I have always been a firm believer in the power of baseball. I still well up when Terrence Mann, aka James Earl Jones, gives his “People will come” speech to Ray Kinsella, aka Kevin Costner, in Field of Dreams.
And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray.
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
I found myself thinking of that movie moment driving up the Edens Expressway Friday Night as I made my way home from the White Sox-Red Sox game at the Cell. You see, the night before, my buddy, Brian, who works for ESPNZone, called me up to offer an extra ticket to the game.
It was so much more.
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