams,” which builds the myth up, and “Moneyball,” which breaks it down. Deconstructing these movies helps us understand why they have so much staying power and what their themes about baseball suggest about our lives.
“Field of Dreams”
“Ray, people will come, Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.”
No movie was more immediately obvious for this genre than “Field of Dreams.” This is a film that channels the founding myths of baseball. “Field of Dreams” opens on Iowan corn farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”), a diehard baseball fan haunted by his relationship with his late father. One night, he’s awoken by a mysterious voice, which tells him: “If you build it, he will come.” Eventually, Ray tracks the source of this voice to retired author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones, “Mufasa: The Lion King”), who himself has become disillusioned with his life.
Terence and Ray realize that they’re being called to construct a baseball field together on Ray’s farm, where spirits of baseball legends reunite to play one last game. Among these are two real-life players, each demonstrating unfulfilled dreams of baseball careers. They are “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster, “The Jeweler’s Shop”), a man who appeared in one singular Major League game before retiring and becoming a doctor, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta, “1992”), an all-star whose career was ruined by false allegations of throwing games and who was part of the scandalous Chicago Black Sox team. Also among the players is the spirit of Ray’s father, John (Dwier Brown, “Locked Down”), whose personal failures as an overbearing parent ruined his relationship with his son.
“Field of Dreams” approaches the game with a religious reverence. Jones’ iconic voice echoes over Ray’s cornfield like the voice of God dictating the Ten Commandments to Moses. The film’s plot plays on magical realism for thematic effect; the ghosts of baseball’s past aren’t just metaphorically haunting us, they are literally ready to emerge from the shadows. But most of all, the film shows how the game seeps into your entire life, built off the legends you learned in childhood. When these people face failure or tragedy in their own life, baseball is both the source and remedy for these ails. Through this, “Field of Dreams” is a story of failure. Each of these men dreamed of making a career in the game they love, and each of these men had that dream crushed. Their failed dreams created a legacy of scorn and broken relationships with their families. Ray building that field and giving them one last chance to play is really just him giving them one last chance to relive their childhood.
The magic of “Field of Dreams,” and movies like it, is its ability to maintain a sense of childlike wonder. Listen, “Field of Dreams” is a stupid, cheesy movie. But it commits to the bit, immersing itself into a fairytale atmosphere that is fully bought into its own sentimental affections. In a modern cinematic age of self-referential cynicism, it’s extremely refreshing to watch a film that is emotionally straightforward and honest. There is no plot twist, no undercutting emotional betrayal. In his review of “Field of Dreams,” Roger Ebert compared it to the films of Frank Capra, and I think he’s onto something. In a literal sense, the film embraces its fantasy in a way that is reminiscent of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with spiritual elements that illustrate the importance of emotional beats over plot beats. “Field of Dreams” also parallels the tone of Capra and, by extension, Golden Age Hollywood — moral heroes, magical realism and an American sense of determination. The commitment to this tone reflects a return to the baseball and the cinema of our childhood.
At the end of the day, “Field of Dreams” agrees: If you build it, they will come. Everything will come rushing back to you when you watch the film. Ray gets to play catch one last time with his dad, creating a final memory to cherish and resolving their own broken relationship. It might be kind of dumb, but baseball is a pretty dumb game. To this day, every baseball is rubbed with mud from the bottom of the Delaware river. To this day, they make the old man managers wear uniforms like they’re on the team. And baseball really is just a bunch of grown men hitting a ball with a stick. So why do I watch 162 games a year just to be slightly angry the entire time? “Field of Dreams” finds an answer to these questions: We do it because we love it.
“Moneyball”
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
“Moneyball” evolves baseball myth-making by using the traditions and stylings of the sub-genre to subvert it thematically. “Moneyball” is to the baseball movie what revisionist Westerns like “The Searchers” or “Unforgiven” are to the Western genre. These films recognize the shortcomings of their parent genres — the endless violence and white saviorism in the case of Westerns and the unyielding commitment to tradition for the baseball movie — and exploit them to find the failure, and ultimately beauty, their genres lead to.
After all, “Moneyball” is quite literally a movie about recognizing the failure of dogmatic commitment to tradition. The film is focused on the 2002 Oakland Athletics, a small market team who have suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the prior season and subsequently lost many of their stars to large market franchises in free agency. Short of cash and devoid of talent, general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt, “Mickey 17”) has to turn to unconventional methods to acquire new talent. Major League Baseball teams value highly rigid aesthetic standards that favor traditional stars. This leads teams to undervalue players that are seen as too old, that throw too weird or have ugly girlfriends. Beane recognizes the opportunity this represents. Playing the game within the game, he acquires cheap replacements for his stars by capitalizing on undervalued attributes like on-base percentage, assembling an island of misfit toys that are able to string together a winning season.
“Moneyball” upends the baseball movie genre not simply through its plot. Most baseball movies are unflinchingly sentimental, with the scrappy band of lovable heroes always coming out on top, thwarting their opponent and learning a valuable lesson about friendship along the way. Not in “Moneyball.” The A’s will not win the World Series. A few decades later, their owner will strip them for parts and ship them to Las Vegas for profit. Any victory is purely moral — a front office executive is able to temporarily stick it to the New York Yankees by making a few trades. This is the subversion of the mythical baseball movie presented by “Moneyball”: The game of our childhood is dead, and it’s not coming back. “Moneyball” kills not only the traditionalism of front offices but the very underpinnings of the baseball movie genre.
The true stroke of genius of “Moneyball” is that it understands that even though the baseball movie might be gone, a bygone representation of childhood nostalgia for a sport that’s not even that popular anymore, there was a reason we loved them in the first place. Yes, the 2002 Oakland A’s did not win the World Series. But Beane’s strategy reshaped the way the game was played and built something that lasted. When Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt, “The Electric State”), one of the many undervalued players on the A’s, steps up to the plate and delivers a clutch homer to extend their all-time best winning streak, we still care.
Tapping into visions of nostalgia, “Field of Dreams” illustrates the reason we loved baseball movies so much in the first place and became as iconic as the mythos it sought to reflect; MLB games were played at a cornfield in Iowa nearby the original filming location in 2021 and 2022, an attempt by the league to recapture that magic. It might be gone, echoing the way that “The Searchers” knew that the Old West had come to an end. The mythos that led to Golden Age Westerns isn’t with us anymore, never to return. “Moneyball” knew the baseball movie had come to an end. But more importantly, “Moneyball” understands that even if the ideal baseball movie, and our childhood memories, are gone, there was a reason why we loved them so much in the first place.
Daily Arts Writer Will Cooper can be reached at wcoop@umich.edu.
