Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I missed the game but caught some of the highlights and by all accounts it was a very special and memorable event. Will probably be something that the fans that were at the game will never forget and I'm sure the players enjoyed playing there as well and in seeing the landmarks from the movie. I'm sure MLB will start having an 'annual' game there as they wouldn't build an entirely new field right next to the one from the movie just for one game.

It's moments like this that make you realize just how much more 'special' baseball is then football to our culture. I'm a way bigger fan of football but I have to admit football doesn't have anything like that that and probably never will. It's just the difference I guess in that baseball embraces its past whereas football doesn't. And while baseball is a game where players are playing catch and hitting a ball to each other football is a game where players are trying to beat each other up or at the very least trying to physically over power one another.

lastcat3 wrote:... I have to admit football doesn't have anything like that that and probably never will. It's just the difference I guess in that baseball embraces its past whereas football doesn't...

Well, successful or not, I think the Hall of Fame Game is supposed to be just that.
Another parallel is the NHL's annual outdoor game.
All three purport to be a return the the "simpler times" of the games' halcyon days.

Re: Baseball vs. Football, I assume you've read/seen/heard George Carlin's take on that...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkqNiBASfI

JuggernautJ wrote:
Re: Baseball vs. Football, I assume you've read/seen/heard George Carlin's take on that...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkqNiBASfI

Yep. And it is indeed pretty funny. Saw that skit of his during the Ken Burns baseball documentary.

A silly stunt based on a silly movie that was based on a silly book pandering to the sentimentality of certain baseball fans, who seem to think that Virgil was thinking of baseball when he wrote his Eclogues.

rhickok1109 wrote:A silly stunt based on a silly movie that was based on a silly book pandering to the sentimentality of certain baseball fans, who seem to think that Virgil was thinking of baseball when he wrote his Eclogues.

Yeesh, dont hold back, there Ralph!

rhickok1109 wrote:A silly stunt based on a silly movie that was based on a silly book pandering to the sentimentality of certain baseball fans, who seem to think that Virgil was thinking of baseball when he wrote his Eclogues.

If you go back and rewatch Field of Dreams, it doesn't age well at all. The takeaway from the movie is that real estate is a cutthroat business in rural Iowa. Everything else is pure nonsense.

I think baseball needs things like "field of dreams field" to bring meaning to a fairly meaningless regular season game. Part of it is because the baseball schedule is so long, and part of it is because baseball games aren't all that exciting. Football games can stand on their own in the present.

lastcat3 wrote:It's moments like this that make you realize just how much more 'special' baseball is then football to our culture.

I don't think baseball became "special" (mythical) until we experienced a series of three media events that spanned a decade from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

1) "The Natural" starring Robert Redford (1984)
2) "Field of Dreams" starring Kevin Costner (1989)
3) "Baseball" documentary by Ken Burns (1994)

These are the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (in that order) of the baseball myth.

I think football does carry the same mythical quality in our minds when we watch NFL Films with the orchestration, narration, and slow-motion takes. However, NFL Films has never made it to the silver screen. Yes, there have been plenty of football movies, but they are generally comedic and gritty instead of mythical in the way baseball is presented in film.

Perhaps the closest things we have to mythical films are

1) "All the Right Moves" starring Tom Cruise (1983)
2) "Rudy" starring Sean Astin (1993)
3) "Invincible" starring Mark Wahlberg (2006)

In all three instances, while the movies held a sort of mythical quality ("Invincible" is a Disney flick, after all), none of the three films had star power. Tom Cruise was still pretty much a nobody in 1983.

I gave up on modern baseball years ago. Can't make it through 4-hour games consisting of 12 pitching changes and grubby looking millionaires standing around scratching their nuts while all of us wait for something to happen.

RichardBak wrote:I gave up on modern baseball years ago. Can't make it through 4-hour games consisting of 12 pitching changes and grubby looking millionaires standing around scratching their nuts while all of us wait for something to happen.

I treat baseball as a former good friend who passed away during the 1990s during its umpteenth strike.