Baseball And The Afterlife

I am not going to say that Ken Burns is ruining my life.

I am not going to say he's bettering my life either.

Alas, I ruin and better my life. I leave it to you dear reader to decide if I have bettered or improved.

I am going to say that the Ken Burns Baseball documentary is taking up my time. Whenever I fold laundry I take the time to catch up on the Baseball documentary. 

Now here is the reveal: the damn thing makes me emotional; often welling up tears, sometimes near sobbing. What can I say, the historical drama resonates with me. This probably has a lot to do with my mid-life crisis (now in it's tenth year or so), marriage crisis (coincidentally in it's tenth year), parenting crisis (huh, also in about the tenth year) and career crisis (too many years to count) but it also speaks to the depth and power of the documentary. The fact that my sons are smitten with baseball right now and that we are reading through the Dan Gutman Baseball Card Adventure books before bed is also playing a role.

But that it not what I want to tell you about today. I will connect the documentary to another thesis in my life however. 

The documentary covers the Black Sox and the Shoeless Joe Jackson bribe in the 1919 World Series. And Shoeless Joe Jackson is part of the backdrop for the plot of the movie Field of Dreams, which this fool decided to plop down and watch on...wait for it...Father's Day, with his baseball loving sons.

I had to fight off tears for a good portion of the movie (I know I know, get some help you stubborn idiot - something is amiss!) because there is so much of the movie that hits my heart. 

Now you know that he crux of the movie is Ray Kinsella's relationship with his father and the the denouement is his having a catch with his father at the end of the movie.

But there is a trope that runs through the movie that highlights the main thesis of my life right now: There is no afterlife; you and mammals like you, are finite. 

Really? This is in Field of Dreams? The movie about baseball? 

That's the one.

You see, when Shoeless Joe (played by the *late Ray Liotto) first appears, he asks Ray, "Is this heaven?"

To which a beaming Ray quips, "No, it's Iowa."

Upon reuniting with his father, after never getting the chance to apologize..."Son of a bitch died before I could take it back,"

his father also asks, "Is this heaven?" And Ray again says, "It's Iowa," but follows by asking his father, "Is there a heaven?"

It's where dreams come true.

And Ray looks around at his land, his wife and daughter on the swing and realizes:

There is no afterlife.

I wrote this for my Writing In the Public Interest Course:

"I can hear you now: our souls will be in eternity. Souls can’t be anywhere. But I’ll look past this and still ask, how are you going to enjoy eternity when you can’t grab anything? What’s even the point if you can’t grab a beer, hold a lover, whack a golf ball, strum a guitar..."

Or in the case of Field of Dreams, have a catch with your dad.

Heaven and the afterlife is a bad idea. It doesn't help the species. It's regressive. It's unhealthy, on the individual and public health level.

After the movie I went out and threw batting practice for my sons. I tucked my daughter in that night.