“If you build it, they will come,” a ghostly voice tells Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams.
After 30 years, that promise is about to come true — although it’ll be brought to you by Geico, not ghosts.
The New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox will play a regular-season game at the Iowa farm where the Costner film was shot, Major League Baseball said in a statement on Thursday. The game will be played next summer on Aug. 13, 2020.
The league says it will build a temporary stadium to accommodate 8,000 fans at the field in Dyersville, Iowa. The field will be built beside the existing “Field of Dreams,” which still stands as a tourist destination for baseball fans.
Judging from the MLB’s announcement video, the new field will be much, much larger than the one Costner’s character built.
The 1989 film Field of Dreams tells the story of an Iowa farmer, played by Costner, who hears a ghostly voice urging him to build a ball diamond in his cornfield. He builds it and “they” come: ghostly versions of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, a squad forever known as the “Black Sox” due to a match-fixing scandal.
The film was based on the book Shoeless Joe, by writer W.P. Kinsella.
Fans hoping to watch the Field of Dreams game will have to make the trip out to Dyersville, some 320 kilometres west of Chicago. Alternatively, the game will be broadcast live on TV.
“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,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “We look forward to celebrating the movie’s enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa.”
The MLB plans to construct its temporary stadium with windows in the outfield walls, so that the surrounding cornstalks will be visible.
″Field of Dreams is an iconic, generational baseball story built upon a deep love of the game that transcends even the most impossible of circumstances. The filmmakers tell a beautiful story that resonates to this day,” White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said.
The event will be the first-ever MLB game played in the state of Iowa.
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