John Kinsella: Is this heaven?
Ray Kinsella: It's Iowa.
John Kinsella: Iowa? I could have sworn this was heaven.
[starts to walk away]
Ray Kinsella: Is there a heaven?
John Kinsella: Oh yeah. It's the place where dreams come true.
[Ray looks around, seeing his wife playing
with their daughter on the porch]
Ray Kinsella: Maybe this is heaven.
Terence Mann: I'm going to beat you with a crowbar until you leave.
Ray Kinsella: You can't do that.
Terence Mann: There are rules here? No, there are no rules here.
[advances with crowbar]
Ray Kinsella: You're a pacifist!
Terence Mann: [stops] Shit.
Ray Kinsella: So what do you want?
Terence Mann: I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.
Ray Kinsella: No, I mean, what do you WANT?
[Gestures to the concession stand they're in front of]
Terence Mann: Oh. Dog and a beer.
[first lines]
Ray Kinsella: [voice over] My father's name was John Kinsella. It's an Irish name. He was born in North Dakota in 1896, and never saw a big city until he came back from France in 1918. He settled in Chicago, where he quickly learned to live and die with the White Sox. Died a little when they lost the 1919 World Series. Died a lot the following summer when
eight members of the team were accused of throwing that series. He played in the minors for a year too, but nothing ever came of it. Moved to Brooklyn in '35, married Mom in '38. He was already an old man working at the naval yards when I was born in 1952. My name's Ray Kinsella. Mom died when I was three, and I suppose Dad did the best he could. Instead of Mother Goose, I was put to bed at night
to stories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the great Shoeless Joe Jackson. Dad was a Yankees fan then, so of course I rooted for Brooklyn. But in '58, the Dodgers moved away, so we had to find other things to fight about. We did. And when it came time to go to college, I picked the farthest one from home I could find. This, of course, drove him right up the wall, which I suppose was the point.
Officially, my major was English, but really it was the '60s. I marched, I smoked some grass, I tried to like sitar music, and I met Annie. The only thing we had in common was that she came from Iowa, and I had once heard of Iowa. After graduation, we moved to the Midwest and stayed with her family as long as we could... almost a full afternoon. Annie and I got married in June of '74. Dad died
that fall. A few years later, Karin was born. She smelled weird, but we loved her anyway. Then Annie got the crazy idea that she could talk me into buying a farm. I'm thirty-six years old, I love my family, I love baseball, and I'm about to become a farmer. And until I heard the Voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life.
Voice: If you build it, he will come.
Ray Kinsella: By the time I was ten, playing baseball got to be like eating vegetables or taking out the garbage. So when I was 14, I started to refuse. Could you believe that? An American boy refusing to play catch with his father.
Terence Mann: Why 14?
Ray Kinsella: That's when I read "The Boat Rocker" by Terence Mann.
Terence Mann: [rolling his eyes] Oh, God.
Ray Kinsella: Never played catch with him again.
Terence Mann: You see? That's the sort of crap people are always trying to lay on me. It's not my fault you wouldn't play catch with your father.
[Ray explains Terence Mann's "pain" to Annie]
Ray Kinsella: The man wrote the best books of his generation. And he was a pioneer of the Civil Rights and the anti-war movement. I mean, he made the cover of Newsweek. He knew everybody. He did everything. And he helped shape his time. I mean, the guy hung out with The Beatles! But in the end, it wasn't enough. What he missed
was baseball.
[Annie looks at Ray's notes]
Annie Kinsella: Oh, my God!
Ray Kinsella: What?
Annie Kinsella: As a small boy, he had a bat named Rosebud.
Ray Kinsella: Fifty years ago, for five minutes you came within... y-you came this close. It would KILL some men to get so close to their dream and not touch it. God, they'd consider it a tragedy.
Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.
Ray Kinsella: Are you Moonlight Graham?
Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: No one's called me Moonlight Graham in fifty years.
Ray Kinsella: Where'd they come from?
Shoeless Joe Jackson: Where did WE come from? You wouldn't believe how many guys wanted to play here. We had to beat 'em off with a stick.
Archie Graham: Hey, that's Smokey Joe Wood. And Mel Ott. And Gil Hodges!
Shoeless Joe Jackson: Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us
could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!
Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: Well, you know I... I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn't. That's what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to
look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag. That's my wish, Ray Kinsella. That's my wish. And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?
Ray Kinsella: Don't you miss being involved?
Terence Mann: I was the East Coast distributor of "involved." I ate it, drank it, and breathed it... Then they killed Martin, Bobby, and they elected Tricky Dick twice, and people like you must think I'm miserable because I'm not involved anymore. Well, I've got news for you. I spent all my misery years ago. I
have no more pain for anything. I gave at the office.