The Man for All Seasons.

James Earl Jones and sports: an American experience

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It’s so hard to unhitch James Earl Jones from the seminal scene in the movie “Field of Dreams.” First, it involves a dramatic rendering of a speech. If James Earl Jones were reading the menu at the Waffle House, you’d sit through it in pure rapture until he decided he was finished. The man could deliver a line.

Second, though, that scene, the “people will come” scene — that’s the whole ballgame. That is almost everything that the movie, based on the novel “Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella, was pointing toward in all of the moments that preceded it. And Jones’ performance elevates all of it and negates the mawkishness that seeps into other scenes in the film. He even nails the low-key great lines, like, “For it’s money they have, and peace they lack.”

So yes, no one will separate Jones, who died Monday at age 93, from the heart of one of the most famous sports movies ever made. But if you can believe it, that actually shorts James Earl Jones’ contributions to sports media — and the American experience — during his rich, varied career.