That Field Of Dreams baseball game sold a whole bunch of copies of Field Of Dreams
The MLB's Field Of Dreams promo stunt successfully promoted Field Of Dreams
Film News Field of Dreams
Kevin Costner’s 1989 Field Of Dreams is an American sports classic, an iconic tale of a small businessman harnessing the terrible secret that life persists beyond death in order to sell concession stand popcorn to rubes. Major League Baseball fully embraced that heartwarming message this past week, organizing a game between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees in an Iowa cornfield that paid homage to Phil Alden Robinson’s film, in the spirit of community, ratings, and selling many copies of Field Of Dreams on Blu-ray and DVD.
And lo, but a miracle occurred: The Field Of Dreams game did sell a bunch of copies of Field Of Dreams on Blu-ray and DVD. That’s per Deadline, which reports that the film (which also stars James Earl Jones as a man exhibiting an increasingly potent case of Stockholm Syndrome) shot up Amazon’s “Movers And Shakers” chart after the game’s dramatic finish. Said chart, which analyzes how quickly any given item on Amazon’s sales list moves up in ranking, shows that the film’s Blu-ray jumped from the mid-3000s to sixth for all movies and TV on Friday, presumably as a great many men went searching for a functional relationship with their fathers in their DVD drawers, and inexplicably came up empty.
And while the film is neither moving nor shaking as much today, that’s mostly because Field Of Dreams—multiple versions of it, in fact—is still sitting pretty near the top of Amazon’s various best-seller lists, period. It did pretty well for the MLB, too, mind you; the game, which featured players (and Costners) emerging from the Iowa corn to celebrate the great American past-time of remembering that a movie got made, gained plenty of traction on social media, and was the MLB’s most-watched regular-season game since 2005.
It’s like an uncredited voice actor whispered in a sound booth once: “If you build it, etc.”
58 Comments
the MLBI cringe every time I see someone write this.
Best. Caption. Ever.Works on soooooo many levels.
Is Costner on the left?
Damn, this is a fucked up cynical take.
“Something that made lots of people happy” = always fodder for the cynics
Let’s remember that in W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, it’s not a made-up-writer played by James Earl Jones who gets kidnapped, but J.D. Salinger.
Yes. Let’s.
Aw, do we have to?
People are always ruining things for you.
Wait a minute… “Field Of Dreams” was based on a book?
Yes, one significant enough that we even read it in English class in high school several years before the movie was made.
And Kinsella’s novel was based on a short story he had previously written called ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa’. Also, Kinsella was Canadian. His las years were spent in the town of Hope, British Columbia, about two hours’ drive south of where I live. Hope is probably most famous as the place where ‘First Blood’ was filmed.
I think I got assigned to read it three separate times between grade school and high school. The “baseball as beautiful religion” theme gets a little old if you don’t particularly care for the game.For some reason, my main memory of the book as it differs from the film is that Ray has a carny twin brother who suddenly shows up in the middle of the book, then doesn’t really do anything.
Kinsella was a great writer. He did a short story about the Chicago Cubs winning the series, finally breaking that curse, which then of course brings upon us the End Times.Which… well, I did love that game when they finally won, but look what’s happened since…
Hey everybody! This guy reads books! (Chugs Brawndo)
And then there’s the dark, killing spree ending.
And honestly so much better. Can you imagine trying to combine a real-life person with a fantasy drama? Especially someone as polarising as Salinger?And James Earl Jones was so amazing in this part. It’s one of the few roles (Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada are others) where it doesn’t work at all with a different actor.
Who doesn’t like Field of Dreams?
*raises hand, looks around, sees no one else agrees, pretends to stretch instead*
Rudy > Field of Dreams
Who doesn’t want to see a hobbit play football?
It’s ok, but Bull Durham exists, so…
And Major League
I actually rewatched that last year, and it holds up surprisingly well.
Let’s see, who wrote this post?
Robin Scherbatsky.
Is completely indifferent an option?
Oh it’s polarising. A lot of people hate this movie. The main reasons being baby boomer nonsense, the fact that the timeline makes no sense, the fact that Kevin Costen spends the whole movie trying to atone for not liking the same baseball player his dad likes, as though that makes him a bad person even though he’s led an exemplary life, and the big one, a black 60s activist giving a big speech praising the glorious American past when baseball was segregated. (Relatedly, no black players in the cornfield).
That game was way better than the movie could ever hope to be. An excellent showdown indeed, old sport.
The opening with Kevin Costner was really cheesy, but the setting, atmosphere and that freaking sunset were all awesome.Glad to hear its coming back next year.
There should be an interleague game with the Reds, Pete Rose as the MC. MLB has no sense of humor. Also how sad is it that the White Sox are an original franchise and this is literally the only thing anyone knows them for?
