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“If you build it http://www.royalsfanproshop.com/authentic-ryan-goins-jersey , he will come.”Puh-lease.Thirty years after the release of “Field of Dreams,” it’s time for a major reassessment.Sorry, all you folks who view baseball — and this movie — as some sort of timeless metaphor for connecting to your past and understanding what America is really all about.In reality, it’s just another terrible film.If you can somehow get past all the factual errors and horrible casting — Ray “Goodfellas” Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson? — you realize this is nothing more than an epic helping of corniness, passed off as some of ethereal fantasy that gets to the deeper meaning of life, which apparently is nothing more than the chance to play one more game of catch with your athletically challenged dad.Like so many people, I remember gushing over “Field of Dreams” after it was released on April 21, 1989, but that was also a time when I still clung to the schmaltzy belief — pushed by folks such as George Will and Bob Costas — that baseball was more than a sport. It was the national pastime, a slow-moving game that somehow managed to epitomize all that is great about our country on a patch of grass and dirt marked by 90-foot paths.Or as James Earl Jones’ character, reclusive author Terence Mann, tells Kevin Costner’s Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella, in one of the film’s signature scenes: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”Can someone pass a barf bag?That sequence gets to one of the major problems with “Field of Dreams,” which conveniently ignores the ugly racial history of baseball and America, even though it chose to cast Jones, one of our most esteemed African-American actors, as a central character. (In the novel the movie was based on, “Shoeless Joe,” the reclusive author was J.D. Salinger Justin Grimm Jersey , but the filmmakers were apparently afraid of a lawsuit if they referenced him, so they came up with a fictional character instead).Jones’ Terence Mann, we’re told, was a 1960s firebrand whose push for social change was so radical that an Iowa school wants to ban his books. Yet he’s mesmerized by a cornfield that features a bunch of players from an era when Major League Baseball was for whites only.To briefly recap, Costner’s Kinsella is the owner of a struggling Midwest farm who, while wandering through his stalks one evening, hears an ominous voice command, “If you build it, he will come.” This leads to him to mow down part of his crop to construct a baseball field, even though this will likely cause his financial ruin. (It’s never explained why using a small patch of land on a farm that appeared to be hundreds if not thousands of acres would cause it to go under, but we digress).We also learn that Kinsella had a troubled relationship with his father, who idolized Jackson despite him being implicated in the Black Sox scandal. One day, Jackson appears on the field in his Chicago uniform, and he later returns with the other seven players who were accused of taking payoffs to throw the 1919 World Series.We also find out from Shoeless Joe that they won’t let the ghost of Ty Cobb play because he wasn’t a good guy.No jerks allowed on this field!But you fixed a World Series?No problem.After hearing more voices, Kinsella takes off for Boston, winds up kidnapping Mann, goes to a game at Fenway Park, travels on to Minnesota to pick up the ghost of Moonlight Graham (portrayed by Burt Lancaster in his final film role and based on a real person who played one game in the major leagues, didn’t get a chance to hit and went on to become a doctor), reveals a falling-out with his father over the Black Sox, returns to Iowa to watch more ghosts playing ball and — well — blah, blah, blah.Moving ahead to the spoiler alert: Graham finally gets a chance to bat against big leaguers (though, strangely, he hits a sacrifice fly, which still doesn’t count as an official at-bat even for a ghost) and Mann follows Jackson and all those players into the corn stalks (apparently to integrate baseball in the great beyond). Then Kinsella gets a chance to play one last game of catch with his dad, who was on the field the whole time but obscured by his catcher’sgear, and throws like someone who’s never picked up a baseball in this or any other life.“Field of Dreams” was a success at the box office and a hit with the critics http://www.royalsfanproshop.com/authentic-ryan-goins-jersey , who apparently skipped all the scenes with Liotta portraying Jackson, who was born, raised and died in South Carolina. Liotta played Jackson with the same wise-cracking demeanor and New York accent that would fit the part much better the following year, when he portrayed a turncoat mobster in an actual movie classic, “Goodfellas.”The baseball flick was nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards — losing to “Driving Miss Daisy” in what was clearly a down year for the film industry — and added to the National Film Registry for its historical significance in 2017. No mention was made was all the cliche leads the movie’s best-known line would inspire from lazy sportswriters (yep, me included) every time a new stadium was built.If you want to watch Costner in a baseball movie with some entertainment value, may we suggest “Bull Durham.”