October 19, 1990: "Dances With Wolves" Premieres

October 19, 1990: Dances With Wolves premieres, starring and directed by Kevin Costner, who wanted to make what's known as a "revisionist Western," taking the side of the Native Americans.

A decade earlier, another revisionist Western, Heaven's Gate, saw its costs run out of control, nearly put United Artists out of business, and became the standard by which all subsequent box office flops have been measured. When the price tag for Dances With Wolves grew, people began joking that it was Kevin's Gate.

But it not only made money, it was nominated for 12 Academy Awards. It won 7. Costner won for Best Picture and Best Director, but not for Best Actor. Graham Greene (the Native American actor, not the British novelist born Henry Graham Greene) was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Mary McDonnell was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1995, having had this success, and those of the baseball-themed films Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, Costner began to think he was commercially bulletproof, and made Waterworld. It became the 1st film ever to cost $200 million, and the Kevin's Gate jokes started again. But Waterworld made money, too.

So he really pushed the envelope: His next project was The Postman, based on a novel that was half-Western, half-post-apocalyptic story, set in 2013 Oregon. Released on Christmas Day 1997, this one did flop. Costner has made more movies, but he's never again been the big star that he was.

*

October 19, 1990 was a Friday. Actress Ciara Renée was born.

Game 3 of the World Series was played at the Oakland Coliseum, and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Oakland Athletics, 8-3. Tom Browning outpitched Mike Moore, and Chris Sabo hit 2 home runs. Harold Baines and Rickey Henderson hit home runs for the A's, and former Yankee Willie Randolph went 3-for-4, but Mark McGwire only went 1-for-4, with a single, and Jose Canseco went 0-for-4. The Reds completed the surprising sweep the next night.

The NBA season began 14 days later. There were 6 games played in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat their arch-rivals, the New York Rangers, 3-2 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Washington Capitals, 4-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins played to a tie, 4-4 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditoirium.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Vancouver Canucks, 7-5 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Boston Bruins, 8-1 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. This was a rematch of the previous season's Stanley Cup Finals, with the same result.

* And the Los Angeles Kings beat the Hartford Whalers, 5-2 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

And in New Jersey high school football, my Alma Mater, East Brunswick, in Middlesex County, playing at home at Jay Doyle Field, defeated the school now known as West Windsor-Plainsboro South, of Mercer County, 35-7. It was the 1st time we had ever held Homecoming at night.

August 12, 2021: The 1st MLB Field of Dreams Game

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.

*

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.

July 13, 1999: Old Ted Williams at the All-Star Game

In 1999, The Sporting News listed its 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Ted Williams, often called "the greatest hitter who ever lived," with a .344 lifetime batting average and 521 home runs, was ranked 8th, the highest-ranking left fielder.

For the sake of perspective, here are the 7 players ranked ahead of him: Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig and Christy Mathewson. That's 4 of the 1st 5 guys elected to the Hall (Ruth, Cobb, Johnson and Mathewson, but not Honus Wagner), a .340 lifetime hitter (Gehrig), and the guys who used to be the top 3 home run hitters ever (Aaron, Ruth and Mays). Although it probably pleased him that only 2 of the guys ahead of him were pitchers.

That year, Ted was named a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, to be chosen in All-Star-style balloting by the fans.

July 13, 1999: Many of the finalists for the MLB All-Century Team were introduced before the 1999 All-Star Game, which was held at Fenway Park in Boston, where Ted Williams had played his home games from 1939 to 1960. After the other finalists were introduced by actor Kevin Costner (since he'd done baseball-themed films), Ted, 77 years old and weakened by a stroke, was driven onto the field in a golf cart, and tipped his cap to the fans, something he had always refused to do while he was playing.

When the cart stopped, all the greats, current and former, crowded around him, like he was the Pope about to offer blessings. A path had to be cleared for them so he could be eased to a spot in front of the pitcher's mound, where he would throw out the ceremonial first ball to another finalist, former Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk. The man then thought of as the best pure hitter in the game, Tony Gwynn, helped steady him so he could properly throw. Gwynn played for the major league edition of the San Diego Padres, in Ted's hometown. Ted had played for the old, minor-league version of the Padres.

He'd had a stroke, and he was nearly wheelchair-bound, and needed help walking to the mound. His famous vision had already gotten so bad, he couldn't see Fisk from the mound during the Fenway pregame, and was heard to ask, "Where is he?" When he finished his throw, he was led back to the cart, and the players were still crowding around him. It might have been the first time people had come to a baseball game, and were hoping it wouldn't be played, that the pregame could go on forever.

