It's a baseball fable based in 1988 in Iowa, Boston, and Minnesota.

Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) and his wife, Annie (Amy Madigan), are ex-1960s radicals who have taken up farming in Iowa. They have a daughter, Karin (Gaby Hoffmann), and drive an old VW bus with George McGovern stickers on it. Unfortunately, Ray's father, John (Dwier Brown), has died, and Ray never had a chance to reconcile with him before leaving home at age 17.

His father was a minor league ballplayer, and Ray still loves the game. One day in his cornfield, he hears, "If you build it, he will come." This leads to a series of messages and dreams that lead Ray, supported by his wife, to build a baseball field in a cornfield only to find deceased baseball players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta), playing on it.

The voices and dreams also lead him to connect with a famous writer, Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), who has not written in years, and a baseball player from 1922, Archibald Graham (Burt Lancaster), who played one inning in his career and never had a chance to bat. Meanwhile, the farm is in danger of bankruptcy, partly because of building the baseball field. However, everything nicely resolves by the end.

I think you either like or dislike this movie. There's little reality to it, but for me, today it was a wonderful story. Kevin Costner didn't allow his earnestness to get the better of him. James Earl Jones does a great job of being a mysterious writer based on J. D. Salinger. Ray Liotta was too articulate for the illiterate Shoeless Joe Jackson, but hey, this is a fable.

The critics who didn't like it thought it was too gooey. Today I was in the mood for gooey.