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| Kevin Costner as Ray in "Field of Dreams" [source: NBC CT] |
Jackson, as you may recall, was banned from baseball along with seven other members of the Chicago White Sox after they were accused but not convicted of "throwing" the 1919 World Series.
Early in the movie, Ray becomes obsessed with thoughts of Shoeless Joe, and begins to hear a voice saying, "If you build it, he will come."
At first, Ray doesn't know what to make of the strange voice and its mysterious prediction. But eventually he gets the message, runs a plow through a field of corn, and builds a baseball field.
To his amazement, Joe Jackson and several of his teammates -- or their ghosts -- appear just beyond the outfield, walk through the cornstalks and onto the field, and begin to play.
But this amazing event is only the beginning, because by the end of the movie, huge crowds of people are coming to Ray's farm to watch the ghosts play ball.
That's the plot in a nutshell, and it truly is a bizarre fantasy, so it seems crazy to make much of it. But there are a couple of key points which I should mention.
When he's building the baseball field, Ray is vaguely hoping to attract Shoeless Joe, and he's surprised to see him, of course -- but he's even more surprised to see so many of Jackson's teammates. Later, Ray is again surprised when so many people come to the games. And, presumably for these reasons, the movie has been promoted and remembered by the line, "If you build it, they will come."
At least this is how some of us remember it. Other people remember the voice in Ray's head as saying "If you build it, they will come."
And when these people watch the movie again, they are surprised to hear the voice say "he" rather than "they."
What could this mean? Who changed the movie? Why would anybody change a movie?
It's hard to imagine a motive, but there is no doubt that the movie has been changed, because the voice that used to say, "If you build it, they will come," now says, "If you build it, he will come."
For the people who remember it differently than it is now, this is very difficult to understand. At first they say, "Something very strange is going on here."
But as they learn more about what's going on here, it doesn't seem so strange anymore, and they start to say, "This looks like another manifestation of the Mandela Effect."
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