Playing to Win

The Bronx boasts the House That Ruth Built, but only Silver Lake can claim the Tommy Lasorda Field of Dreams. Dedicated in 1990, the public baseball field off Glendale Boulevard was given its unwieldy name in tribute to the legendary Dodger manager and, apparently, the 1989 corn-patch-to-ballpark Kevin Costner vehicle.

In 1993, the Field of Dreams began hosting a weekly kickball game that bore only a passing resemblance to America’s pastime. Each Sunday afternoon a couple dozen twentysomethings--myself included--arrived bearing beer, mimosas and a large red rubber ball. The “rules” were vaguely those of baseball’s, except that it was permissible to bean base runners to get them out. (There was also an Infield Dog Rule, which held that a ball that caromed off a pet wandering the base lines was playable.) Players who kicked home runs were rewarded, somewhat redundantly, with beer. Our own private kickball culture was enshrined in pitcher Courtney Holt’s ‘zine, Kickball Action News (columns included Ask the Red Ball). Kickball jerseys blossomed, too, with “numbers” inspired by Gen X cultural milestones, or perhaps millstones--

The games dried up after three years or so, but the Field of Dreams seems to have conferred a charmed existence upon an uncanny number of its young players. Noah Wyle (“ER”), Vince Vaughn (“Swingers,” “The Lost World”) and “Swingers” writer and co-producer Jon Favreau kicked the red ball before their current eminence; Jenji Kohan won an Emmy as one of the writers of HBO’s Tracey Ullman series “Tracey Takes On . . . “; Morgan Neville and Harry Pallenberg wrote and directed the 1996 documentary “Shotgun Freeway”; Scott King was executive producer of this year’s indie film “Star Maps”; and third-base regular Craig Spirko directed a yet-to-air season of MTV’s “Road Rules.”

Tommy’s park also nurtured love. In November 1995, while stretching before a game, Christopher Noxon and Jenji Kohan first laid eyes on each other. Last summer, Chris brought her back to the Field of Dreams, where he dropped to a knee and offered her a rattling red rubber ball. Inside was a diamond ring. She said yes.