More than three decades after “The Field of Dreams” took its place in the collective imagination, and one year behind due to the pandemic, one of Hollywood’s most famous cornfields will finally be the theater of a major baseball game on Thursday evening.
The Yankees-White Sox clash will take place next to the site that was used in the 1989 feature film. The original site remains a tourist attraction.
“Is this paradise? John Kinsella’s ghost asked in the movie that inspired the match.
“No, it’s Iowa” answers his father the farmer played by Kevin Costner, before they throw the ball under the reflectors, in the most touching scene of the film.
On Thursday, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the other players from another era will be replaced by Jose Abreu, Aaron Judge and company.
The proud state of Iowa, embodying the essence of the Midwest, has a habit of only making headlines for four years, in the pre-election period.
A big league match will be played there for the first time.
It will be in a temporary stadium of about 8,000 seats in Dyersville, home to just under 4,400 people.
“I walk around the state and when people hear you’re from Dyersville, they all know about the game,” said city mayor Jim Heavens. It is a real source of pride to receive Major League Baseball. ”
The film stars Costner, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta and Amy Madigan, among others.
The original production site was soon declared too small for a game. At the new location, where 4,000 tonnes of sand and 2,000 tonnes of gravel were deposited, we also wanted the enclosures to resemble those of old Comiskey Park, the former home of the White Sox.
For fun, we even added a maze in the corn, beyond the right field.
Summer is particularly hot and dry in this part of the country. We have therefore installed an irrigation system so that the harvest looks good on TV (the match will be broadcast on RDS). You want the corn to be 10 or 12 feet high.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t end up with browned corn,” said Chris Marinak, who heads major baseball operations and strategy.
Both clubs will have uniforms reminiscent of 1919, when Jackson, playing for the White Sox, was among eight players banned for rigging the World Series.
The story of this team is one of the many themes covered in “The Field of Dreams”, a film that goes far beyond sport.
