History of Field of Dreams: A Father’s Day Treat

Bill Petro
9 min readJun 17, 2022

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One of my all-time favorite movies is not an action movie, a science fiction movie, a comic book blockbuster, or a fantasy film. It’s a baseball movie. Or is it?

Is it a movie about Berkeley, Iowa, Fenway Park, or America? It’s all of them, and more.

For every man who has unresolved issues with his father, this is the movie to watch. I dare you to make it to the ending without needing Kleenex.

Uniqueness of Field of Dreams

What other movie has these?

  • Four, count ’em, four crescendoes!
  • Ray Liotta in one of his earliest film performances, including swearing? (OK, he does that in lots of his subsequent movies.)
  • Burt Lancaster as Doc Archibald “Moonlight” Graham in his final film performance at 74.
  • James Earl Jones delivering show-stopping speeches as Terence Mann with his Darth Vader voice.

Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom

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Bill Petro

Writer, historian, technologist. Former Silicon Valley tech exec. Author of fascinating articles on history, tech, pop culture, & travel. https://billpetro.com