Brett Favre and his Field of Dreams

I just finished watching Field of Dreams, which, along with The Natural, is one of the two best baseball movies of all time (Although this doesn't quite live up to the book, while The Natural's movie version definitely leaves a better taste in the audience's mouth than the book in terms of the whole "having faith in humanity" thing, but that's for another day).  I specify "baseball movie" as opposed to "sports movie" because I believe they are a different genre, in fact, hardly even the same species.  One of my professors from last semester, Tracey Thomas, told me that Frank Deford, who has written for Sports Illustrated and is a broadcaster for NPR, once said that he believes that the best sports movies are the ones written about the sports with the smallest balls, and while I'm having a hard time coming up with good golf and polo movies (although I do love The Legend of Bagger Vance), and I love all of the following movies, it's hard to argue that Remember the Titans (team comes together to win), The Longest Yard (team comes together to win), Rocky (man overcomes odds to win), Hoosiers (team and coach come together and overcomes odds to win), Coach Carter (team overcomes odds to win), or Rudy (man overcomes odds for a huge moral victory) are very good complete stories compared to Field of Dreams (man gets to redeem himself after losing the opportunity to have relationship with his father), For Love of the Game (man realizes what's actually important in life), The Natural (man has to decide between love and money, and loses, completely crashing from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in the process), and even The Sandlot (kid makes friends, realizes he sucks at baseball, geekiness saves Babe Ruth baseball, watches his friend succeed).

Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez agrees with me)

There are no scores in Field of Dreams.  Nobody wins.  Nobody loses.  The only time a run is scored is when Moonlight Graham (by the way, what happened to cool sports nicknames?) drives in a run off of a sac fly, after finally being able "To stare down a big league pitcher.  To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink.  Make him think you know something he doesn't."  The whole point of the movie is that dreams and spontaneity are the most real things in the world, and that as long as we make sure that we follow our dreams and act on our impulses, we'll probably turn out okay (Editor's note: Letters to Pilky takes no responsibility for anybody who follows this advice and fails.  It's probably much more difficult to do if there isn't a disembodied voice giving hints along the way).  All that Ray Kinsella wanted to do was to be able to play catch with his father one last time after he severed their relationship.  He wanted another chance to play.  One more chance to show his father that he loved him.


On a related note, up until about a month ago I had a serious problem with Brett Favre.  I enjoyed every interception that he threw.  I hoped and prayed that he would get hurt.  I wanted the Vikings to lose every single game that they played.


In the first week of December I had to give a presentation on sports and the media for my Sports in American life class (with the previously mentioned Tracey Thomas, dontcha know), and I decided that I would discuss the way that Brett Favre has used the media to put himself into the limelight.  What I started to realize, instead, was that this guy was just trying to please everybody, something we've all been guilty of at one time or another, and while I still hope that the Vikings lose every time they walk onto the field, I started to feel bad for all the hatred that I've given Brett Favre over the past few years.  At one point, the man was my idol for being able to have more fun than anybody in the world, and now I dislike him for pretty much the exact same reason. 


Last night I finally got a chance to unashamedly cheer one more time for Brett Favre, as the Packers needed the Bears to lose for the Packers to win the division (because we all know that the Bears will lose to the Jets next week, and the Packers the week after, while the Packers have easy wins against the Giants and Bears coming up.  By the way, the Bears have only played four teams with winning records so far this year.  I don't think that should count.  The teams that they have beaten have a combined record of 75-93.  These guys blow.) (Editor's note: Best Case Scenario: Packers sneak into a Wild Card spot, draw the Bears at Soldier Field in the first round, and win by 600 points after Roger Goodell implements a mercy rule at halftime).  Anyway, it was fun.  Cheering for Favre was fun.  Watching Favre throw a bubble screen for a touchdown was fun.  And all of the sudden I didn't hate Brett Favre anymore.  In fact, I really liked him.  After all, he stands for everything that Letters to Pilky has been harping on since the beginning.  Ignoring logic.  Joy.  Making the most of experiences.  Extending childhood.  Like Ray Kinsella, Brett Favre has done some totally irrational things without much regard for how the people who cared about him would react, but I cheer for Ray and boo Brett.  Why?  Maybe because Brett Favre is a no-good rotten traitor he didn't go about it gracefully.  Maybe because he went to the arch-rivals.  Maybe because it seems like he's really finally done.  Maybe because Brett Favre just wanted to play.  He wanted to go out and enjoy it.  He wanted to do what he loved.  It's hard to fault a guy for that, especially when he did such a beautiful job of it for so long.  I never thought I'd be able to forgive Brett Favre, but I guess I have.  All he wanted was one more chance (and one more chance, and one more chance) to show the game that he loved it, and I'd say he did a pretty good job.