Field of Dreams is the second of three baseball movies featuring Kevin Costner, coming between Bull Durham and For Love of the Game. Each story is different, and this one is the most well-known. It has become a classic. Now, 31 years later, it's difficult to remember a time when Field of Dreams was not part of our culture. It's difficult to remember a time when "If you build it, he will come" and "Is this Heaven? No, it's Iowa," didn't mean anything to anyone yet. This movie succeeds in combining two concepts we may have never connected before: baseball and magical realism.

The storyline is based generally on the book Shoeless Joe, by Canadian fiction writer W.P. Kinsella. If you take the chance to read the book, you may find (as I did) that the moviemakers selected the best parts of the original text and ramped them up several notches. The book is different enough to be considered, well, fairly different. This is one of the few instances when we can see that the movie actually presents the story in a more impactful way than the book does. (Sorry, W.P.)

Ray Kinsella (Costner) lives with his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and their daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann) on a farm in Iowa. One day while Ray is walking through his cornfield, he hears a whisper: "If you build it, he will come." No one else is around to have said these words to him. The whispering repeats for several days until Ray finally thinks he understands the message. He believes that the voice wants him to build a baseball field so that the eight ostracized members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox -- including Shoeless Joe Jackson -- can come back and play again. They could redeem themselves of the accusations that they threw games and deliberately lost the World Series.

As a baseball fan himself, Ray builds the field, and eventually, magic does start to happen. Annie is as supportive as she can be. When Ray says, "I have just created something totally illogical," Annie beams and says, "That's what I like about it." But while all of this is happening, financial troubles descend on the Kinsella farm. Annie's brother Mark (Timothy Busfield) offers to buy them out. Will Ray and Annie really have to sell to Mark and his partners? And if they do, what will happen to the field and its magic?

The voice returns with, "Ease his pain" and "Go the distance." Ray is led to drive to Boston to find famous author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones). Mann had written an influential book in the 1960s, The Boat Rocker, which then served as an inspiration to young people like Ray and Annie. We can consider him to be a stand-in for J.D. Salinger and his Catcher in the Rye. (Check out the movie Finding Forrester for another version of a Salinger-like character, this time played by Sean Connery.) As Ray assembles all of the pieces the voice prods him to discover, the baseball field in Iowa soon comes to mean something more personal for him. Much more personal.

(Amusing sidebar: When I worked as a high school librarian, I was once asked by a student if we had a copy of The Boat Rocker by Terence Mann. She was sorely disappointed when I told her that this book was purely fictional and was made up for the movie. I explained about its connections to J.D. Salinger and Catcher in the Rye, but her eyes just glazed over. Oh, well. One bubble, summarily burst. It had to be done.)

In addition to author Mann, we also meet baseball players Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and "Doc" Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (Burt Lancaster). Every actor gives a class-act performance. James Horner's musical score augments the most dramatic and poignant moments of the film. Horner also chose two of the best road songs from the 1970s to accompany Ray's travels. Field of Dreams was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for best musical score. It won none.

We witness at least four memorable speeches here: Ray's background monologue over the opening credits; Annie's defense against book-banning at the PTA meeting; "Doc" Graham's memories of the game of baseball, as told to Ray in Chisholm; and Mann's "People will come," advice near the end. Each one lingers in the mind.

Folks can visit the real Field of Dreams Movie Site in Dyersville, Iowa. I went there twice in the mid-1990s, in its early days of operation. I highly recommend stopping there, whenever a trip through the American Midwest brings you close enough to consider it. Go in late summer, when the corn is high. The movie and the place will mean even more to you when you see the field for yourself. I dare you to walk into the corn. (I chose not to.)

I mentioned to a friend that I was watching Field of Dreams again and writing a review. As it turns out, she had never seen the movie. I was shocked. We're the same age. How could someone who was alive in 1989 have missed it, either in the theatre or, by now, on demand? "I don't watch baseball films," she said. Wow. But this film isn't solely about the sport. At its core, it's not about baseball at all. You don't have to know anything about the game to be entranced and moved by this story.

And that's why I have to say, with ever-increasing vigor: Field of Dreams is a must-see movie that you should probably own and should definitely watch again at least every few years. Revisit those feelings of both regret and forgiveness, and step into the power of possibilities and dreams. If you build them, they will come.