Circle that Date

Clare called or texted the other day to inform her parents we’re all going to the White Sox game on August 9^th, against the A’s.  After the game will be a screening of “Field of Dreams.”

 

I go back and forth on favorite baseball movie—“Field of Dreams”; “The Natural”; “The Rookie”; “Eight Men Out”; “A League of Their Own.”  Any one of them will do in a pinch, or on a rainy day begging to be spent watching a movie.  But only “Field of Dreams” has a personal connection to us.

 

We took Clare to the movie site in Dyersville, Iowa, about a week after she hit a walk-off homerun in Bronco baseball and then on the next day finished fifth out of twenty-five in a homerun hitting contest, with all the opponents being boys.  It was the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

 

I’d bought a bucket of baseballs along and took to the mound.  First pitch a swing and a miss; second pitch a shot to the gap in left center; third pitch a line-drive head high, as in my head.  I’d give anything for those three pitches to be part of the movie.