The first chapter of Shoeless Joe begins with the narrator, Ray Kinsella, a young farmer in Iowa, telling us about his father watching a commercial league baseball game in a town in South Carolina and describing a baseball player, nicknamed Shoeless Joe. The narrator says that his father had told him that, “No one has ever been able to hit like Shoeless Joe” (1). Ray recounts how three years ago, while sitting on the verandah of his home, he heard the voice of a ballpark announcer saying, "If you build it, he will come" (1) in “scratchy Middle American” (2).Ray interprets this announcement as an instruction by a ballpark announcer to build a baseball field in one of the cornfields at his farm.Ray believes that the "he" that the voice refers to is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Black Sox player who gained infamy for his role in a bribery scandal that brought disrepute to the 1919 World Series.

At first tempted to dismiss the two announcements and the vision of the baseball field as a crazy dream, and abandon it, Ray decides to finally build it when his wife Annie encourages him by saying, “Oh Love, if it makes you happy you should do it” (4).