Published October 2, 2024

Probably going to make some people mad with this one. I waited, though, a respectful amount of time. The movie “Field of Dreams” came out in 1989. James Earl Jones died more than three weeks ago.

Yes, this is about the speech. You know which one.

There are some great phrases in there. Jones delivers them perfectly.

But I’m sorry. This part?

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”

One of my biggest quibbles with the movie is not that Shoeless Joe Jackson bats right-handed instead of left-handed, nor that he throws left-handed instead of right-handed. It’s that line in that speech.

Baseball is the one constant through all the years?

America has had presidents for longer than it’s had baseball. Mountains. Houses. Crops. CORN.

That line wouldn’t have needed much of an edit to make it so much better, but it needed one. It’s a shame it didn’t get it. America has had more than one constant. Someone should have spoken up.

As for its other flaws, a big one is that the movie glosses over a lot of racism in its glorification of baseball. Racism: the true one constant in American history.

Let me make it up to you

Before I lose you forever, let me say that I like the movie. And no, I can’t make a better one.

I saw it for the first time in Houston, on my way back from an assignment for The Sporting News. “Field of Dreams” got me “all charged up” (to use part of another James Earl Jones line) to go and see an Astros game afterward.

(The game was a monumental letdown after seeing the movie. Big mistake.)

I should have gone to the Galleria instead, which I was much closer to after the movie, but that’s another story.

Critics winced

The negative reviews at the time pounced on that speech, which — much like “The Shawshank Redemption” five years later — grew in popularity over time. A tough-love edit might have turned that tide.

I wrote a review of “Field of Dreams” in 1989 and called it a combination of the 1984 movie “The Natural” and the 1988 song “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics and another thing or two I can’t recall now.

I mean, I’m not wrong.

I wasn’t there that morning
When my father passed away
I didn’t get to tell him
All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo
In my baby’s newborn tears
I just wish I could have told him
In the living years”

That man, that voice, though

I come to praise James Earl Jones, though, not to bury the movie or the screenplay. Have you heard him as Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” movies? If not, I highly recommend.

But seriously, his impressive voice work wouldn’t be a bad choice for “the one constant” in the bulk of my lifetime, if we’re playing that game. So many memorable lines, and … 10/10, no notes.

“We are the United States government. We don’t do that sort of thing.” (Sneakers)

“Make a hole, make it wide.” (Gardens of Stone)

“This is CNN.” (CNN)

“Leave that to me.” (Star Wars)

“It’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.” (Field of Dreams)

Tell me, with a straight face, that you never delivered a line in your best James Earl Jones voice. Tell me, with a straight face, that anyone could have had a better James Earl Jones voice than James Earl Jones.

He is the reason so many people loved that speech. You can’t convince me otherwise.

Imagine being Kevin Costner and going to work and getting to hear Jones and Burt Lancaster on the same set.

Far out

Perhaps my favorite story about James Earl Jones is one I heard in 1999, when I was in Dallas covering a charity screening of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.” A moviegoer was the first to tell me of Jones’ days in the ’70s talking with truckers on his CB radio and having them remark that his voice was so familiar.

(The person who told me that story bought 18 tickets at $300 a pop to treat himself and his friends to the movie. He worked for Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com and said, “I had a really good year.” So did Cuban. He was about to sell the company for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock.)

More than once since Jones died, I’ve found myself imagining his energy freed from Earth’s gravity, making whatever is out there tremble at the sound of his voice.

“That’s a corny line,” I imagine someone on some distant planet saying. “It makes me roll all six of my eyes. But you made me love it anyway. How did you do that?”

So charming and graceful, I can even stand seven minutes of Conan O’Brien.

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Photo from the cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa, where “Field of Dreams” was filmed: Scott K Baker via Shutterstock.