Film icon Kevin Costner has paid tribute to his Field Of Dreams co-star Ray Liotta, who died earlier this week at the age of 67.
As it turns out, one memorable moment in the beloved baseball film wasn’t planned. It just happened, and Kevin’s reaction was genuine.
“Devastated to hear the news of Ray Liotta’s passing,” he wrote on Twitter. “While he leaves an incredible legacy, he’ll always be ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ in my heart.
“What happened that moment in the film was real. God gave us that stunt. Now God has Ray.”
According to the film’s trivia page on IMDb, Ray Liotta had no previous experience playing baseball before Field Of Dreams, and trained for the role with legendary USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux, developing the swing that led to that surprising on-camera moment.
Ray did have one regret about his performance: the real-life hit leftie, while he himself was right-handed. Although he tried to learn to hit left-handed, it just didn’t work out and he had to move back to his natural side.
“To this day I regret it because I’m a bug, making sure things are accurate,” the Goodfellas star said in the Field Of Dreams DVD extras, per the New York Post.
“There used to be Monday Night Baseball and they were talking about the movie and how wonderful the movie was and some announcer who shall remain nameless said, ‘Yeah, but Shoeless Joe was batting the wrong way.’ Well, he didn’t come down from heaven either, so... ”
Ray died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was filming a movie called Dangerous Waters.
No cause of death has been given and no foul play is suspected.