“At the end of a Storm” Vol.7
My Dad in a Field of Dreams
“My Dad in a Field of Dreams”
and why I can’t watch a silly baseball film about baseball that isn’t about baseball
13th October 2021
1986 was an odd year.
I had achieved a schoolboy dream of playing for my Senior School football team and a team that contained many associate schoolboys who were signed with either Portsmouth or Southampton and some who would progress into the professional ranks after leaving school or play at the highest possible level of amateur football. I was also playing Men’s cricket at 14 years of age whilst still a “colt” cricketer and in the first flush of youthful teenage love. I also thought it was a fine and dandy idea to ride my bicycle down a one way side street at Portsmouth and Southsea railway station the wrong way and after an incredibly painful “chat” with a car travelling in the correct direction, I spent a week in hospital watching that year’s Snooker World Championship being fussed over by some incredibly kind nurses, eating both a child’s and an adult’s meal every day and recuperating from an officially noted fractured skull which was in fact just (just!) a small broken bone at the back of a thumping head. Just a few short weeks later I attended my first FA Cup Final at Wembley as my beloved Liverpool FC beat local rivals Everton 3–1 thus achieving the almost unthinkable (in those days) League and FA Cup “Double” and another few short weeks later it was the World Cup, “Mexico 86”, the Azteca Stadium, late night football, Gary Lineker’s goals propelling Bobby Robson’s England to a Quarter Final with a Diego Maradona inspired Argentina and the infamous “Hand of God”, a game which I’ll return to in due course.
Then the early morning of the 8th November arrived and nothing would be the same again.
1986 was indeed an odd year.
By all accounts 1972 was an odd year too as the UK blinked their way slowly from a Black and White past into a more colourful televisual future. It was a leap year, Edward Heath was Prime Minister and the country was mere months away from joining the European Economic Community (now European Union) and to prevent blackouts and conserve electrical consumption the country was also on the verge of a 3 day working week. 1972 was also the year of the horrific murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, Northern Ireland came under direct British control and Richard Nixon was still lying his way through a scandalous term as President of the USA. However, nothing of any substance, no notable births, deaths or historical events, are recorded for the 16th February 1972 and quite frankly, my Dad would’ve had something to say about that as after raising three daughters he could be found (according to apocryphal familial history) pacing the corridors of St Mary’s Hospital in Portsmouth with my middle sister Vivienne and at 8.30pm I came kicking and screaming into this mad, mad world. Also according to family legend, my Dad was as pleased as could possibly be and at 42 years of age (quite an advanced age for a parent in 1972) he was welcoming a son into the world and the family “mistake” (as I was constantly and jokingly referred to due to the huge age gap between my sisters and I) had taken his first breath on planet earth.
I have no knowledge of this, but it would seem that 1972 was an odd year too.
1989 was a horrific and turbulent year on the world stage as an earthquake struck near San Francisco and an even bigger natural disaster occurred as the Exxon Valdez oil spill devastated Prince William Sound in Alaska. Depending on your political persuasion, events of this year either improved or further deteriorated with the appointment of George HW Bush as the 41st President of the USA and there were huge protests, uprisings and revolutions sweeping the world, from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the beginning of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and peoples movements sweeping through eastern European countries.
Closer to home, the 15th of April saw the unlawful killing of 97 Liverpool football fans in the Hillsborough Disaster (the ramifications and conduct of the “Authorities” continues to be a subjective and emotive issue to this day) and there would be further disasters when an aircraft crashed in Kegworth killing 44 people, 2 rail disasters caused the loss of lives at Purley and Glasgow and 51 people perished during the Marchioness Disaster on the River Thames. A “fatwa” was placed on author Salman Rushdie for his book “The Satanic Verses”, an IRA bomb killed a British soldier in Germany and inflation and fears of another recession would combine with civil unrest and strikes across the UK and force the resignation of sitting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the following year.
The impending departure of “The Iron Lady” aside, it was a pretty grim year all round.
