LETTERS FROM HOME: SEARCHING FOR OUR FATHERS ON THE FIELD OF DREAMS

June 15, 2000

Dear Ken,

One summer while doing some work in Dubuque, Iowa, I drove the 25 miles to Dyersville, the small town where "Field of Dreams" was filmed. I was hoping to find something, anything that reminded me of the green vision in the movie and dreading a theme park. Neither awaited.

It was still the Field of Dreams.

The field looked much as it did in the movie, with rows of corn bordering the outfield. It was built at the intersection of two farms, so each farmer owns part. On their side of the field, each had set up little stands where memorabilia could be purchased, the only concession to commercialism.

But they're still farming. The one who lives in the white, two-story farmhouse that was the family's in the movie walked down to talk to me when I waved. He was wearing overalls and seemed embarrassed about the fuss people make over his little piece of movie history.

But the farmers have done the most wondrous thing there: Bats, balls and gloves lie on the ground off the foul line between third base and home plate, waiting for a family of vacationers to arrive and play some catch, knock some balls toward the cornfields and run the bases. To play some ball on the Field of Dreams.

Women think men love "Field of Dreams" because it's about baseball. Yes, but the movie touches us because the hero is on a quest most men are on: To find our fathers.

There is a bond and a wall between fathers and sons, a paradox so confounding we pretend it does not exist. The bond is the passing of the torch of masculinity, the "anointing" that allows a male to accept himself as a man. The wall is the reality that during the 20th century, fathers abdicated most of the responsibilities of raising their children.

They became the machinery in the economic engine. It required leaving home so they could return with money. Breadwinning became their ultimate goal. But were the better breadwinners also better fathers? And is there a son who can say he truly knows his father's heart?

In the 21st century, the greatest benefit of sexual equality may be that more husbands are sharing with their wives both the breadwinning and the child-rearing.

The voice in "Field of Dreams" tells Ray Kinsella he must find his hero, a writer named Terence Mann who was the darling of '60s anti-war movement. In the book the movie was made from, Kinsella went looking for the famously reclusive J.D. Salinger.

In the second half of the 20th century, many men learned more about growing up male from "Catcher in the Rye" than from anywhere else.

In "Man Enough," Frank Pittman writes that men are too caught up in proving their masculinity -- through philandering, competing or trying to control others -- when we ought to be practicing it by seeking more intimacy with our women, by thinking of other men as brothers instead of competitors, and through fathering.

If our father is gone, he says, men must find a hero, someone who epitomizes the kind of masculinity we want to emulate. Ultimately, our job is to become heroic in our own eyes.

If we are lucky enough still to be able to claim our fathers, we need to forgive them everything as they forgave us everything just as we hope our sons will learn to forgive.

When males become men we finally know that masculinity does not reside in our muscles or behind our zippers but in our hearts.

Love, Sam