‘Field of Dreams’ site to finally welcome MLB

DYERSVILLE, Iowa — If you build it they will come ... eventually.

After a year-long delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees soon will be traveling to the small town of Dyersville, Iowa for the state’s first-ever major league baseball game.

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The two teams will play in a stadium inspired by the film “Field of Dreams,” surrounded by a cornfield, only a year after the game was supposed to originally take place.

“I will never forget that day where we got that phone call that we kind of knew was coming last year with a postponement of the game,” Roman Weinberg told KCRG. “We saw it coming, but it was a week prior to the game, so it was disappointing, it took the wind out of our sails a little bit.”

Weinberg is the director of operations for Go the Distance Baseball, the group that owns the site where “Field of Dreams” was filmed.

The game is now scheduled for Aug. 12.

The MLB field, which will hold about 8,000 people, will be near the filming location for “Field of Dreams,” because the Iowa cornfield does not have the normal dimensions used in the MLB. But the field where the teams will play will be accessed by a path cut through the cornstalks and there will be a view of the corn through windows in the rightfield wall, the MLB said. It will also be inspired by Comiskey Park, home to the White Sox from 1910 through 1990.

Once the game is done, the field will remain and will be under the control of Go the Distance Baseball that will determine the future use of the facilities, MLB said.

Town leaders expect many more to come into the area, so they’re organizing an event called Beyond the Game which will highlight The Hawkeye State.

“If someone from New York who has never been to Iowa before they can go through this area and kind of get a feel for what Iowa has to offer,” Karla Thompson, the executive director of the Dyersville Area Chamber of Commerce told KCRG.

There will also be a country music concert and an official viewing party for the game.

“This is holy grounds of baseball,” Weinberg told KCRG. “The fact that it is being held here is fitting, to say the least, for the first-ever regular-season game in the state of Iowa. It is humbling, but it is a testament to everything that this field means and the fact that it is not lost on major-league baseball.”

If you can’t get to Iowa, the game will be broadcast on Fox, the MLB said.

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