Oh yes, the game: The American League won, 4-1.

The fans voted, and, naturally, Ted was elected to the final All-Century Team. Every player elected to it and still living showed up at Turner Field in Atlanta, to be introduced before Game 2 of the World Series between the Braves and the Yankees. Ted tipped his cap again, and Atlanta fans, who never got to see him play (never mind Interleague play, the Braves didn't move to Atlanta until he was already elected to the Hall of Fame), gave him a standing ovation.

It was his last time in a major league ballpark. He had another stroke, and was practically immobile after that. He died on July 5, 2002, at age 83, at Citrus Memorial Hospital in Inverness, Florida.

*

July 13, 1999 was a Tuesday. As this was the All-Star Break, and no other North American sports were in season, there were no other scores on this historic day.

June 15, 1988: “Bull Durham” Premieres

June 15, 1988: Bull Durham premieres. At around this time -- unusual for me, I can’t remember the exact date, but it was in May -- I got a job as an usher at Movie City 5 in East Brunswick.

So I got to see Susan Sarandon naked and get paid for it. In 1988, that was a big deal. But after 2016, when she joined the group of people stabbing Hillary Clinton in the back, I now feel dirty.

Sarandon met Tim Robbins on the set, and were together for 21 years, longer than most Hollywood couples that actually have gotten married.

In one night game scene, it looks like Robbins and Kevin Costner were smoking (or vaping) on the mound. The movie was filmed in the Winter, and it was cold in Durham, North Carolina.

The movie inspired a few catchphrases, from Kevin Costner as Crash Davis telling Robbins' Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh, "Don't think: It can only hurt the ballclub"; to Trey Wilson as manager Jim "Skip" Riggins' rant about the players being "Lollygaggers!" Robert Wuhl as pitching coach Larry Hockett spouting faux wisdom and near-gibberish baseball jargon almost certainly inspired Daniel Stern's character in the 1993 baseball film Rookie of the Year.

And a few months later, Major League would be almost the same movie, with a banged-up old catcher, his intellectual girlfriend, a wild pitcher, a holier-than-thou player (although, unlike in Bull Durham, the Major League one was a hypocrite), and a player practicing voodoo. One big difference: Major League ends with a Playoff game, as the Cleveland Indians put together a late surge; while Bull Durham ends ambiguously, as the last time we see the Bulls, they're rained out, the season appears to still be in progress, and where they finish in the standings is never mentioned.

The movie gave a big boost to the minor leagues. Several teams, including the real-life Bulls, saw their attendance go way up. New ballparks were built to replace unsafe old ones. In New Jersey, for example, there were zero minor-league teams in the 1993 season, which didn't seem all that odd, given that there were 2 major-league teams in New York City and 1 in Philadelphia, plus a Class AAA team in Scranton, 53 miles from the State Line. But in 1994, Trenton got a Class AA team, and Sussex County a Class A team. By 2001, there were 8 minor-league teams in the State -- although that would be down to 4 by the 2016 season, as the minors' boom finally fizzled out.

*

June 15, 1988 was a Wednesday. Football was out of season. The NHL season had been over for 3 weeks, as the Edmonton Oilers swept the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals. The NBA Finals were between Games 4 and 5, and the Los Angeles Lakers went on to beat the Detroit Pistons, 4 games to 3.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 8-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Bruce Hurst was the winning pitcher, while Al Leiter didn't get out of the 3rd inning. Ellis Burks and Spike Owen hit home runs for the Red Sox, Dave Winfield hit one for the Yankees. Rickey Henderson went 1-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Don Mattingly did not play.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-4 at Shea Stadium. Ron Darling was the winning pitcher. Darryl Strawberry hit 2 home runs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Montreal Expos, 6-2 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-5 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Cleveland Indians, 15-3 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 5-3 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 1-0 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Jeff Robinson pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Mike Boddicker. The only run came in the bottom of the 2nd inning, when Dave Bergman hit a sacrifice fly to score Luis Salazar.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Barry Bonds went 1-for-4.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Seattle Mariners, 5-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Paul Molitor went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 4-2 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Tony Gwynn went 2-for-4.

* The Texas Rangers beat the California Angels, 6-3 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). The Rangers got RBI singles in the top of the 10th inning from Larry Parrish, Pete O'Brien and Cecil Espy.

* And the Kansas City Royals beat the Oakland Athletics, 2-0 at the Oakland Coliseum. Charlie Leibrandt pitched a 2-hit shutout, outpitching Bob Welch. George Brett went 2-for-2 with a walk and an RBI.