However, even closer to home things were rolling along fairly well. I was in my first year at Portsmouth College and finding it all rather a doddle and loving the freedom from the restrictions of a strict and claustrophobic all boys school. I was dating and treating the lucky young lady to “cider and black” at “The Baffins” pub and oodles of games of darts on a Thursday afternoon and would soon experience my first tentative steps at “work”, in a paper factory in my college summer holiday and as a Football Association registered coach in local schools for Portsmouth City Council and loosely, for the city’s football club. I also had a weekend job with a supermarket but although I looked incredibly sexy in my long brown supermarket issued coat we had many long suffering issues, namely they didn’t particularly enjoy my long hair or my earrings (stop laughing!) and they especially didn’t accept me not appearing most weekends as I was travelling all over the UK watching Liverpool play. Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be the long hair, the earrings or the magnificent football team under the management of Kenny Dalglish.
In between watching football I was also playing a lot myself and the summer was exclusively reserved for sunbathing and playing a lot of cricket before my trial at the County Ground, Southampton, for Hampshire CCC and a claim to fame I cling to like a last wicket diving slip catch for a last gasp win.
So all was going fairly smoothly in 1989 and then Kevin Costner and his silly film about baseball (which isn’t about baseball) came along and spoiled it all.
Spoilers aside, “Field of Dreams” would no doubt be termed in today’s vernacular as “cheesy” and of course faintly ridiculous. Based on the book “Shoeless Joe” by W P Kinsella, Iowa farmer “Ray Kinsella” (a brilliant Kevin Costner on his way to 1990’s superstardom) hears God like voices in his head and begins to question his sanity as well as the surreal world around him. It’s very quickly established that Ray is carrying a lot of personal baggage, guilt and regret and although adored by both his wife “Annie Kinsella” (Amy Madigan) and young daughter “Karin Kinsella” (Gaby Hoffmann) he can’t shake the ghosts and thoughts that preoccupy his restless mind.
“If you build it, he will come”
Farming his cornfields Ray hears the above proclamation and growing frustration leads him to seek out a writer “Terence Mann” (James Earl Jones) and along the way they encounter “Moonlight Graham” (Burt Lancaster) and as they return to his Iowa farm, and to the consternation of his brother in law “Mark” (Timothy Busfield) and to the bemusement of all around him, Ray has to act on the voice and he destroys the surrounding cornfields to create a perfect baseball field and diamond.
But who is “he”?
Further characters materialise (and if you’ve already seen the film you’ll get this lame pun) including “Archie Graham” (Frank Whaley of “JFK”/”The Doors” future film fame), “John Kinsella” (Dwier Brown) and particularly future cinematic legend Ray Liotta as the titular character from the book upon which the film is based and legendary baseball player of yesteryear “Shoeless Joe Jackson”.
So I started this spoiler free segment on the film describing it as cheesy and faintly ridiculous and that’s not entirely fair and very disingenuous. Heavenly voices aside, the film still stands up 32 years after it’s initial release, it’s high on my favourite films of all time list and it’s absolutely blooming wonderful. I have seen it numerous times over the years, mostly alone and once infamously with someone else who feared for my sanity afterwards! I simply can’t watch this film any more as at the first mention of *something* roughly 15 minutes in, I dissolve and fall apart like a wet newspaper and by the end and *that* quote, I’m inconsolable. Why is patently obvious considering the content of this article and the famous quote that comes towards the denouement of the film, but it’s far more than that. You see, this baseball film about baseball isn’t about baseball at all. It’s a purely human story, about inner turmoil and carrying around regrets, trying to deal with loss and the emptiness only the death of someone close to you brings, of bucking conventional wisdom and following your own path, your own dreams and aspirations, and seeking a soulful contentment and happiness that gives you solace and peace.
“Field of Dreams” is also the ultimate Father/Son story and the bonds we all have with our parents but the film has exploded over the years and become synonymous as the parental/child tale and become ingrained in the popular consciousness as such, particularly in the USA. Kevin Costner, who would go on from Field of Dreams to star in monster Hollywood blockbusters such as “JFK”, “Dances with Wolves”, “Robin Hood Prince of Thieves” and “The Bodyguard” remains inextricably linked with the film. As do Hollywood behemoths like James Earl Jones (“Star Wars”, “The Lion King” and “The Hunt for Red October”) and Burt Lancaster (“From Here to Eternity”, “Birdman of Alcatraz” and “Local Hero”) and everyone’s favourite “Goodfella” Ray Liotta, who enjoyed a stellar cinematic career before AND after Field of Dreams but will always be “Shoeless Joe Jackson” rather than mobster “Henry Hill” in the Martin Scorsese masterpiece to me.
