They built it, now they will play there

The MLB is building it, and the Yankees and White Sox will come. In some kind of tribute to the 31st anniversary of the iconic baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” the two teams will play each other on August 13, 2020 in Dyersville, Iowa, where the baseball classic movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed.

It will be the first-ever major league game in Iowa.

There is an obvious tie-in for the White Sox here: With its links to W.P. Kinsella’s 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe” — which is based on Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919 Black Sox scandal — the White Sox were an obvious choice to host this thing.

But the Yankees tie-in? Well, they just have a big, global fan base, and have been happy to participate in MLB’s attempts to branch out and expand its reach. Plus, Aaron Boone and Aaron Judge are excited about it.
 “I had heard little whispers about it earlier this entire year but I hadn’t heard much about it lately. To see it and see the Aaron Judge commercial, I think it’s great,” Boone said. “I was part of Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN when we went to Fort Bragg, and the first in Williamsport. It’s a special thing that they do and I’m sure they’ll do a great job of getting it ready and recreating. It’s such an iconic movie. To go there, I think it’s something we’ll all start to look forward to.”

Judge is featured in the commercials that MLB released to promote the game on Thursday. Recreating a clip from the movie, Judge jogs out to the first-base line, turns and delivers one of the most memorable lines from the movies. “Is this heaven?” a serious Judge asks before the camera cuts to the movie’s star Kevin Costner, who laughs and replies, “No, this is Iowa.”

They participated in the first-ever regular season game played in the UK this season. The two-game London Series featured the premium rivalry of the Yankees and the Red Sox.

An 8,000-seat temporary ballpark will be constructed on the Dyersville site. A pathway through a cornfield will take fans to the ballpark, which will overlook the famous movie location. The right field wall will include windows to show the cornfields beyond the ballpark. The ballpark’s design will pay homage to Chicago’s now-demolished Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox from 1910-1990. It will replicate the shape of the outfield, as well as the bullpens beyond the center field fence.

This is just one of several marquee games that MLB has created to take the regular-season games outside the normal 30 big league cities. It held a game in Omaha earlier this season to highlight a connection with the NCAA College World Series and are playing their third game at the Little League World Series this year.

The Thursday night game will be a White Sox home game, and the opener of a three-game series. The teams will have Friday off and then resume the series Saturday back at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago. Logistically, this will be an easier detour than this season’s London Series, which required 7,000 miles of travel and three off days for a two-game series in a soccer stadium that produced two barely watchable games.

But travel logistics aside, it’s the different atmosphere these games produce that really stands out to Boone.

 “Going back to Fort Bragg, I don’t know what the attendance was there, but it was small and intimate. It was all the people that lived on the base. It was a really neat experience," the Yankees skipper said. "This will be different than that obviously, but I would imagine the same kind of cool intimate but also feel like I really big deal. It’s something that we’ll start to look forward to.”