Field of Dreams

This week is the celebration of baseball – the All Star Game – and as a person who grew up with, loves and still plays the game of baseball, it reminds me of some of the great baseball movie lines of all time. There are two that I want to share with you today – not in the spirit of baseball, but because of the spirits and lessons within them.

The first line that comes to mind is from Tom Hanks (as Jimmy Dugan) in A League of Their Own (1992) when he confronts Gina Davis (as Dottie Hinson), who’s leaving the team to go home with her husband right before the world series:

• Dottie Hinson:      Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It’s only a game, and, and, I don’t need this. I have Bob; I don’t need this. At all.
• Jimmy Dugan:      I, I gave away five years at the end my career, drinking. Five years. And now there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to get back any one day of it.
• Dottie Hinson:      Well, we’re different.
• Jimmy Dugan:      This is chicken shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that.
• Dottie Hinson:      It just got too hard.
• Jimmy Dugan:      It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.

Emphasis added. You can watch the movie clip here. And there’s the magic line – it’s supposed to be hard, the hard makes it great, and if it wasn’t hard everyone would do it.

How often do you hesitate, delay or give up because something is hard? The reality is that no one said it was going to be easy or that it’s supposed to be easy. Just because you find something that excites or delights you doesn’t mean the journey is going to be easy. Perhaps all you can hope for is that the journey will light you up, and sometimes that light comes from the fear. The question is not whether you’ll be afraid, but what you choose to do when the fear comes.

The second line comes from perhaps my favorite baseball movie – Field of Dreams (1989): “If you build it, he will come.” If you think Field of Dreams is a baseball movie, you’ve clearly never really watched it. It’s a move about life, dreams, relationships, family, courage (of conviction), and hope. Everyone thought Kevin Costner (as Ray Kinsella) was crazy, but it turns out that he was a visionary who trusted his instincts and “listened.”

What is your inner voice asking you to do? What dreams are you sensing, but holding back on? What are you meant to build but waiting for circumstances to be right, better or even perfect to begin?

This week was the All Star Game (won by the American League, 4-2), a perfect time to tap into the wisdom of the baseball gods. I see so clearly the lessons and messages that these two movies have to offer. Do you? Or was this just a swing and a miss? I wonder.