August 12, 2021: Major League Baseball holds its 1st "Field of Dreams" game. For all that MLB officials have gotten wrong, this was one time when they really got it right.
The story begins in 1982, with the publication of Shoeless Joe, a novel by W.P. Kinsella. The book's narrator is Ray Kinsella, a farmer in Iowa, who cuts down a section of his corn to build a baseball field, after hearing a voice say, "If you build it, he will come." At first, he believes that "he" is Shoeless Joe Jackson, a great hitter and left fielder who helped the Chicago White Sox win the 1917 World Series and the 1919 American League Pennant, but was one of 8 White Sox players banned from baseball for life for their role in purposely losing, or "throwing," the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
Ray tells of his father, John Kinsella, who lived in Chicago at that time, who considered Jackson his all-time hero, and never believed any of the charges against Jackson -- who, like the other 7, was acquitted of criminal charges. Baseball banned them anyway. John was already about 60 when Ray was born, and when Ray was 17, they had a falling-out, and Ray left home. They never saw each other again.
Upon seeing the field, Jackson comes back to life. He brings the other "Black Sox" back with him, and eventually players from other teams whose careers came to unfortunate ends, through mistreatment, or injury, or death.
A scene in the book, but not in the movie, tells of an old farmer near Ray who tells of being the oldest living former Chicago Cub, but Ray looked in The Baseball Encyclopedia, and didn't find the old guy's name. Hence, he's lying. But a young version of the guy comes out of the cornfield in a period-accurate Cub uniform, and gets clobbered, paying for his older version's lies. The older version dies shortly thereafter, and is buried beneath center field, wearing a modern Cubs cap.
Finally, another figure appears: John Kinsella, looking younger than Ray ever saw him, wearing a New York Highlanders (forerunner of the Yankees) uniform, even though he never got out of the low minors. This allows them to reconcile.
In 1989, a film version was released, titled Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner as Ray, Amy Madigan (a big White Sox fan in real life) as his wife Annie, Ray Liotta as Jackson, James Earl Jones as reclusive writer Terence Mann (they changed it from the book, where the writer was J.D. Salinger, because they wanted to avoid a lawsuit), Frank Whaley as the young Archie "Moonlight" Graham, Burt Lancaster as the older Dr. Archibald Graham, and Dwier Brown as John Kinsella.
The movie is loved by baseball fans, but more for its fantasy than its accuracy. For example, Liotta batted righthanded, even though Jackson was a lefthander. Most fans consider the previous year's Bull Durham, starring Costner as a minor-league catcher, to be the better movie. Maybe, but Field of Dreams is the better story.
The farm where the main action was filmed is in Iowa: 4 miles east of downtown Dyersville, 25 miles west of Dubuque, 77 miles northeast of Iowa City, and 210 miles northwest of Chicago. Don Lansing, who owned the land, maintained the field as a tourist attraction -- farming being a hard way to make a living at the time, probably a good idea. He staged games between retired players and celebrity teams.
Unlike the mortgage-saving maneuver in the movie, where $20 a pop was charged to see the ghost players, Lansing did not charge for admission or parking, but made extra cash from a small souvenir shop he'd built. By the time he sold the property in 2011, to Go The Distance Baseball, LLC, for $4.5 million, it was getting 65,000 visitors a year. By 2018, Go The Distance had a controlling interest bought by White Sox Hall-of-Famer Frank Thomas, and attendance had gone up to 100,000 a year, due to the number of events being staged there.
Someone gave Thomas the idea to stage a regular-season game there, and it was set for August 13, 2020, a Thursday night, between the closest team to the site and the team most identified with the site, the Chicago White Sox, who would thus be the "home team"; and baseball's most popular team, but also its most hated: The New York Yankees.
The COVID-19 epidemic wiped out 2/3rds of the 2020 baseball season, and made it impossible to build the 7,800-seat stadium, adjacent to the original Field of Dreams, in time, although the new field would have been ready. So the game was rearranged for a year later, August 12, 2021.
