Utah still hasn't learned the Field of Dreams rule of highways: if you build it, they will come. 

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There may never have been a truer line in all of cinema than the mysterious, whispered proclamation made to Ray Kinsella in the movie Field of Dreams. Kinsella (played by the actor Kevin Costner) was searching for the source of the mystical ballplayers who led him into his Iowa cornfield when he heard the words, "If you build it, he will come."

"Huh, build what?" he asked. Well, a ball field of course, build a ball field. So, he did.

The rest is the stuff of cinema history. Few grown men ever admit that they cried like babies during the scene when Kinsella understands that the "he" who will come (after building a ball field) is none other than Kinsella's long dead father. Oh, my, God.

United again, father and son "have a catch" and, at that moment, anyone who ever swung a bat, caught a fly ball or tore his pants sliding into second base began to sniffle. Or so they tell you. (They actually sobbed but won't admit it. If you still have trouble admitting it, watch the scene on YouTube).

I admit it, I cried. I still cry thinking about it. Who wouldn't want to play catch again with their father—or symbolically anything else they could do one more time with any lost loved one?

My first public cry, though, was in 1991, when I was walking down Decatur Street in New Orleans during the filming of JFK. I was there for a convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), and the film crew kept following another car around our hotel. Kevin Costner, (playing the role of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, known for his investigations regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy), was in the car that the film crew was filming.

At one point, production halted near me, and I spotted Costner. I mouthed the words, "Do you want a catch?" and he nodded. So, I tossed him a fake baseball, and he fake-caught it. He still has my fake baseball since the cars were soon off again on another lap, and he didn't toss back.

That was it. I then quickly headed off in the opposite direction to the Central Grocery Store for a muffaletta—not for the giant, famous, juicy sandwich, but for some giant napkins to wipe my eyes. I mean, who wouldn't want to play catch—even fake-catch—with Kevin Costner?

I'd ride a horse up to wherever Costner is filming in Utah these days (he's always filming in Utah, it seems) to see if he remembers that fake catch, but I can't even ride a fake horse nowadays. Ahh, he wouldn't remember, anyway. I'm not even a memory glint in his eye all these years later, and if he has any pain at all, I'm the last one who could ease it. Besides, it's likely that only teary-eyed little boys like me remember that the original line was, "If you build it, he will come" and not, "If you build it, they will come."

That second usage of the quote is slightly incorrect because the character Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) does indeed tell Ray that if he builds the ball field, "they will come." Yeah, a sniggling point, but Mann doesn't connect the building thought with the coming thought in a single sentence. Yet, people are prone to say, "If you build it, they will come" as if it were Field of Dreams gospel.

The quote has taken on its own life as a result. This is especially true when it comes to developers and Realtors—most of whom will experience a triple bypass before ever catching a glimpse of a triple play.

You also hear it when new highways are being built. And just like magic, new roadways are indeed built and subsequently filled with angry commuters, bisecting areas once home to jack rabbits and the bones of unsolved murder victims.

Last night, I turned on the news right when a segment aired featuring City Weekly news editor Benjamin Wood. Wood was speaking on behalf of the nonprofit Sweet Streets that he volunteers with, expressing dismay over the endless sprawl and road construction just north of Salt Lake City and elsewhere.

Wood is an expert on sensible community development that includes workable partitions for pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit that benefit residents and business owners. He's not a fan of the West Davis Corridor and the traffic and pollution it will generate. The primary support for the corridor comes from state legislators and the Realtors, developers and builders who have them in their pockets.

I won't see Wood today, but I'd tell him to keep speaking out, because few others are. I remember the Interstate 15 segments being built in the 1960s. In the 1970s, I watched the I-215 Belt Route being built—the name inferring that it circled most of the Salt Lake Valley's residents, and it did at the time. Later came the Bangerter Highway and also a fully rebuilt I-15 with an even wider torso.

To the north came the Legacy Parkway and so much road mayhem that the area around Lagoon is taking on the look of Los Angeles' Bill Keene Memorial Interchange. To the south, Utah County just kept making I-15 wider and deadlier. Their cherry orchards are gone, too.

Salt Lake City, theoretically a prime benefactor of more highways, is on edge as certain high-profile businesses are threatening to leave town, for—you guessed it—the former beet, corn and hay fields that are now home to over half the population in Salt Lake County. Yes, "they came," all right, but in the opposite direction.

When it comes to development in Utah, nostalgia and preservation are not invited to have a catch at all. The ball is always dropped. Trouble is, nobody sheds a tear.

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