What might have been: Cornfield of Dreams

Joe Mock
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NOTE:  before MLB canceled the Field of Dreams game scheduled for August 13, 2020, I had written this article to provide a preview of the event. It was scheduled to run in the August 12th issue of USA TODAY Sports Weekly. Because it shows what incredible ingenuity and hard work went into creating this very special facility, I am posting it here. Enjoy … but note that the event isn’t actually occurring this year. 

In one of the most famous exchanges in the history of sports movies, the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson asks farmer Ray Kinsella, “Is this heaven?”

Ray replies, “No. It’s Iowa.”

It’s been 31 years since the release of Field of Dreams. The film made non-fans fall in love with the National Pastime, while the ending brought grown men to tears at the sight of Ray and his father playing catch as cars swarmed toward the ballfield carved from a cornfield.

Now Major League Baseball wants to recreate some of that movie magic at another ballpark constructed in an Iowa cornfield. In an event billed as “MLB at Field of Dreams,” the Chicago White Sox will take on the St. Louis Cardinals in Dyersville, Iowa at 7:00 ET on August 13.

Tremendous interest was generated by MLB’s August, 2019 announcement of the event. Fans immediately called hotels in eastern Iowa to book rooms, while pestering the White Sox ticket office for details on how to purchase seats.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 will prevent fans from attending. Fox has the exclusive rights to the event, and will broadcast the game to a nationwide audience.

While many celebrities and pro-baseball players have taken the field for games at the movie site, this will be the first big-league game played there. In fact, it marks the first time MLB has staged a game in the State of Iowa.

“As a sport that is proud of its history linking generations, Major League Baseball is excited to bring a regular season game to the site of Field of Dreams,” said Commissioner Rob Manfred in announcing the event. “We look forward to celebrating the movie’s enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa.”

And in this unprecedented season of only 60 games, it shows the importance that MLB placed on this event to keep it on the schedule.

Brothers in farms

Dyersville residents Adam Rahe (pronounced “ray”), 40, and his brother Andy, 35, farm the fields adjacent to the movie site.

“I remember when we were younger, we had a hayfield that overlooks where the filming was being done,” recalls Andy of the summer of 1988. “We’d sit up there and watch, especially at night. It was a big deal for all of us in the area.”

After the movie became a national hit, tourists started flocking to Dyersville to visit the famous ballfield. “If you saw an out-of-state plate, you knew what they were looking for,” he adds. “We’d have to give them directions.”

The Rahes’ hometown quickly became one of the best-known communities in America. “You can go anywhere in the country or in the world, and if you tell people you’re from Dyersville, Iowa, they say ‘Oh! Field of Dreams!’ That’s pretty neat,” explains Andy.

The brothers learned last summer that they needed to harvest the corn earlier than usual on about five acres of their fields. That allowed construction on the ballpark to begin. “That was a pretty exciting sit-down talk about how we can make it all work together,” he adds. “We were super excited about it. You know, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I don’t think any other farmer has gotten the chance for this to happen.”

Aren’t the brothers out a lot money by not being able to farm those five acres? “Oh, Major League Baseball has been awesome to work with. They made sure that we were always taken care of,” explains Andy.

Adam Rahe understands the importance of the movie. “I think when you’re younger, you don’t think a whole lot about family. As we all age, it brings up a lot of memories of family and the time you spend with them. It’s pretty cool to be that close to a movie that has been so nationally recognized for baseball and, I think, for second chances with family or friends.”

From the windowsill

The ballpark for the MLB game has been carved from a fairly level part of the cornfield about 250 yards from the movie site (in the photo at the top of this page, you can see the farmhouse from the movie toward the upper right-hand corner). In 2015, Todd Barnes, Senior Principal at Populous, was part of a group dispatched to Dyersville by MLB to assess the feasibility of playing a game there.

That site visit left quite an impression on Barnes. “Just being able to see the original ballfield there, the wooden bleachers that Kevin Costner sat on, and the farmhouse, you just feel like you’re on the movie set. It hasn’t changed at all.

“Growing up with baseball, seeing the movie and actually being there to experience it, I felt it deep in my heart.”

Initially, some consideration was given to modifying the ballfield from the movie to use for the big-league game. Upon closer inspection, the field wasn’t level, with right field being about three feet higher than home plate. “It just didn’t seem right to change the conditions there,” he says.

Further, the site is used as a commercial endeavor, as entities rent the field and the farmhouse for corporate outings and baseball tournaments. All of that would’ve been shuttered during the construction of structures for the MLB game.

Barnes relates that he was invited into the farmhouse to look around, and upstairs he found the room where in the movie, Costner’s character sat on a windowsill, looking out at the ballfield he’d created.

