THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
We've had the cruise control set at 70mph for over two hours since we left the bustling college town of Ames on a bright, breezy, warm July day, cruising down Highway 20 in our rented Chevy Malibu through the American heartland. We've seen little other than big sky, verdant corn fields as far as the eye can see and the occasional pig farm. Welcome to Iowa.
My wife and I have just spent a couple of pleasant days visiting her company's headquarters. I'd accompanied her there during a five-week American work-cation from our current home in Dublin, Ireland to my native environs in nearby Wisconsin, made plausible in the post-Covid remote/office hybrid working world.
We approach the town of Dyersville in the mid-afternoon sunshine, population 4,477, about 25 miles west of Dubuque, an old river town on the Mississippi River, which forms the Iowa-Wisconsin border. We've decided to break up the trip back to the Wisconsin side at a roadside attraction just outside of town. A place I've never been, but which nonetheless has a bit of a place in my heart.
We pull off the four-lane highway and drive through a typical, tidy mid-American town of well-trimmed lawns and American flags, home to both the Dyer-Botsford Doll Museum and the National Farm Toy Museum. But they are not why we're here.
We head on through town, back into the countryside out Dyersville East Road. A right turn about three miles out of town and our destination appears out of the cornfields on our left, down a little country lane. A big white farmhouse next to a red barn set on a rise above something about as all-American as you can get: a well tended baseball field. We're here. The Field of Dreams.
You'll find baseball fields in every town and village from one end of this land to the other, from 'sea to shining sea' so to speak, so that in itself isn't particularly special. What sets this one apart is its origins. It was built for the 1989 movie titled Field of Dreams, which starred a young Kevin Costner and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
In the opening stages of the movie, Costner's character, Ray Kinsella, is an Iowa farmer who one day, while walking through his cornfields, hears a disembodied voice that says, "If you build it, he will come."
At first he is bewildered, but he then has a vision of a baseball diamond in his cornfield, with 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, a real-life player who was caught up in the 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" scandal to purposely lose the World Series, standing in the middle, and is convinced he must build a field for Jackson (who died in 1951, by the way). Ray then talks his doubtful wife Annie, played by Amy Madigan, into letting him plow up a portion of their corn crop – in the process endangering their livelihood – and build the field.
As the months pass and nothing happens, Ray starts to doubt, until one night as he and Annie are discussing whether they can afford to keep the field, their adorable little daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann) interrupts, "Daddy, there's a man out there on your lawn." Sure enough, it's "Shoeless" Joe (played by Ray Liotta).
After fielding a few fly balls from Ray and hitting a few bombs into the corn beyond the outfield and meeting Annie and Karin, Joe asks if he can bring some of his friends next time: "There's more of us you know." "I built this for you," Ray says.
As Joe jogs toward the rows of corn at the edge of the outfield, he turns and shouts back "Hey, is this heaven?" Ray smiles and pauses before answering "No. It's Iowa". As Joe reaches the corn, he steps in and disappears. Ray, with a steely look in his eye, says "We're keeping this field" as he turns to Annie, who replies "You bet your ass we are."
And sure enough, here it is. The dirt infield, the wooden light poles, the chicken wire backstop, the wooden stands, the bases, the green, green grass, and yes, those majestic rows of corn.
There are a handful of others here, on this warm and sunny Friday afternoon, some just strolling around, some tossing baseballs, and a few brave souls stepping up to the plate to knock a few balls around the infield. It's all open and accessible. We park and step onto the field ourselves, walk the bases, sit a spell on the bleachers, and then wander down the right field line to the edge of the corn to turn back toward the infield and take in all in from the different angle.
We stroll to centerfield, and I step in amongst the leafy stalks towering 3 feet above my head so that my wife can film me emerging from the corn. I utter the immortal "Is this heaven" line, and my wife giggles as she answers about it being Iowa. It's silly and oddly touching at the same time. Kind of like the movie itself.
When Universal Pictures built the field in 1988 for the movie, they chose the site largely for the picturesque farmhouse, which was owned by the Lansing family. But the baseball field itself extended onto the adjacent farm, which was owned by a family named Ameskamp, as the filmmakers needed a clear line of site with the farmhouse for their sunset shots.
After the film crew wrapped up and went back to Hollywood, the Lansing family decided to keep their section of the baseball field and open it to the public, installing a souvenir shop adjacent to the first base line and taking donations for the field's upkeep. However, in an example of life imitating the tension of the movie between the romantic folly of a baseball field versus the cold hard value of a cash crop, the Ameskamps planted corn on their portion, which ran across left field and the third-base side of the infield.
The following year, though, perhaps sensing they were missing a trick and that maybe people actually would come, the Ameskamps restored their portion of land to the baseball field and opened their own shop. This rather uneasy truce lasted, with tensions simmering between the two families regarding the commercialization of the site, until Rita Ameskamp eventually sold out to Don and Becky Lansing in 2007.
"You're going to lose the farm, Ray," says Annie's brother Mark – the voice of reason – in the next scene. "Your stupid baseball field is going to bankrupt you, and everyone knows it," Mark adds.
Meanwhile, "Shoeless" Joe returns from the corn with the other seven suspended members of the Black Sox team, and Ray and Karin go out to watch. As Mark gets ready to leave, it becomes apparent that he can't see the players playing on the field.
