New York Yankees play the Chicago White Sox at the Field of Dreams

It was ages ago and I had just started as a sportswriter of the Jersey Journal in Jersey City. 

About two weeks before that, Neil Milbert had began with the same daily newspaper, and in the same sports department. I had come over from the Long Island Press and he had traveled in from the mid-west, a small area in Iowa named Dyersville.

Now, many years and years ago, I am in Santa Fe and he’s in Chicago, and so I gave him a call to talk about Thursday night‘s Major League Baseball game between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

We had kept in touch all this time, and I no doubt knew more about Dyersville then I did before.

An excellent sportswriter, Milbert was born and raised in Dyersville. He and his mom and dad lived about one mile from where the Field of Dreams sits right now. He played semi-pro baseball there when it was just one of several fields in the area.

“I’ve got people calling me,” he said Thursday, “and asking if I was going to be there. I laughed and told them that I would watch the event on TV.”

He added, though, that it would not be played on the diamond where

Field of Dreams was made into a what became a very popular movie in 1989, that it would be played on the adjacent field also next to the cornfields that stood there for the movie, where the ghosts came out of, where the house that featured star Kevin Costner lived in with his wife and still stands.

The actual site still stands and is maintained as a tourist attraction. In the movie, dutiful farmer Ray Kinseller — played by Costner — played catch under the lights in the movie’s most poignant scene.

A fence separates the two fields, and on the fence at the front of the house is a neat sign that says “BUILD IT,” which is what they did, emphasizing that to read “build it and they will come.” And that they have.

Now, with a population of about 4,400, more then when Milbert and family lived there, tourists arrive daily with cameras, take shots of where the field stood, the cornfields, and even the house. He said its about 30 miles from Dubuque and not far from Drake University.

“What happened way back then,” Milbert said, “was as they put the film together they needed volunteer ghosts to come out of the cornfields, and my cousin was one of them, and still talks about it.”

Milbert added that it’s all farmland there and there’s plenty of land to play ball there, maybe even two more fields. Otherwise, it’s fine the way it is now.

More then three decades after Field of Dreams seeped into the country’s cultural consciousness, with a one-year delay caused by the pandemic, one of the most famous cornfields in Hollywood history, now gets to host real Major League ball.

The proud and quintessential Midwestern state, usually only in the spotlight every four years during presidential campaigns, has the home team, the White Sox, and Yankees playing at a temporary venue built for about 8,000 in tiny Dyersville.

And this time the ball playing isn’t friction. “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other long-ago players who took the field in the movie, will be replaced by Jose’ Abreu and Aaron Judge. The one constant through all the years has been baseball.

Dyersville found its place on the map through the movie that starred Costner, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta and Amy Madigan, but the sport has been entrenched in the town for more than a century.

Commercial Club Park is where the team from Beckman Catholic High School and the local semi-pro club (and Milbert) played, a spot as much of the heart of the community as the well-kept farms around it. About one-third of the crowd Thursday is expected to be Iowa residents.

Says Dyersville mayor Jim Heavens: “I see a lot of people as I travel around the state, and when they find out you’re from Dyersville, they all know about this MLB game. It kind of warmed my heart to see that the people of Iowa are so honored that this is happening.”

Both teams will wear throwback uniforms going back to 1919 when Jackson played for the White Sox and was one of eight players banned for fixing the World Series. The history of that team is one of the many themes woven into a film that transcends sports.

One thing, the original movie site was quickly deemed too small for a standard game, so the made-for-the-moment ballpark required removal of 30,000 cubic yards of material and the installation of 4,000 tons of sand and 2,000 tons of gravel. The bullpens were designed to mimic those at old Comiskey Park, the former home of the White Sox, and there’s even a just-for-fun corn maze beyond right field.

Build it and they will come, that’s for sure.

Credit Neil Milbert with his assistance regarding this story.