While taking in that view, Barnes had the thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to put the ballfield farther out beyond what was left field in the movie?” That part of the cornfield looked to be flatter, plus it was where the ghost players in the movie walked from the cornstalks onto the field.

After a muddy trek through the corn, “we discovered that it was where we wanted to put the (new) ballfield.” Like a kernel of corn planted in the soil, the idea was taking root.

Teamwork

Populous was also involved in a groundbreaking event put on by MLB in 2016. In order to play a regular-season game at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a big-league-caliber facility had to be constructed from scratch on an abandoned golf course on the military base. Because the stands and outbuildings were going to be taken down and trucked off after the game, the phrase “pop-up ballpark” was coined to describe the temporary venue.

In many respects, the game in Dyersville required a similar process, so MLB brought in the same team of design-and-construction professionals as at Fort Bragg (and, interestingly, at 2017’s MLB Little League Classic event in Williamsport). That team includes Populous, BaAM Productions and BrightView. Barnes and his associates at Populous designed the structures for the ballpark, BaAM provided the construction and production expertise and BrightView was responsible for the playing field, dugouts and fencing.

But the site wasn’t without its challenges. “Obviously, we’re in the middle of a cornfield, so there’s no power. There’s no water. There’s none of the things you need to have,” explains Murray Cook, President of BrightView’s Sports Turf Division. After getting the Rahe brothers to conduct an early harvest of the corn in that area a year ago, Cook’s team set about leveling the ground – which required the displacement of about 30,000 cubic yards of soil.

A well had to be dug to provide the irrigation of the sod that was coming – and for the corn that was to be grown within the perimeter of the ballpark. Yes, this is a special ballpark indeed.

“Yeah, one of the chief design considerations requested by MLB was corn, corn and more corn,” quips Barnes.

A memorable aspect of the day of the Fort Bragg game was a blinding deluge that arrived just a few hours before gametime. The playing field Murray designed, though, was ready to go shortly after the scheduled start time. The same sort of system is in place in Dyersville.

“Yes, we have a very robust drainage system under the field,” says Murray. That includes a 5”-deep layer of gravel and drain lines every 15 feet across the field “that will move the water pretty good. We’ve had a couple of gully-washers here that have brought three or four inches of rain in a couple of hours. After those rains, within half an hour or 45 minutes, we could be playing.”

It’s been reported that $6 million has gone into the building of this facility. And even though the stands and surrounding structures will be broken down and hauled off after the game on the 13th is played, some aspects will remain. For instance, the playing field and dugouts will be left in place, making it possible for future Major League or even Minor League games to be played here.

Barnes points out that the success of the Dyersville facility comes from the “rapport between each of us” involved in the endeavor:  MLB, Populous, BrightView and BaAM. “This is not just the A Team,” he adds proudly. “It’s the A-Plus Team.”

Members of the “A-Plus Team,” taken in Dyersville in May, 2015. From left: Todd Barnes, Bobby Sloan, Populous; Ray Salverda, BaAM; Murray Cook, BrightView; Annemarie Roe, BaAM. USED BY PERMISSION

Making Shoeless Joe feel at home

Shoeless Joe Jackson played for the Chicago White Sox. He was embroiled in the infamous Black Sox Scandal, in which the team threw the 1919 World Series. He and seven teammates were banned from baseball as a result, although Jackson’s guilt has been hotly debated for the last century.

Jackson is central to the movie’s plot, so the designers of the new ballfield incorporated both White Sox and Iowa features. The outfield dimensions resemble those of Old Comiskey Park, where the team played from 1910 through 1990, as does the location of the bullpens beyond the outfield fence. There also is a manual, hand-operated scoreboard.

“The batter’s eye is reminiscent in appearance to barns that are in this region of Iowa,” adds Barnes. “The dugouts are made of reclaimed barnwood.”

The modern-day scourge of COVID-19 can also be felt in the design, as the dugouts are an extra-long 100 feet, and the press area accommodates a six-foot space between media members.

And, of course, the virus is the reason fans aren’t going to be permitted at the game.

MLB and the park’s designers hope the fans watching the game on TV will appreciate all of the features incorporated into the park. And the brothers who gave up five acres of cornfields are certainly impressed.

Because they farm the land surrounding the park, “we’ve gotten to be around to watch the whole thing be built,” observes Andy. “It’s interesting watching how a diamond gets built, and how beautiful it all is when it’s all done. It’s pretty breathtaking.”

Since it’s doubtful that they’ll be allowed to attend the game on the 13^th, “we might be watching from the same hayfield where we watched the movie get made. That would be fine with us.”

Adam adds that so far, they’ve stayed off of the playing field, out of respect for all that has gone into the making of the facility. “But after the game, I’m sure we’ll take our families out there and play catch.”

And make some family memories of their own on the new Field of Dreams.

Mock covers sports facilities for USA TODAY publications.