Toward the end of the movie, as enough players have started coming out of the corn to play full games, Mark – who still can't see the players – comes to confront Ray during one of those games and force him to sell the farm. "But what about the baseball field?" Ray asks. "Do realize how much this land is worth?" Mark screams.
Then little Karin chimes in, "We don't have to sell the farm. People will come from all over… and they'll drive up and want to pay, like buying a ticket."
As things get heated with Mark serving Ray with foreclosure papers which Ray refuses to sign, Karin tumbles off of the bleachers. She is saved from choking by one of the players named "Moonlight" Graham, who in real life was called up to the Major Leagues on the last day of the season in 1905, didn't get to bat in the game, and then never played in the Majors again.
Later in life he went on to become a small-town doctor. As the young Graham – whom Ray had brought to the field to live out his dream – steps off the field, he morphs into older Dr. Graham. After he dramatically saves Karin, Mark can suddenly see the players, and the error of his ways, and it dawns on him there's more to the field than a lost cash crop. "Keep the field, Ray," he says as he walks back to the house.
And people do come to this day. 100,000 or so people every year pull in to step out of the harried hustle-bustle of their lives, soak up the atmosphere and pay homage to the movie and the game of baseball itself, a game so woven into the fabric of American life.
In 2010, the Lansings sold the farm to a private partnership called Go the Distance, who maintained public access to the field and rented out the farmhouse for overnight stays and announced plans to develop the land around the original movie site.
Major League baseball got into the act in 2021, hosting a regular season game between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox on a field built 500 feet across the corn from the movie field. 7,832 fans watched a spectacle that included an appearance by Kevin Costner and the players emerging from the corn. Chicago's Tim Anderson capped the evening by hitting a walk-off homer into the cornfield to give the Sox a 9-8 win.
In 2022 MLB returned, as the Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-2, with Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. having a catch in the outfield before the game, joined by other fathers and sons – and daughters.
In 2021, former Chicago White Sox legend and Hall of Famer Frank Thomas purchased a controlling interest in the Go the Distance concern. On September 6, just 2 months after we were there, ground was broken on a planned $80 million development that will feature nine new ballfields, team dormitories, a fieldhouse and permanent stands for the Major League field.
The development will eventually include a 104-room boutique hotel across the road from the Field of Dreams, as well as an RV park and outdoor amphitheater near the movie site.
The Go the Distance folks have assured people that that none of the work on what is being called "Project Heaven" will impact the original movie site. A range of 70 to 85 acres separates the movie site from work currently being done for the sports complex to the north.
"We won't compromise the integrity of the field," according to Chief Operating Officer Dan Evan. "We're going to enhance the property. People on the field right now, they don't see any of this (construction), and they never will."
"Build it and they will come" indeed.
As the players and the older Dr. Graham head back to the cornfield after Karin is saved, "Shoeless" Joe lingers. He looks at Ray and says, "If you build it, HE will come." Ray is confused, as all along he thought he had built the field for Jackson. But Joe looks knowingly towards home plate where a catcher is just removing his gear. He turns, and Ray realizes it's his own father, John, as a young man. Throughout the film, Ray has talked about how he became estranged from his father, and that not reconciling with him before he passed away is the biggest regret of his life.
Annie and Karin leave the two alone to talk. Ray tells him that he catches a good game, and his father says, "It's like a dream come true," before asking if it's heaven. "It's Iowa," Ray replies, before asking "Is there a heaven?" "Oh yeah," John answers, "It's a place dreams come true." Ray looks around at the ball field under the fading light of a summer's eve, his wife and daughter swinging on the porch of the house. "Maybe this is heaven," he opines.
As his father heads back towards the cornrows, Ray calls out, "Hey Dad, want to have catch?" And as night falls, the camera pans out on the pair tossing the ball as cars pull into the drive, an endless stream of headlights tailing off into the distance as far as the eye can see.
Back in the here and now, my wife and I stroll back to the infield. Assorted baseball gloves and some balls are scattered by the backstop for people to use. "Want to have a catch?" I ask. We grab a ball and toss it around, a simple, timeless, joyous pleasure, here in the middle of Iowa on a warm July day. And my mind wanders to my own father, who passed his lifelong love of baseball to his sons, and how that connection continues on to my own children.
As we head back to the car to head on down the road and on with our lives, I think again of the movie. It has a special place in my heart, and brings a tear to my eye every time I watch it to this day. But it is also pure schmaltzy Hollywood emotional manipulation really, treading such a fine line between touching emotions and feeding on them. Frankly a silly movie full of plot holes so big you could drive a truck through, but endearing all the same.
And I wonder what $80 million will do to the place. In some ways it's just like the movie, balancing on an equally fine line between honoring the spirit of the game and crass monetization, milking the public for all it can get versus paying homage to those things that money just can't buy.
A baseball Mecca in the middle of the Iowa cornfields could possibly be a wonderful thing if it's done right, a boon to the local community and a showcase of the spirit of the game. Or it could drain the life and magic right out of the place.
I'll hope for the former, but either way, we captured a bit of the magic that day. Our own little slice of heaven, a few precious moments on the ever-rushing road of life, to carry with me, suspended in time, like a movie I can watch again and again.