And all these years later the film’s legendary status and mythical aura lives on, with tourists flocking to the still maintained baseball field and diamond of the original film and games of catch are no doubt played between families drinking in the once cinematic surrounds and this year the Major League Baseball organisation played a regular season game between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees at a purpose built but identical site to that of the film in an adjacent field and, after the game drew the largest MLB audience in 16 years, plans are now in place for another regular season game at this “Field of Dreams” site next season.
Kevin Costner led the players through the cornfields onto the playing field before a high scoring and close game ensued. Only in America?
Or only in a field of dreams?
History can be an unruly beast to tame at times and never more so than familial chronicles. Over time tales become longer, colourfully embellished and apocryphal stories become accepted as truth. Someone once said “Print the Legend!” and I can admire a stance and style such as that and as one of the last remaining Oracle’s of the Blackford family tree sadly recently passed away I think it apt we print the legend, as fiction can often be far stranger and more entertaining than truth. I jest of course but I use this lazy way of introducing the next, closer to home stage of this ramble as a means to say that our family history has many moving parts and I’ve tried to keep abreast of the legendary stories growing up but I have to have faith in the veracity of the tall tales being spun and stories told. The thing that has always fascinated me is how we all having differing ways of viewing or remembering a particular event or indeed a person. We can often shoot our perceptions of these things through a prism of our own singular experience and disregard the views and feelings and others. So these are my recollections of my Dad. They won’t be particularly embellished but they will be somewhat shot through a prism of mythology, so let’s print that legend anyway as far as I’m concerned and can recollect, and it will be as truthful and respectful as I can recall.
My Dad grew up in the small Sussex town of Uckfield and retained a huge affinity for the county cricket club all his life. He was a football fan but to the best of my knowledge he never followed a particular team, unlike the wife he adored and three of his four children. He was the youngest of four or five children (told you family history was a difficult beast!) but what is in no doubt is that his oldest brother Jim was a hero who sadly died in World War 2 serving in the Navy. He never talked about this but it certainly did not dissuade him from joining the Navy and he was quickly stationed in Portsmouth. Here there is some very certain family history as my dear old Mum loved to repeat a particular story as to how they met, and how she shined when she told it! My Mum and her sister were mere young ladies in a Portsmouth chip shop when a dashing young sailor crept up behind them and stole one of my Mum’s chips! In my mind’s eye, I see the cheeky chappie who I grew up with as my ageing Dad as a young idealistic scamp who stole a salt and vinegar fried piece of potato delight, before stealing the heart of the young lady five years his junior. The smile and shine with which my Mum would always tell this story spoke volumes for the adoration she had for her husband of over 30 years, and my Dad.
They quickly married at St Mary’s Church in Portsmouth, three daughters followed in quick succession and after nine total years in the Navy as a submariner he left (was presumably discharged) as he wanted to spend more time with his blossoming family. Again, the family Oracle told me (with more than a glint in her eye) just over two years ago that he was always away with the Navy when all three of my sisters were born but he was very much on terra firma when I arrived, as he paced up and down a hospital corridor with my middle sister, Vivienne, and if there can be such a thing as a favourite daughter, Viv was his. They had an unbelievable and unbreakable Father/Daughter bond and my Dad would always glow when Viv (and husband Steve) would visit. I think Viv’s tales of her corporate and life successes excited my Dad and he basked in them, a daughter made good. They were “thick as thieves” together and the best of mates, even I as a scraggly kid could see and appreciate this. My other two sisters presence in his life (seemed to me) as transient and nowhere near as close, but I have nothing on which to base this other than passing experience. There is an entire adult generation of years between myself and my sisters. They were all either married and/or had children by the time I could cognitively understand who these strange adult females were who kept visiting and disturbing the peace I had with MY Mum and Dad! Who were these strange people?
But we’re skipping ahead in this winding narrative and I am nowhere near to even being born yet, so here’s another magnificent picture and time capsule image I cherish so dearly.
