Hurling speaks for itself. It’s already built and they will come

Field of Dreams was on TV last week. Too difficult to believe, too impossible to love, it had us thinking not about Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Casement Park or a new Leinster venue close to the M50 – “build it and they will come” – but just how precious hurling is to a lot of us as baseball is to people here in America.

James Earl Jones, in that distinctive baritone voice of his as the JD Salinger-inspired Terence Mann figure, delivers the stirring ode to the game in assuring Kevin Costner’s character of Ray that he is right not to sell his Iowa farm, part of which he has transformed in a baseball field where old ghosts meet to play.

“Ray, people will come, Ray, They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. ‘Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,’ you’ll say, ‘It’s only $20 per person’. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.