Ron DeSantis takes issue with casting of Ray Liotta in ‘Field of Dreams’

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to discuss a movie with particular relevance to both him and the state of Iowa.

In Clinton on Saturday, the Florida Governor discussed the 1989 classic “Field of Dreams,” but unlike previous times when he brought up this movie to the delight of Hawkeye State crowds, he pointed out a key casting detail that director Phil Alden Robinson got wrong.

DeSantis noted that “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, a real-life baseball player who was central to the plot of the baseball flick, “in real life was from Greenville, South Carolina and he was a left handed hitter.”

But in casting the film, it seems the choice wasn’t made for biographical authenticity, DeSantis noted.

“The actor that played Shoeless Joe was Ray Liotta, who’s from Brooklyn and he’s a right handed hitter and obviously Shoeless Joe hit, left Ray hit right,” DeSantis said. “I guarantee you that Shoeless Joe’s accent was not the same as Ray Liotta’s accent, but you know, somehow the movie worked even with that and it was really good,” DeSantis noted.

The Governor has made anecdotes about the movie a part of his Iowa stump openings, and much of the material was otherwise rehashed, including son Mason asking him when he saw the field in person if he was in “Heaven.”

Interestingly for those who have followed ongoing accusations that DeSantis is a book banner (which the Governor calls a “hoax”), the movie deviates from the plot of the novel the book is based on. In that version, the protagonist is urged to build a baseball field, but is also urged to kidnap author J.D. Salinger. The litigious and reclusive mid-20th century author threatened to sue if his name was used in the film, alas.

However, in a scene that could have been ripped out of Florida headlines around school book bans today, the renamed author “Terrence Mann’s” books are facing a ban for “endorsing promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races, and disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States Army.”

The Miami New Times contends that more than 1,400 books have been banned in Florida schools since July 2021.

Book banning has actually come up during his presidential campaign as well.

In June, DeSantis told a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids removal of work from the National Youth Poet Laureate from a Miami Lakes elementary school had nothing to do with him, but coverage of “the poem ban hoax” nonetheless illustrated “the dishonesty of legacy media outlets.”

“This had nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with the state of Florida. There was a school in Miami-Dade that had a book of poems. I guess the poet was involved with Joe Biden’s inauguration,” DeSantis said.

He was referring to the work by Amanda Gorman being removed from a Miami Lakes Elementary School after a challenge in which the author was misidentified as Oprah Winfrey.

“So I don’t know, but it was a book of poems and they decided that it was more appropriate in the middle school library than in the elementary school library,” DeSantis said regarding “The Hill We Climb,” which was read at President Biden’s inauguration.

“So they just moved the book, you know, to the next library and the media tried to say that somehow that was being banned because something like the state of Florida was doing, I mean, it was a total fabrication and a total hoax.”

The Associated Press reports the literary work is on the “restricted list.” Miami-Dade clarified the book is now part of the “middle grades collection” in a tweet that didn’t mollify critics.