“Field of Dreams” deserves to be ghosted. We all know the Orioles aren’t going to be any good this year. The PECOTA projection puts a number on how bad: 57 wins."Not too many years ago, an annual ritual for Orioles fans was to survey the various expert projected records for the upcoming season and then imagine with glee how wrong they would be. That game is over, for now. As this year’s PECOTA projection was unveiled today at Baseball Prospectus, the only thing there really is to say in response to their 57-105 record is, “That sounds about right.”Gone are the days of the Orioles blowing past their projected win total by 15+ wins in three out of five seasons, at least for now. The PECOTA system was one of the first harbingers of doom for the 2018 O’s, seeing a 69-93 record for last year’s squad. If only it had been so good. Where they were once double-digit wins too low, in 2018, PECOTA was 22 wins too high.You probably won’t be surprised to learn that this is the worst projected record for any team by far. The closest team is nine wins better, a 66-win projection for the Marlins. The other 100-loss teams from last season, the Royals and White Sox, check in at 71 and 70 wins, respectively, in their 2019 projections.The specific projections are, not surprisingly, no more pretty than the record. This is a team that is expected to score the second-fewest runs in the AL, with 655 runs scored. They are expected once again to be the worst team in MLB at allowing runs, with 910 expected runs allowed. That’s worse than even last year’s 892 runs allowed. It’s not going to be pretty. The only difference between this year and last is that we know it ahead of time.The ugly foundation on which this whole house is built are the player projections. They are gruesome, too. How gruesome? How about: No one expected to throw a pitch for the Orioles, starter or reliever, will have an ERA lower than 4.39. Of the five pitchers projected to start the most games for the team, four will have ERAs higher than 5. At least Blaine Boyer Jersey , that’s what PECOTA says. This is very close to what happened last year.This would not be a great beginning for the Mike Elias rebuilding project. The record doesn’t matter. The fact that seven or eight pitchers may have a revolving door of failure as 4th/5th starters doesn’t matter - only Dan Duquette’s platoon of failed pitching evaluators ever believed those guys might be good or even acceptable, anyway.What would be unfortunate for the Orioles building for the future is if even their next wave of trade bait underperforms. It’s a sad thing looking at a team before the season even starts and knowing that anyone with value is getting dealt for prospects in July, but that’s how it has to be for the O’s for the next couple of years. If they’re good, they’ll be gone.Worse still if they’re not even good. Mychal Givens with a 4.59 ERA as a closer would probably not fetch very much. Dylan Bundy with a 4.64 ERA, probably the same thing. On the hitting side, a .242/.306/.421 batting line for Mark Trumbo or a .245/.311/.382 batting line for Jonathan Villar aren’t going to inspire dreams of July mega-deals either.One thing that can be said about this year’s team is that there is room for improvement. After last year, duh, of course there is. While I think even the most starry-eyed optimist would have a hard time concocting a scenario where the O’s get above, say, 70 wins, I like the O’s chances to squeeze out a few more wins just from having Elias and his newly-hired nerds providing information to a coaching staff that can actually apply that information to specific players in a meaningful way.Perhaps I’m the biggest idiot of all for really believing in this possibility. Maybe the 2018 Orioles were bad because Duquette assembled a collection of players who were operating at their best and still completely outmatched. After having watched way too much of those losers, I don’t think that is what was happening. Nothing could have made those dopes into a playoff team, but smart, modern thinkers could have probably made them better than they were.Defense is one big area where things could get a little better with mostly the same people. The 2018 Orioles were the worst team in MLB at turning balls in play into outs with a .310 BABIP. An Opening Day lineup with three real outfielders would be huge. An analytics department that can figure out what pitchers should be throwing and where the fielders should be standing would also be huge.The PECOTA projection doesn’t expect a whole, real outfield. The most playing time in left field is Trey Mancini at 45%, followed by Joey Rickard at 35%. If that’s really how left field looks for 80% of the season, that’s not much fun. If Chris Davis doesn’t have a miracle rebound, it will be brutal to watch him bat 536 times as PECOTA projects. I suspect new manager Brandon Hyde will not live up to those and other playing time projections.There’s not much that anyone can do to change the fact that this season is going to suck. The Orioles are not going to win very much. They were never going to win very much. That’s not part of the plan.If fans and the team are lucky, some surprises will emerge. Perhaps Renato Nunez can continue serving as a decent stopgap at third base rather than ending up with his sad PECOTA-projected .687 OPS. Maybe the Richie Martin Rule 5 experiment at shortstop will go better than a .203/.256/.321 batting line.And maybe someone, anyone, can manage to look like a competent starting pitcher and stay healthy in the process. Luis Ortiz, Dillon Tate, Yefry Ramirez, David Hess, John Means - please, someone surprise us and save us. Thank you. If enough things go right, maybe the Orioles will only lose 99 games.