After leaving the Navy, Dad quickly found employment at the Ford Factory in Eastleigh, near Southampton, and a job he would hold for over 25 years. He would become fondly known as “Blackie” and accrue a legion of work friends over the years (as he dealt in the underground and penny markets of “baccy” or loose tobacco) but despite his affiliations with Portsmouth he was revered in the enemy territory of Southampton. For readers not familiar with this small part of the world on the south coast of England, there is a regional enmity between the inhabitants of my hometown of Portsmouth and our neighbours just 19 or 20 miles along the coast in Southampton. Legion has it that the venomous hatred exists between the two cities dating back to the days when both cities had mighty dockyards and where one dockyard went out on strike, the other did not, but theories abound and theories are debunked and the whole fracas dates back over 130 years, but this is so deeply ingrained in my old part of the world and you’re either a “Skate” or a “Scummer” and never the twain shall meet and if and when they do, violence doth ensues and especially so when the football teams from the two cities meet.
Skipping ahead briefly to 1984 we can wrap this brief section up in a neat bow, of a red and white variety and a heartbreak that is still spoken about in the blue city of my old hometown. After years of avoiding each other as they played in different divisions, the two rivals were drawn against each other in the FA Cup with Portsmouth playing hosts to their rivals from along the south coast. Fever pitch doesn’t come close to cutting it and 36,000 fans crammed into Fratton Park for the most eagerly awaited game in decades. With a minute to go and the score at 0–0, the outcome fell to the talismanic local heroes of both sides to determine the game as first Alan Biley, still revered today so highly in Portsmouth, blazed high over the bar when scoring seemed easier before Steve Moran, the diminutive and busy Southampton striker squeezed in the winning goal from an almost impossible angle and broke Blue hearts. Why is this such an important tale to tell and to skip ahead? Well dear reader, we lived a short distance from Fratton Park, the home of Portsmouth Football Club and as kick off approached, car after car and van after van arrived from Southampton to park outside our community of flats. Shouts of “Blackie” reverberated around constantly as cars and vans were parked and the short distance taken on foot to the ground and I vividly remember our small flat being as rammed as Fratton Park was earlier with the sounds and cheers from my Dad’s Southampton supporting mates as they celebrated victory over the “auld enemy”. It was a testament to my Dad’s popularity and one that would be revisited just two short years later.
“Blackie” to his mates, but he was always “My Pat” to my adoring Mum or, if and when he teased her and he did, mercilessly and with great fun, he became “PATRICK!” but he was simply Dad to us children and, sometimes, if I wanted to tease him back, “Pops”, which I think he secretly enjoyed. To this, he would always return my chiding with a wink, and a wink that I selfishly believe was just for me and me alone. I was “Tosh” and I still have no idea why, but I rather liked this term of endearment and I hold it closely to my heart to this very day. Growing up, I didn’t see a great deal of my Dad as he worked alternate day and night shifts and so was always either coming or going to work. Weekends were different and those, along with Christmases and family visits are my fondest memories of him. It always seemed our flat was the stopping off point for visits from his side of the family and here my Dad really came into his own and every Christmas bar none was open house for a party with the neighbours, mates and family. So many memories are burned into my mind of my Dad playing the fool and drunkenly entertaining and cracking the most outrageous of jokes and, importantly, ensuring everyone was having the time of their life as well as having their drinks topped up at all times. Because my Dad, that beam of indescribable light, had a bar! And not just any old bar, but a fully fledged, fully stocked, pub style corner bar. Glass backed, five optics on two walls with ten spirits of various beverages, constantly full and ready for the next social occasion in which to play gregarious host. Many was the time that school friends would visit and upon entering the lounge exclaim “Your Dad has a bar!. A real bar!”. Then we’d retreat to the spare bedroom to play snooker and upon opening the built in cupboard in the wall to play an awkward long shot (it was a very small spare room!) would they see that my Dad didn’t just have a fully recreated pub style bar, he had an industry of “home brew” on the go constantly too, and his lager was absolutely sublime to this young teenager!
