THE LAST PENNANT BEFORE ARMAGEDDON
Then we have Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella, who has based his whole writing career on revealing the extent to which an increasingly secular and alienated America has projected its unexpressed religious feelings onto baseball. In Shoeless Joe (made into the movie Field of Dreams) Kinsella uses all the traditional elements of biblical prophecy—mystic visions, voices from heaven (“Build it and he will come”), even visitations by angels and long-dead ancestors—as inspiration for an Iowa farmer to build a baseball diamond in his field. Once the diamond is built, it becomes a kind of cosmic nexus, connecting this world with the next.
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This may say more about Aprill’s knack for casting than about Barrosse, Mula, and Aprill’s adaptation. All the actors are right for their roles. Sad-faced Dan Payne seems especially well cast as droopy Cubs manager Al Tiller. Payne’s Tiller, with his gentle but worn features and his grumbling, weary voice, has clearly endured a lifetime of humiliation and disappointment, yet Payne is an accomplished enough comic actor to let the audience laugh at Tiller’s predicament.