The "major league" field at left, the original field at right
The dimensions of the field were set at those of Comiskey Park, the White Sox' home from 1910 to 1990, at the time of its closing: 352 feet down the lines, 380 to the power alleys, and 402 to center. But no fence: The corn acted as the "outfield wall," and anything hit into the corn on the fly was a home run; while any ball that bounced and rolled into the corn was a ground-rule double. There were modern amenities: Lights, a video board in left field, and, in another tribute to Comiskey Park, a fireworks-shooting system built into the center-field corn.
MLB and Fox Sports went all-out, beginning the broadcast by having Costner walk out of the cornfield into center field, across the field, and to a microphone at home plate, where he made a short speech about how the movie reminded us all of the beauty of the game. Maddie Poppe, winner of American Idol in 2018 (at that time, a show on Fox, now on ABC), sang the National Anthem.
Both teams wore replica uniforms like those they wore in 1919. Lance Lynn started for the White Sox, and Andrew Heaney for the Yankees. The White Sox scored first, in the bottom of the 1st inning, on a home run by José Abreu. More home runs were hit: For the Bronx Bombers, Aaron Judge in the 3rd, and Brett Gardner in the 6th; for the South Side Hit Men, Eloy Jiménez in the 3rd, and Seby Zavala in the 4th.
The 9th inning provided a storybook ending for this fanciful setting. Judge hit another home run, and Giancarlo Stanton also hit one, turning the score from 7-4 White Sox to 8-7 Yankees. But with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th, Zack Britton walked Zavala. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you. The next batter was Tim Anderson. He hit a drive to the opposite field, and even the very tall Judge couldn't catch it. Home run. Ballgame: White Sox 9, Yankees 8.
The fireworks went off, just as they would have from 1960 to 1990 at Comiskey, or since 1991 at the stadium now named Guaranteed Rate Field. It was the 15th time in their shared 119-season history that a White Sox player had hit what would now be called a walkoff home run against the Yankees. The 1st time? It just had to be, and it was: By Joe Jackson, on July 20, 1919, in the season commemorated by the book, the film, and the game.
Fox announcer Joe Buck said, "Well, you can throw the party, but you never know how it's going to turn out." Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, Buck's broadcast partner, said, "Unreal."
Len Kasper, the radio voice of the White Sox, said, "I’m not really sure MLB could have done an event better than the Field of Dreams Game. Yes, the game was bonkers and the finish was Oscar worthy, but the entire thing — the scenery, the park, the weather, the people involved, the vibe — it was just perfect. Unforgettable experience.”
It was a great idea. It was a great production. And it was a great game. For me, the only bad part was the result.
A 2nd edition was played on August 11, 2022. Again making some sense, it was the National League's turn this game, with the other Chicago team, the Cubs, facing the team the White Sox played in the 1919 World Series, the Cincinnati Reds. The Cubs scored 3 runs in the 1st inning and coasted the rest of the way, winning 4-2.
There will be no game at the site in 2023, as the site is adding facilities to house youth baseball and softball. No one wants to see construction equipment shattering the fantasy. "It's a lot going on," Frank Thomas told the Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest newspaper. "They don't want to come back if the stadium's not prepared." Hopefully, the game will resume in 2024, and become baseball's answer to the NHL Winter Classic.
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August 12, 2021 was a Thursday. These other MLB games were played on that day:
* The New York Mets swept a doubleheader from the Washington Nationals at Citi Field, 5-4 and 4-1. Under the rule thankfully in effect only in the 2020 and 2021 seasons, doubleheader games were limited to 7 games each.
* The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-1 at Fenway Park in Boston.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-4 at Camden Yards in Baltimore.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 12-3 at Truist Park in the Atlanta suburb of Cumberland, Georgia.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
* The Oakland Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians, 17-0 at Progressive Field in Cleveland. Mitch Moreland hit 2 home runs. Chris Bassitt (6 innings) and 3 relievers pitched a 3-hit shutout.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago Cubs, 17-4 at Wrigley Field.
* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the San Diego Padres, 12-3 at Chase Field in Phoenix.
* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-3 at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
* The San Francisco Giants beat the Colorado Rockies, 7-0 at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Logan Webb (6 innings) and 2 relievers pitched 4-hit shutout.
* The Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers, 3-1 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
* And the Houston Astros, the Kansas City Royals, the Miami Marlins and the Minnesota Twins were not scheduled.
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