Who doesn’t remember “Disco Demolition Night”?And even if you try, you can’t forget this Bill Veek inovation:
Agreed. Those shots later in the game, with the hot air balloon floating around, were really spectacular … although as a Yankees fan, that game took a bit of a turn late …I’m actually hoping that MLB DOESN’T ruin the novelty of this by making it every year, ala the NHL’s endless outdoor games. Once every few years would be enough, in my opinion. Although I’m sure, much like inter league, baseball will make this so ubiquitous that the fun novelty will fade after a few years.
NHL Winter Classic/Stadium Series I think lost its charm because of the multiple outdoor games they held every year. I think just once a year keeps the mystique and interest high.
It’s a good movie. In most horror films, the necromancer raising the dead is the bad guy. In Field of Dreams, they flip the script and building a large ritual space for conjuring ghosts is a feel-good moment.
“A necromancer who hears voices bankrupts his family to summon ghosts in a cornfield.”
I know you are riffing off the infamous Wizard of Oz summary, but a twisted version where he builds the field and the ghosts come for revenge on the living would be a good horror movie.
FIeld of Nightmares
Also, the ghosts save the humans instead of killing them. At least Karin. I’m interested in the afterlife politics. Like how could the other ghosts prevent Ty Cobb from coming if he wanted to? Do they get a vote? And why didn’t the Clean Sox want to play? And what era? Gil Hodges played into expansion, but he’s the only one. Everyone else is from deadball or soon after. And they can play in the cornfield forever, as long as they don’t step off the field, in which case they age? And are they now trapped forever, playing an eternal baseball game that never ends, while people pay $20 a ticket to find peace? Isn’t that torture? The Black Sox threw the game for gamblers under working conditions way better than that? OK now I want to see a sequel where the Black Sox are fed up by the greedy Kinsella family being rich and not paying them anything, so they gamble on the games. Sponsored by Draftkings.
I’ve always found the Deadball era to be utterly fascinating and such an odd statistical anomaly.
Field of Dreams II: Field of the Living DeadWhen they get hungry, it’s game over.
I wish I could support that, but I’m really tired of zombie movies/TV.
Sheesh, why all the hate? My son and I just watched it again last night, and its a FANTASTIC movie. Cheesy? Yes. Is it 35mm Comfort Food? Yes. But there’s great acting and a great script. Just because the masses loved it doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed by the more sophisticated cinephile.
Because the movie is 100% sincere. It has not a cynical bone in its body, and that is something the AVC will always struggle with
This William Hughes guy really went the long way to say “OK, Boomer.”, didn’t he?
“We are the AV Club. We are a product of Generation X and can never lose the cynicism and snark.”
It’s a great film, though my favourite White Sox-related film is probably Eight Men Out. Brilliant movie. I watched both again last year during lockdown and they’re both excellent.
I can’t see MLB celebrating Eight Men Out any time soon.
Eight Men Out is great, I’m going to have to rewatch it soon. But my favorite baseball movie is Bingo Long and his Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings. James Earl Jones and a cast of dozens too numerous to mention. The era of the Negro League should have given us more movies, in my opinion.I’m not ever trying to start anything on stuff like this, but… I don’t like Bull Durham as much as other people do, nor Field of Dreams or The Natural (wish someone would adapt that with the book’s not-happy ending). I haven’t seen it in years but I loved Bang the Drum Slowly.
I just love the cast. They really capture the avarice and tragedy of the event.
I grew up pretty near there, and I never ever heard anyone say “have a catch”.Everybody said “Wanna play catch?”, not “Wanna have a catch?”It just sounds weird. Is it a regional thing?
Well, I’m from Utica and I’ve never heard the phrase before.
Oh no, not Utica. It’s an Albany expression.
Yeah it’s a whole to-do. Costner wanted “play catch” but the director wanted “have a catch.”
“What would you say to your younger self, if given the chance”? is a pretty common question. I think “Stay for the ending if you want, but you’re not going to like it” pretty much covers it.
The event was cynical, of course, but I can’t think of anybody who loves baseball who didn’t think it was a massive success. Once we got past the MLB cringe, it was a great game that showcased two of the more fun teams in baseball (neither’s my team) in a unique setting. It married the nostalgia trip with guys like Tim Anderson, who are injecting much-needed energy and fun into baseball and changing the game for the better.
It worked. The whole cringy-ass thing actually worked.
Boomers gonna Boomer.
I still don’t get the ending scene of the movie. Why are there thousands of cars coming up to the field? Are all those people going to have a catch with a dead father? To watch a game? Where are they going to park? Where are the people going to sit? Where is everyone going to make pee pee and poo poo? What the hell does it mean?