A few years after the release of the 1989 film, “Field of
Dreams”, we made a stop in Dyersville, Iowa on our way back from Minnesota, to
our home in Illinois.
At that point, the house and baseball field looked exactly the same as they did in the
movie. I pitched a few balls to Brian from the pitcher’s mound, and the two of us
slowly walked the bases.
Naturally, there were souvenirs available, so I bought a
t-shirt.
Since I’ve made a lot of trips to the gym since then, my upper body has bulked up. Also, since that time, I’ve also consumed a “sufficient” number of beers, so the medium size shirt that I bought is too small. I’ll never get rid of it, but it is now cosigned to the darker recesses of the front closet.
There have been countless movies made about the baseball over
the years, but two of my favorites are “Field of Dreams” and “The Natural”.
There’s an old saying that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be –
but that’s not always the case.
One of races that NASCAR staged this year was at the track in
Bristol, which had been converted to a dirt track so that fans could get a taste
of what stock car racing used to be like before the days of super speedways and
enormous racing budgets.
Major league baseball also took a stab at nostalgia just
recently, when the league constructed an 8,000-person capacity stadium a short
distance from the field that was used in the movie. The game that was played on
August 12, and it pitted the Chicago White Sox against the New York Yankees.
The film ended with a simple game of catch. The game, as it turned out, ended with a home run, by Tim Anderson of the Chicago White Sox. With one on and one out in the bottom of the ninth inning, he drove a fastball from the Yankees’ Zack Britton into deep right field. The ball disappeared into the corn beyond the fence, the White Sox won, 9-8, and fireworks exploded over Dyersville.
Anderson, 28, was born in
Alabama four years after “Field of Dreams” was released. He is Black, so he
never could have played in the segregated majors of 1919, when gamblers bribed
some of the White Sox to lose the World Series to Cincinnati. Costner’s
character, Ray Kinsella, builds the field as a haven for the damned, but lots
of other old-timers (all white) also show up to play.
The players cut a path through
that corn to explore the movie site before batting practice. Britton said he marveled
that the stalks were even taller than Judge, who is 6-foot-7. Liam Hendriks,
Chicago’s closer, roamed the little white farmhouse from the film and made sure
to sit on the porch swing.
This event was received so
warmly, Commissioner Rob Manfred said, that the league would stage another game
here in 2022.
Baseball is no longer the most
popular sport in America, since major league football has increased in popularity
in the last 20 years – but there is still magic in baseball.
“..
the memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces
.. the one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball ..Americans
rolled by like an army of steamrollers .. they’ve been erased, rebuilt, and
erased again .. but baseball has marked the time .. the field, the game .. It’s
a part of our past .. It reminds us of all that once was good, and could be
again .."
If major league makes another trip to Dyersville next year, I
live too far away to attend the event. However, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart
(in Casablanca) I’ll always have the t-shirt.
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