I never did.

I hadn’t thought that throwing a baseball back and forth with my father could be a big deal. That was until the first time I watched the movie “Field of Dreams.”

The film is a fantasy premised upon the game of baseball. Actor Kevin Costner owns a farm in Iowa that he is about to lose to foreclosure because his crops are failing and his bank account is dwindling. One day he hears a mysterious voice coming from somewhere in his cornfield.

“Build it and they will come.”

Once he figures out that “it” is a baseball field, Costner, whose movie name is Ray, spends his last few dollars constructing an entire field complete with lights for nighttime games.

One night, he sees a famous baseball player named Shoeless Joe Jackson mysteriously appear in the outfield. Then, one by one, players from way back in the early 20th century walk through his cornfield to play games.

The field represents any opportunity in life where a dream can come true. To take the risk to make the dream a reality, you have to grab hold of the opportunity.

In the movie, Ray talks about an empty relationship he had with his father, who passed away long ago. The two had never played catch with each other in real life, but in the final scene of the movie, his young and virile father appears on the field of dreams. Ray recognizes him immediately.

In an awkward moment, his father asks, “Is this heaven?” To which his son replies, “It’s Iowa.” Ray steps onto the field and plays catch with his dad in one of the best endings of a movie I have ever seen.

The first time and every time I watch this movie scene, tears fill my eyes. I had never known that my dad had played baseball until one day, long after he had died in 1970, I found a photograph of him taken in 1932. He’s 15 years old in the picture and he’s wearing a uniform and holding a baseball glove.

A father playing catch with his son or daughter is an extraordinary experience. It’s not an athletic event and it really has little to do with the game of baseball. I have had this experience several times with my son. We would toss a ball back and forth whenever we got the chance. When the ball was in the air, I was tossing my love to him, and when he threw the ball back, I was catching his affection for me.

Playing catch can have another benefit. The other day, I watched my now 20-year-old son have a catch with a teammate he had just met from their Lehigh Valley Men’s League team. These were two young men, unknown to each other, but because of their catch, they are no longer strangers to each other. This simple act between two people builds a relationship of trust without words.

If I found a genie in a bottle and he gave me three wishes, one might think I would ask for money or even fame. But neither would come first to my mind. My first wish would be that my dad would come back to life wearing the “Indians” uniform I see in the old photograph. My second wish would be that he and I would be on a baseball field, perhaps the one at Recreational Park on Route 903 in Jim Thorpe, where as a committee member, I had helped bring the first baseball games ever after the park had first opened.

Of course, my third wish would be that we get to play catch. No conversation is necessary. There’s nothing to hear except the iconic sound of the ball striking the inside of our baseball gloves, a kind of beating of a drum that marks a celebration of an unbreakable union between a father and his son.

My father and I had rarely spoken to each other when I was growing up. He was sickly for most of my childhood and he died at age 52 and I was 19. When I stared at his body in the casket, I saw a man whom I had never known. I felt an empty hole in my heart as if I was looking at a guy I had never met before.

And yet, I can fill that empty hole in my heart if I allow my mind to envision my father appearing to me on our Field of Dreams at Recreational Park. He’s a young man, healthy and handsome. He picks up a baseball and a glove. He turns to face me.

“Oh my God, it’s my father!” I say to myself. I hear a voice from somewhere speak into my ears.

“Ease his pain.”

My only memories of my father are from years later when he was worn down by life, but in the here and now, he has his whole life in front of him and I’m not even a glint in his eye.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Dad says to me. “Is this heaven?”

“It’s Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania,” I say.

“I could have sworn this was heaven.”

“Is there a heaven?” I ask.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “It’s a place where dreams come true.”

“Maybe this is heaven,” I say, looking into his eyes. We shake hands, strong and long. He begins to walk away. My thoughts run wild. It’s June 15th. It’s Father’s Day. It’s my birthday, too, and I’m about to get the best gift ever.

“Hey, Dad,” I call out to him. “You want to have a catch?”

“I’d like that,” he says.

“So would I, Dad. So, would I.”

There he stands, tall and straight, my superhero, with the sunlight raining showers of gold across his broad shoulders. He tosses me the ball. I reach out my glove and catch my dad’s love in a magical place where dreams really do come true.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com