2002-07-07 - 1:20 a.m.

I have a dire confession to make, children of the Revolution.

I know what you?ve all been thinking:

That Wheel ... he's so hip, he can barely see over his pelvis.

He's so cool he can be used to set gelatin desserts.

He's so groovy that if you drag a needle along him he plays Eric Clapton tunes.

But now I have something to say.

Something which may shock and discredulize you.

I ...

:: sigh ::

... I cry like a schoolgirl when I watch Field of Dreams.

...

Shut up.

So, it's a Kevin Costner movie. Yes, I'm aware what that implies. The man innovated the school of modulated volume acting, and brought us Dennis Hopper as the jet-ski riding nemesis of the poor man's Namor. Hell, the Mariner was the poor man's Aquaman. Even Aquaman was never so low that he found himself drinking urine.

And yes, it's kind of silly for ME to weep over it, since the movie was directed towards 'Boomers who had gone through the 1960s and become alienated from their fathers and loved baseball. It was a movie which was made for my dad and a thousand thousand dads across the nation, not for me. I could barely play baseball. God knows I tried. I collected the cards, and I wasn't very good at that, either. It just wasn't satisfying to look up how much they were worth in the little Overstreet digest. I did rather enjoy the Topps sticker sets, which let you get a series of neat stickers of various team rosters and great moments from 1988, which even for ME was an astonishing year for baseball. How could anyone NOT have been impressed when Kirk Gibson, who looked like Zeus and walked like Hephaestus, blasted an impossible pitch into the tinsel-strewn stratosphere and laughed as he hobbled around the bases into history with the world's most dramatic home run?

Let me make an aside to explain the wonder of this moment for those few of you unlucky enough not to have seen it at one point or another in your ephemeral lives, although I sincerely doubt my ability to give any substance to the one instance of true magic I have seen on national television:

Kirk Gibson was a giant of a man who had made a career out of dramatic, towering longballs. His shot in game 5 of the 1984 World Series was already considered one of the legendary moments in the game's history, and when he came with the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Series in '88, he was in the twilight of a powerful career. Being a big, big man who spent far too much time loping around the bases for long doubles and triples, he had managed to shoot his knees. Badly. And after a season of vicious play to get the Dodgers to the Series, Gibson had nothing left to give. He couldn?t start for the Dodgers lineup. The man couldn't even walk. Nonetheless, God has as good an eye for a dramatic moment as anyone, and He tweaked Tommy LaSorda's aging SlimFast-addled brain to convince him that there was only one choice for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth against the vicious weaselly-fast Athletics pitcher, Dennis Eckersley: the crippled giant, Kirk Gibson. So Gibson shambled out there, gritting his teeth in obvious pain, and immediately fouled off to go 0-2. He kept fouling. And fouling. And fouling. Eckersley got so befuddled that he managed to toss enough wild pitches to build the count up to 3-2. And Gibson kept fouling. And every time he knocked the ball over the lines, he'd collapse like a marionette with cut strings. And slowly haul himself up to his feet on his bat, while the umpire, catcher, and pitcher all winced in agony, and the announcer, Jack Buck, questioned LaSorda's sanity. But the fans knew. Each and every one of them KNEW that there is no possibility that the situation could be resolved in any other way than it was; an injured, aging hero comes out for heroic last stand with his team trailing by one run and men on the bases, a full count against him, looking at the business end of two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

And, of course, it happened.

Gibson blasted the ball in a long, sweet arc that landed just over the right wall. Not the most towering shot or graceful homerun in history. It was, in fact, rather ugly since it came entirely from Gibson's wrists.

But it was magic.

Nonetheless, I've never been what I would consider a baseball fan. I can?t stand watching most games. I'll sit through the World Series because there tends to be a lot of drama, and sometimes I'll watch the highlight reels, because it features things like Ozzie Smith doing backflips and Fernando Valenzuela salsa dancing on the mound.

But I wasn't born into a time when baseball had much real magic left to it.

All the magic was being forcibly sucked out of America's Past-time by a combination of impinging corporate interests, cable television, the advent of more entertainingly violent entertainments, and the growing wave of apathy which swamped America after years and years of Reagan and Bush. (Yes, I blame them. For everything.)

In fact, given recent baseball history, I'd say that Kirk Gibson took all hundred or so years of baseball magic and used it to hammer home that one beautifully ugly shot in 1988. And then it was spent.

I didn't get to see Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris or anyone else with a last name beginning with "M". Or the Mets before they were losers. Or the Braves before they were Turner's Titans. Or the Pirates when they were interesting. I didn't get to see anyone whose baseball card is worth serious money. I didn't get to see any longball hitters who used plain ol' booze and speed instead of strange chemical cocktails lifted from slaughterhouses and gene labs.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Baseball players, by the time of my advent in this vale of tears, were no longer playas.

You wouldn't see Marilyn Monroe marrying Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire, even if it was only a fling.

So the magic had largely been bought off my father's game by the time I was starting to understand the "Who's on First" riff Bert and Ernie did, and baseball was never a passion of mine, although my father did and does love it with intensity, nu?

So WHY DO I CRY WHEN I WATCH FREAKIN' FIELD OF DREAMS?

It's not simply that I'm manipulable.

I am, but I have my decency. I won't shed my Wheel-brand Eye Lubricant? for any Joe Schmoe who can string together two maudlin characters and a violin score.

I just find it amazing that a movie that was clearly and patently directed a full generation over my head always manages to lodge itself right in my throat and sit there quivering like a Pawnee arrow.

To be sure, it's quite a good movie.

One of James Earl Jones' most entertaining performances ("See what I'm talking about? This is the kind of crap people are always trying to lay on me! It's not MY fault you didn't play catch with your father!"), and Kevin Costner's best work far and ages away. The script is excellent, the settings are nothing short of gorgeous, the costumes are amazing, and the plot is more than adequate. Ray Liotta is a freakin' amazing Shoeless Joe Jackson.

And I always fall for the two custom-engineered scenes.

Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham abandons his returned youth and his dream of playing with the giants of baseball to become an old wizened medico once more to save the life of Kevin Costner's daughter. The scene is contrived and syrupy. And it's played really, really well, especially by Burt Lancaster as Doc Graham. It's beautiful. It's touching. That always tears me up.

And then, of course, after James Earl Jones gets to walk through the corn to heaven, we get Ray Kinsella meeting the returned, youthful ghost of his estranged father, John, and the real meaning of the movie is revealed for those too obtuse to catch it after the opening montage.

The two shake hands, and then ... Costner asks his father to have a catch with him.

And I start crying, dammit.

Because it's beautiful and simple and really idyllic and NOT because I haven't gotten a chance to play catch with my father ...

But maybe because he didn't with his.

Ahh ... forget about it.

Play ball.

- Wheelin' 'round the bases.

*****

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