Field of dreams

Baseball as a pure, beatific, transcendent sport is evident in this story of a baseball-obsessed Iowa farmer. Walking his fields, Ray Kinsella hears a voice telling him, If you build it, he will come. Ray immediately understands the message. If he constructs a baseball diamond on his cornfield, Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Sox outfielder banned from baseball for his part in the 1919 World Series scandal, will appear. This filmic parable explores baseball's redemptory qualities and elevates the American pastime to mythic scope.

Ray Kinsella is a novice Iowa farmer who lives with his wife, Annie, and daughter, Karin. While walking through his cornfield one evening, he hears a voice whispering, "If you build it, he will come" Ray hears the voice again, this time urging him to "go the distance" The scoreboard "shows" statistics for a player named Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, who played one game for the New York Giants in 1922, but never had a turn at bat. Graham had become a doctor and had died 16 years earlier.