C - John Kinsella - Team#2_The Movies

Ray Kinsella: Hey... Dad?
[John turns]
Ray Kinsella: [choked up] "You wanna have a catch?"
John Kinsella: I'd like that.

My dad taught me how to play baseball, because he taught me how to play catch. Nothing fancy: a couple of ratty gloves and a heavy old ball, in the front yard. The lawn was dome-shaped to funnel away the product of summer thunderstorms, and I had to skitter down the side of the grass dome to chase a badly thrown ball.

My glove was a black and silver Russell as light as you would expect a few folds of polyester to be. My dad's glove was the more expressive of the two, having survived the sixties. It wasn't well-built, but it was leather, the color of sun-baked plywood, wrinkled and broken in poorly, so that the thumb crossed the other fingers at a wonky impractical angle.

Dad's fundamentals were sound even if his experience was limited. He scolded me for throwing sidearm. Lucky thing, too, that he took me out to the fields by Rice University with a friend, and made me throw from the catcher's crouch until at last I flung it overhand. Legions of coaches would later reiterate my dad's prescient message, until I couldn't throw the ball but right from my ear without feeling like something was wrong.

I'm not gonna say that John Kinsella threw the ball as though he'd been at it for 15 of his formative years. But I cry every time he and Ray flip it back and forth, I do.

imdb, quotes, the field, people will come ray

Lineup - The Movies

C - John Kinsella
1B - Jack Elliot
2B -
3B - Roger Dorn
SS -
LF -
CF -
RF -

SP -
RP -

Manager -