“Hey, Dad — you want to have a catch?”
That’s the line from Field of Dreams. This week, I watched grown men live it out for real, and it hit me harder than I expected.
A week ago, I told you about my own trip to that field in Dyersville, Iowa, about having a catch with my dad on that exact grass, and how the day would live in my memory forever. I meant every word of that. Then this month, Major League Baseball went back to that same field for the annual Field of Dreams Game, and the footage MLB, Fox, and Netflix put out afterward brought it all rushing back—for me, and apparently for a whole lot of other men too.
WHAT I WATCHED
Roger Clemens, one of the most decorated pitchers who ever played the game, put his old jersey back on and walked out onto that field with his son Kody, who plays for the Twins. And they just had a catch. Kody said afterward it was all his dad’s idea. He wanted to recreate the movie scene, and Kody was all for it.
Think about that for a second. A guy with a Hall of Fame résumé, a guy who’s thrown a baseball in front of sold-out stadiums his entire career, and the moment his own son called “unforgettable” wasn’t a championship memory. It was playing catch with his dad on a cornfield diamond in Iowa.
And it’s not the first time that field has produced a moment like that. Back in 2022, Ken Griffey Jr., one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game, walked out of that same corn with his father, Ken Griffey Sr. Junior asked him the exact line from the movie: “Hey, Dad, want to have a catch?” Senior answered, “I’d like that.” They played catch right there in front of a stadium full of strangers, and it’s still one of the moments people talk about years later.
Before this year’s game, more than two dozen Hall of Famers walked out of that corn together in one of the most striking pregame ceremonies I’ve ever seen. Player after player talked about watching that movie with their dads growing up. And then Kyle Schwarber went out and hit two home runs into the actual cornfield to help the Phillies beat the Twins 7-1, which is a great story on its own. But nobody was talking about the final score afterward. They were talking about the catches. It was about the fathers and sons.
WHY THIS HITS SO HARD
Here’s what I want you to sit with. These are men who have already achieved almost everything our culture tells a man he’s supposed to want—money, fame, championships, and their names in a record book. And the moment that actually got them emotional in front of a national television audience wasn’t a trophy. It was a game of catch with their father.
That tells you something true about every man reading this story, whether you’ve ever picked up a baseball glove or not. Underneath whatever we’ve built—the career, the title, the reputation—there’s a little boy in every one of us still asking one question: did my dad show up for me?
But here’s the part of this story that doesn’t make the highlight reel. For every Clemens or Griffey moment this week, there’s a man watching that clip whose stomach just dropped. A man whose dad is gone. A man whose dad was never around to have that catch in the first place. A man who watched that footage and felt something closer to grief than joy.
If that’s you, I don’t want to rush past it. That ache is real, and it’s not weakness. It’s the exact same longing those big leaguers were feeling — you just didn’t get the ending they got.
WHAT A MAN DOES WITH THE ACHE
I’ll be straight with you on something. Ray Kinsella’s story in Field of Dreams is beautiful, but it’s also fiction. Real life doesn’t always hand a man a voice in a cornfield and a second chance at the ending. Sometimes the catch you needed simply isn’t coming, and no amount of longing changes that.
But the story was never really about getting the catch back. It was about what a man does with the ache once he’s honest about it. Ray spent the whole movie trying to reach backward toward reconciliation with a father he’d lost the chance to fully know. What he actually built, though, was a field that other fathers and sons could walk onto for generations after him. You may not be able to go backward and get the catch you never had. But you can absolutely go forward—you can be the catch somebody else needed all along.
That’s the invitation for every man reading this who didn’t get his own catch. You can be the father who shows up. The uncle who takes the nephew fishing. The coach who notices the kid nobody else notices. You don’t need a movie set and a national television audience to have that moment. You need a backyard, twenty minutes, and the willingness to ask the question first.
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
If your father is still living, call him. You don’t need a speech—”Hey, do you want to grab a coffee” is its own version of “you want to have a catch.” Initiate it, and don’t wait for him to make the first move.
If that relationship isn’t reachable, find one young man in your life this week and give him twenty minutes of your full, undistracted attention. Phone away, nowhere else to be. That’s what the catch actually is underneath the baseball metaphor — presence, without an agenda.
I go into all of this in much greater detail in this week’s episode, “The Catch You Never Got,” including more of the stories from this year’s Field of Dreams Game and a fuller breakdown of how a man turns that ache into something that outlasts him.
🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfLsrGWB0WU 🎧 Listen and find every platform: truemanpodcast.com
About the Author: Mike Van Pelt (“MVP”) is the founder of American Family Renaissance and CEO of True Man Life Coaching. He is a men’s mentor, speaker, author, and podcast host dedicated to helping men reclaim their God-given identity so they can lead strong families and help restore the moral and spiritual foundation of the American family.