I grew up playing baseball in central Iowa. diamonds carved out of small towns, gloves broken in over a summer, the particular smell of cut grass and infield dirt that never really leaves you. So when Field of Dreams came out in 1989, it didn’t land like just another baseball movie for me. It landed like something closer to home.
It still does.
Recently, I made the trip out to the actual field, the one built for the film, still standing in the Iowa cornfield where it was shot. I want to tell you what that day meant to me, but first, I want to tell you why the movie itself has stayed with men like me for almost forty years. Because if you understand the movie, you’ll understand exactly why I couldn’t leave that field without doing one thing.
MORE THAN A BASEBALL MOVIE
On the surface, Field of Dreams is about a farmer who hears a voice in his cornfield telling him, “If you build it, he will come.” Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, is haunted by a broken relationship with his late father and by the fear that he’ll grow old having never pursued the thing that actually mattered. So he risks his family’s future and turns part of his farm into a baseball diamond. Shoeless Joe Jackson shows up. Other legends follow. The voice sends Ray chasing down a reclusive author and a former ballplayer who never got his one shot in the big leagues.
Foreclosure is closing in on the farm the whole time. And then Ray finally understands what the field was actually for. It was never about baseball. It was about healing old wounds, restoring lost dreams, and giving people a second look at what they’d left unfinished. When one final player takes off his catcher’s mask, Ray sees his father as a young man, and he understands the whole journey was leading him toward reconciliation the entire time. Father and son play catch beneath the evening sky, and cars start streaming toward the field, proving the promise true, if a man has the courage to build it, people, and healing, will come.
I’ve stood in rooms at men’s events where that closing scene plays on a screen, Ray asking his father, “Hey, Dad? You want to have a catch?” and I’ve watched grown men go completely silent. For some, it brings back a memory they didn’t know they still had. For others, it brings pain because that catch never happened and now never will. For every man in the room, it means something. That scene works on us because, underneath the baseball, it tells the truth about what most men are actually carrying: an unfinished conversation with their father, spoken or not.
That’s the real subject of this movie. Healing. Relationship. Redemption. Chasing the thing you hear whispered to you when nobody else can hear it.
WHY I HAD TO HAVE A CATCH
When I finally stood on that field myself, with the actual grass and the actual outfield wall of corn rising up on every side, I knew there was only one way the day could be complete.
I had to have a catch with my dad.
I’m not going to pretend that decision was complicated. It wasn’t. In fact, I’m not sure the trip would have been worth taking without it. You know how it goes sometimes, you build a moment up in your mind for years, and then you finally get there, and it just doesn’t live up to what you imagined. This wasn’t that. That field, that grass, that wall of corn standing in for an outfield fence, and the sound of a ball hitting leather in a place that exists because a movie convinced a farmer to plant a baseball diamond instead of another season of corn—that day is going to live in my memory for the rest of my life.
It wasn’t really about the catch itself. Any two people can throw a ball back and forth in a backyard. It was about what that catch represented, presence, attention, a father and a son standing in the same place with nothing else competing for their focus. For a few minutes, there was no phone, no meeting, no errand list. There was just a ball moving between two gloves and a conversation happening underneath it, whether words were spoken or not.
WHY THIS SCENE WRECKS MEN
I want to go back to that men’s event scene for a minute, because I think it explains something important about where a lot of men are right now.
When that clip plays, and the room goes quiet, it isn’t sentimentality. It’s recognition. Every man in that room is measuring his relationship with his father against what he’s watching, and either he’s grateful because he had that catch, or he’s grieving because he never will. Scripture tells us that a father’s heart is meant to turn toward his children, and a child’s heart toward his father (Malachi 4:6). When that turning never happens, it leaves a hole nothing else quite fills, not success, not money, not achievement. Men carry that hole quietly for decades, and then a baseball movie cracks it open in about ninety seconds.
If that’s you, if you read the description of that scene and felt something tighten in your chest, I’d ask you not to bury it again. Whatever that catch looks like for you, whether it’s an actual conversation with your father while there’s still time or a decision to become for your own son the man who never left the field, don’t let it stay a whisper you ignore.
HOW DO WE SLOW DOWN ENOUGH TO BUILD THESE MOMENTS?
Here’s the question that the trip left me with, and it’s the one I really want to leave you with, too.
How do we slow down enough in our lives to create more of these moments, on purpose, instead of by accident?
Because here’s the truth: most men aren’t opposed to moments like these. We’re just buried under a life that never stops moving long enough for one to happen. We tell ourselves we’ll build the field someday. Someday, when work slows down. Someday, when the finances are more settled. Someday, when the calendar clears out. Ray Kinsella didn’t have a someday. He had a voice in a cornfield telling him to act now, with no guarantee it would make sense to anyone else watching.
So allow me to offer a few things I’ve learned about actually building these moments instead of just hoping they show up.
Say yes before you understand why. Ray built the field before he knew what it was for. Most of the moments that end up meaning the most to us start the same way, a trip you can’t fully justify, a conversation you didn’t plan to have, or a “yes” to something before you had all the reasons lined up. If you wait until it all makes sense, you’ll be waiting a long time.
Go to the place, don’t just watch the memory. I could watch that scene of Ray having a catch with his father over and over again, sitting on my couch. I didn’t need to do that anymore. I needed to stand in the grass. There’s a difference between remembering something and being present in it. Whatever your version of that field is, a hometown, a hospital room, a childhood house, or a lake, go stand in it while you still can.
Protect the moment from everything competing for it. Once you’re standing in it, guard it. Put the phone away. Don’t let the moment share space with a dozen other things pulling at your attention. A catch with your dad doesn’t happen if you’re checking a notification between throws.
Do it while there’s still time. This is the part that stings, but it’s the truth underneath the whole movie. Ray didn’t get his catch until it was almost too late, and even then, it came through something that only happens in a movie. We don’t get that guarantee. If there’s a version of this moment still available to you, a father still living, a son still young, or a relationship still repairable, the field needs building now, not someday.
THE CHALLENGE
I didn’t go to Iowa expecting a men’s ministry lesson. I went because I love baseball, and I love that movie. But I left understanding something I want every man reading this to hear.
You don’t need a cornfield and a voice from heaven to build something that matters. You need the willingness to stop, to show up fully, and to have the catch you keep telling yourself you’ll get to eventually. Some of you have a father you can still call today. Some of you have a son standing in the yard right now, waiting for you to grab a glove. Some of you have neither anymore, and the only field left to build is the one you create for the next generation, so your own son never has to wonder if you were paying attention.
Build it. Not someday. This week.
Because if you build it, the presence, the attention, and the courage to stop long enough to have the catch, healing has a way of finding its way to that field, just like it always has.
Watch/Listen: True Man Podcast — available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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.
Field of Dreams Movie Site: https://www.fieldofdreamsmoviesite.com/
Movie clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wnD6jxREU
Field of Dreams Movie Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jUOGhUqGdk
Me having a catch: https://youtu.be/vROuXrKaLlI