Are personal memories selfish? Self indulgent? Even self defeating? Who knows. But I treasure them as us human beings should I guess. We never played football together but there’s a picture of us now lost to the mists of time and the vagaries of umpteen missing photo albums of me in my first Liverpool kit and Dad cuddling me and I remember with great glee watching Ian Botham and Graham Dilley putting the Australian cricket team to the sword on a Monday morning in 1981 when presumably he should have been working. I don’t remember, but it was “Botham’s Ashes” after all and we were watching stupendous cricketing history together being written in front of our disbelieving eyes. Every weekend was a treat as Dad returned from the “Barrow Man” on Arundel Street with either a ginormous bag of freshly caught cockles (which he delighted in cooking in the kitchen and causing a horrendous smell throughout the flat!) or a bacon “hock” which was cooked and left to cool for us to eat together with that night’s “Match of the Day” football. Every Saturday night without fail as I recall was snooker or pool night in the spare room whilst Mum watched “Tales of the Unexpected” before we interrupted with supper and the football.
I often beat him at snooker, a game he introduced me to but which I quickly eclipsed him skill wise. However, one vivid memory remains of him sinking a final black ball to win a frame and as he raised his cue in triumph he smashed the overhanging glass lampshade and we saw it come crashing down onto the middle of the table! A brilliant memory indeed. I also remember him lugging the damn snooker table up three flights of stairs in the flats where we lived as I watched excitedly and supposedly surreptitiously from the top of the stairs for my “surprise” Christmas present that year. And one of the biggest personal memories I have is of him sleeping in a moving van as he waited for the keys to yet another new home for my sister Viv and Brother in Law Steve as Dad always, always, decorated their new home as soon as was possible. He did this on a number of occasions and I was with him just once and it summed up my Dad perfectly. He was the epitome of someone who was always busy, forever helping someone no matter what needed doing. Always (always) smiling, cracking jokes and nothing it seemed was worth worrying about. There was always another cigarette to be rolled, a whiskey to be poured, a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale to be drunk (and in a half pint glass — he had class my Dad!), always a huge cuddle for my Mum, always a beaming smile of absolute pride for my sister Viv and always a ruffle of the hair and a wink for me, his “Tosh”.
1986 was an odd year indeed and by this time, a year and half since his official cancer diagnosis my dear old Dad was struggling and restricted to a hospital bed installed in the flat. I remember how excited he was to see me on my return from Wembley in May after seeing Liverpool lift the FA Cup and it was just a month later that we shared the “Hand of God” game together in the Mexico World Cup and it was particularly memorable for the fact that he was well enough to venture out of bed and enjoy the game from the comfort of a corner chair. So I sat on his bed and we screamed “handball” together as Maradona cheated and we both leapt into the air when Lineker nearly equalised from yet another sublime cross from John Barnes. As we sat together after the game and consoled each other he said triumphantly that he was feeling better and asked me to take him, if he continued feeling better, for a stroll in a wheelchair along the nearby seafront.
Five months later he was setting up yet another pub style bar in another universe from ours.
Something happened at 1.10am on 8th November 1986. Something so vivid and burned into my memory that will never go away. But something else happened on that horrendous morning, a light went out. The brightest of lights.
The best of lights.
Because my dear old Dad was the best of us. Fiercely proud family man, loving husband, ever present friend, joker, gregarious host and someone who only wanted the very best for everyone around him. This was never more perfectly demonstrated than just a few days later in that odd year of 1986 when “The Barn” an extension to the “Milton Arms” pub near Fratton Park, home of Portsmouth Football Club, was as rammed as Fratton Park was two years earlier or indeed our flat was too that day. It was full to the rafters of family, friends, neighbours and so many of the same work mates who had packed out the adjoining football stadium and our small flat two years earlier. It was testament to the man we’d lost and the light that had gone out so criminally early in a life he thoroughly blooming enjoyed.
I was barely a teenager and far too young (and angry, really angry, at my loss) to appreciate the raucous laughter and drunken jokes that filled the air. In retrospect of course, it was an appreciation and celebration of an amazing human being who had touched so many lives in his too few years.
I hung around the pool table, heartbroken. I didn’t “wanna have a catch” but I did want to play him again at pool and watch that beaming smile of his radiate around the room as he sunk another game winning black ball.
For “Blackie”.
“My Dad in a Field of Dreams” also moonlights as the lucky 12th chapter within my recently self-published book “At the end of a Storm”.
"At the end of a Storm" - available via Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
I do remember the '89 earthquake. It really cast a pall on the World Series that year, since the San Francisco Giants were playing the Oakland A's, and at least one of the games got disrupted. There hasn't been another Bay Area Series since, which might be a good thing...