Is this heaven? No, it’s Canada

“If you build it, they will come.”

In the 1989 classic, “Field of Dreams,” Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) follows orders issued in a whisper from the cornfield on his failing Iowa farm.

“It” turns out to be a baseball field on prime agricultural land – an expenditure of resources that makes no sense to those who are less idealistic, including a bank holding the note on Kinsella’s farm and including Ray’s cynical brother in law.

“They” initially turn out to be ball players from a time long past – ghost players including one who happens to be Kinsella’s dead father.

Later, after a father and son reunion and reconciliation symbolized by a game of catch on the aforementioned field of dreams, movie viewers learn that “they” includes thousands of people searching for something nearly lost, but kept alive by the American pastime: baseball.

James Earl Jones, as former ‘60s activist Terence Mann explains why those thousands of people will be drawn inexorably to the field as follows:

People will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. 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.


Those thousands whose headlights stretch to the horizon at the movie’s end, of course, represent all of us; and baseball symbolizes the kind of straightforward and wholesome activity that unites families and communities and creates an elusive and powerful condition that I call joy.

Of course the game is a metaphor. The movie makes it clear that the baseball isn’t paramount when Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, played by Burt Lancaster, turns his back on a chance to continue playing in order to fulfill his true life’s purpose and, as a doctor, crosses over the baseline and off the field of dreams to save Kinsella’s daughter’s life on the sidelines.

No, for me, baseball represents “family;” it symbolizes “love;” it stands, as Terence Mann says, for all that is good and that seems to be lost in the crush of life in the 20th (and now 21st) centuries.

For the first half of my adult life, I desired to build fields of dreams. As a recreation administrator, I saw the value of baseball – and ballet and crafts and drama and just about any wholesome activity and I firmly believed that people who took time to play together would find a way to coexist.

Public recreation had experienced a golden age in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Unrest in major cities related to the struggle for civil rights led politicians to support programs and facilities for leisure pursuits. Money became available for playgrounds and millions of former “latch-key” kids who previously went home to empty houses had the option of remaining on campus for after-school activities.

Then, at the end of the ‘80s California’s Proposition 13 and other legislation brought in the era of “no new taxes!”

Dollars began to dry up for public recreation programs. Staffing was cut, after-school playgrounds were closed, and by the time “Field of Dreams” arrived on the scene, the golden age of public recreation was over and many programs were fighting for survival.

The film, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture, resonated in me. But that resonance was bittersweet because I left the recreation profession in 1986, discouraged by changing priorities

In recent years, I’ve encountered outstanding recreation professionals who offer valuable services to their communities. I believed that they were the lucky survivors of an earlier age.

More recently, though – and particularly while on the road this year – it has become clear that what I’m seeing is not a vestige of the past, but rather is something new. Community recreation, it seems to me, is finding a way to prosper in the post-proposition 13 world.

And, as I’ve discovered this week in Red Deer, that prosperity is evident in Canada, big time.

In this mid-sized city, the local government has entered into partnership with non-profit and commercial entities and has built – and continues to grow – a set of offerings that take leisure services to levels I never dreamed of during my career in the field.

Epitomizing this new effort is the Collicutt Centre in the southern end of town. This multi-million dollar complex hosts thousands of visitors every week – over a million last year – and reflects the community’s willingness to again support recreation with tax dollars.

More on the Collicutt Centre in another posting. I’ve spent several hours on site and must admit that I’m getting that old feeling from years ago. A good feeling.

Terence Mann: Oh, my God.
Ray Kinsella: What?
Terence Mann: You're from the sixties.
Ray Kinsella: [bashfully] Well, yeah, actually...
Terence Mann: [spraying at Ray with a insecticide sprayer] Out! Back to the sixties! Back! There's no place for you here in the future! Get back while you still can!