What true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father?
"I experienced the sixties."
"No, I think you had two fifties and went right on into the seventies."
This exchange during a school board meeting between Annie Kinsella, the wife of protagonist Ray Kinsella, and a woman intent on the removal of books from an Iowa public school district, and much of the plot of 1989's Field of Dreams, is meant to put the 1960s generation on a pedestal of moral righteousness. I do not fundamentally disagree with this take recently from Jack Posobiec about its intent.
Field of Dreams was written for former 60s radicals to tell themselves how great they are even though they sold out. Love the baseball parts but the rest of the plot is so self-serving and dumb
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 14, 2026
However, like with 1994's Forrest Gump, one of my favorite genres is the "accidental conservative or traditional values" film.
Yes, the film was written by a radical or from the ranks of Hollywood's liberal class, yet its conclusion, themes, and takeaways end up being decidedly conservative, whether they were going for that or not.
The fundamental conservative values of the sport of baseball have been well established by conservative commentators like George Will. I don't have to rehash them here. But the rest of the plot and scenery of Field of Dreams is very hippie, radical, and steeped in 1960's main character lore.
"Oh my God! You're from the sixties." For every reference, there is a derisive comment about the decade that follows. There is a disillusionment that has set in to the decade's true believers that I predict will soon happen with many of the fellow travelers of our current era.
The 1960s radical son who wouldn't have a catch with his father merely serves as a precursor to the magic flight that takes shape at the end of the story. The son does play catch and reconcile with his father, and even gets to do it when they are both young.
The reclusive writer, Terence Mann, a loosely-based stand-in for the real life-J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), takes a magic flight of his own by seeing exactly what Ray and his family get to see, the baseball players from the past like Shoeless Joe Jackson playing right before them. His dream is presumably fulfilled just as the people are coming to the middle American farm in Iowa and the end credits are rolling, as he is off-screen eating popcorn next to Shoeless Joe and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field.
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| Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams |
Then there is Moonlight Graham, the small-town Chisholm, Minnesota doctor who told Ray, and the audience, that if he had only gotten to be "a doctor for five minutes, now that would've been a tragedy." When this film was released, free agent salaries in baseball were beginning to truly explode, and we were just a half-a-decade away from the 1994 players strike which drove a dagger through the heart of America's pastime. The message: being a small-town doctor with generosity of spirit is greater than having an extensive page on baseball reference.
Then there is even the closest thing the story has to an antagonist. The brother-in-law who represents the interests of the bank and wants to foreclose on the loan and therefore, end the field of dreams. By the end, he too can see the players. This is a story about belief, about familial and spiritual reconciliation
The film is littered with conservative and return-to-tradition messages in the end, and the hippie wife Annie is increasingly losing the argument today against the big meanie conservative school board activist in the public imagination. America doesn't want to ban The Boat Rocker, it just questions whether explicit and sexual material should be available in a K-12 school. Considering America's so-called "banned book list" is entirely made up of the most available books ever, more and more people are catching on to this sort of gaslighting.
Field of Dreams, Forrest Gump, and a whole host of films made in the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s all have one thing in common: these conservative-in-message films written by Hollywood liberals were being made when the baton of leadership in the culture was transitioning from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers.
In the next decade or so, a similar transition will be taking place from Baby Boomers to Millennials and the surrounding generations. It has already started, but it will accelerate.
Understandably, right now the culture is not too kind to the legacy of the baby boomers, but for the elders, the children, and the squeezed and stressed out generations in between, I hope the rising political coalition and rising generation takes a long hard look every spring and summer at the true message behind this 1989 classic rather than writing it off. And I hope we make some new Capra-esque magic of our own, because our culture sure could use it.
Whether we agree or get along or not, what true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father? And even if you cannot or do not, you can always revisit the times you did through the magic flight of America's great game of baseball.
Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority’ available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of its Veterans Caucus. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, and OAN. He lives in New York City with his wife and son, and is the 3rd Vice Commander (“Americanism” pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson
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