Field of Dreams author W.P. Kinsella: The Iowa story behind the magic

As the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals prepare to meet Thursday night in Dyersville for the third MLB at Field of Dreams game, Iowa fans will once again be drawn to the iconic cornfield that captured America's imagination. But behind the magic of the 1989 film stands a Canadian author whose unlikely journey nearly ended before it began, thanks to a high school guidance counselor who told him to abandon his dreams of writing.

W.P. Kinsella, who passed away in 2016, wrote the novel Shoeless Joe that inspired the beloved movie. The story of a farmer who hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field in his cornfield has become synonymous with Iowa's agricultural heartland and the enduring bond between fathers and sons.

How a guidance counselor almost derailed 'Shoeless Joe'

During high school in Alberta, Canada, Kinsella was called into guidance counselor Mr. McCoy's office to discuss his future. When Kinsella shared his dream of becoming a writer, McCoy delivered a ten-minute lecture on why that was a terrible idea, pushing him toward engineering, accounting, or law instead.

Kinsella never forgave the man. “I think there is a special place in hell for McCoy,” he told his biographer Willie Steele in the book Going the Distance.

The irony isn't lost on Steele. Shoeless Joe is about a man trusting a mysterious voice in a cornfield rather than listening to reason, mirroring Kinsella's own decision to follow his calling despite the naysayers.

From first swing to baseball obsession

Kinsella's first piece of writing was about baseball. At age 14, he wrote Diamond Doom, a short story about a murder at a ballpark during a YMCA competition. Though that story has been lost to time, it launched a career that would produce eleven novels and short story collections about the game.

Remarkably, Kinsella didn't play or watch baseball until age ten. Born May 25, 1935, near Edmonton, Alberta, he was homeschooled until fifth grade. When he finally got his first at-bat with other children, he hit the ball but didn't know to run to first base, suffering embarrassment that stayed with him for life.

“Children are especially cruel to anyone who is different,” Kinsella said, “and I had all my weaknesses pointed out in no uncertain terms.”

His love for the game grew after hearing the 1946 World Series champion Cardinals on the radio. Steele notes Kinsella became “enthralled with names like Harry 'The Cat' Breechen, Howie Pollet, Red Schoendiest, Terry Moore and Joe Garagiola.”

But it wasn't until his 1979 collection Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa that Kinsella began writing baseball fiction in earnest. “It really was just this wave of baseball literature for the rest of his career,” Steele said. “His thought was, 'If that's what they want, I'm gonna keep writing it until they don't want it anymore.'”

Why baseball spoke to Kinsella's readers

Kinsella and his third wife Ann Knight were Mariners season ticket holders with an almost “religious commitment level to rotisserie baseball,” Steele said. He was also a “card-carrying scout for the Atlanta Braves,” though the role was largely honorary.

For Kinsella, baseball's appeal was its endless possibilities. “There's theoretically no time, you know, baseball can go on forever,” Steele explained. “There's no limit to how far somebody can hit a ball, how far somebody can run to catch a ball. And so he incorporates those types of things. And he says, it's a lot like our day-to-day lives. There's a lot of mundane, really, quite frankly, boring things. And then there are these moments.”

Steele points out that baseball resonates because fans can imagine themselves in the game. “None of us can envision what it's like to be a seven-foot-tall NBA player, but how many of us have watched baseball and thought, 'I can do that?' I mean, Greg Maddux looked like somebody's tax guy.”

A study in contradictions

Kinsella's stories are filled with magic, ghosts, and biblical allusions. Ray Kinsella hearing voices in the cornfield is “like Abraham, Moses or Noah,” Steele notes. Yet Kinsella despised the supernatural and had no patience for believers.

“Look, I think the Bible is a great story,” Kinsella told Steele. “It's not true, but that doesn't mean it can't have really good stories.”

His life motto was simple: “I don't suffer fools gladly.”

Kinsella also struggled with his own father, calling him a coward for returning to the church while battling stomach cancer. Steele believes the father-son bond at the heart of Shoeless Joe was Kinsella working through his own unresolved pain.

“The great thing I think about the novel and the film, is, if you've got a really terrible relationship with people, it's that sense of wanting to do it better,” Steele said. “And if you've got a great relationship, it's that you always want one day more. If you lose a parent, if you had the opportunity to have one day more, at the end of that day, you would want one day more, and I think Kinsella really knew that.”

The movie that 'should never have been made'

The path from novel to film was anything but smooth. Editor Larry Kessenich, then just an assistant who had never edited a novel, convinced Kinsella to expand his short story into a book. Film rights then bounced from studio to studio, usually a death sentence for a project.

Director Phil Alden Robinson seemed an unlikely fit. “Phil wasn't into farming. He's not a spiritual person, not into the mysticism of ghosts and hearing voices,” Steele said. “This movie should never have been made.”

Yet it was, and it became a cultural touchstone. Steele himself only saw the film by chance, opting to watch Field of Dreams instead of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with friends. That decision changed his life's trajectory.

“My favorite line in the novel is when Moonlight Graham says, 'Hardly anybody recognizes the most significant moments of their life at the time they happen,'” Steele said. “And I think that's true for all of us.”

What Iowa fans should know about Thursday's game

The third MLB at Field of Dreams game takes place Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET, broadcast on Netflix, which recently returned the original film to its streaming library. More than 25 Hall of Famers are expected to attend the game at the Dyersville site made famous by the movie.

For Iowans, the game is more than just baseball. It's a celebration of the state's agricultural heritage, family values, and the enduring power of a story about trusting your instincts and following your heart, even when the world tells you otherwise.

As Kinsella himself proved, sometimes the voice in the cornfield knows best.