Opening Day Ritual

Well, yesterday was a great sports day. The fighting Illini didn't fare well against North Carolina in the college basketball national championship here in St Louis, but it was a great game and Monday was one of my favorite sports days. It was opening day for Major League Baseball. I know there was a game on Sunday between the Yankees and the Red Sox, but yesterday was the first day that most of the teams were playing. The Cardinals weren't one of them, they open today. I have a little ritual I do on most opening days. It goes like this:

Watch Field of Dreams and cry like a baby.

I don't know why Field of Dreams affects me this way. I am normally not a very emotional person, but that movie just rips me up. For several reasons I still think it is one of the finest movies ever made:

It chronicles the life of someone who hears a voice, knows his calling and is willing to suffer the consequensces for acting irrationally to follow his calling (I get convicted for not being in the full-time ministry every time I see the film). So needless to say I am in a very convicted mood this morning.

It is a good clean film with a great plot and characters

It has 3 of my favorite subjects embedded in it: baseball, farming, and an old Volkswagen Bus

I played baseball for Crescenta Valley High School and we played against Kevin Costner and Aviation High School almost every Saturday morning in Fall Baseball. It was a great rivalry. When he bacame an actor he moved into our neighborhood about a mile away from our house and I saw him in the local grocery store several times before I joined the Air Force and moved away. I'm still a big fan, although he has made some bad movies lately.

My kids actually enjoy the film also.