I recently watched a Turner Classic Movies re-showing of “Field of Dreams,” a wonderful baseball fantasy drama about an Iowa corn farmer (played by Kevin Costner) who builds a baseball diamond in his corn field that attracts the ghosts of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and seven other White Sox players who were banned from Major League Baseball in 1920, accused of intentionally losing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The novel “Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella, was the inspiration for the movie “Field of Dreams.”

Reading “Shoeless Joe” was as memorable as my viewing of “Field of Dreams.” It would be difficult for me to decide if one was better than the other. The novel and the movie complement each other in many ways, despite changes in the novel version made by the directors and producers of “Field of Dreams.” My recommendation is to watch the movie and to read the novel.

Both will sweep you into the story about what happens after the farmer hears an unearthly voice tell him, “If you build it, he will come.” I won’t reveal the identity of the man the voice predicted would come after the baseball field was built other than to say this man is not one of the players implicated in what became known as the Black Sox Scandal — although the field was built primarily for the benefit of the Black Sox Scandal ghosts who, even after their deaths, had no other place to go to fulfill their passion for playing baseball.

I loved the way the author, W.P. Kinsella, enables........

© Finger Lakes Times