The permanent “Field of Dreams” stadium in Dyersville will host the first major league game at the site in four years when the Minnesota Twins play the Philadelphia Phillies next Thursday night.
Jeremiah Yolkut, Senior Vice President of Global Events for Major League Baseball, said the setting drives home what the movie was all about. “Being able to come back to ‘Field of Dreams’ and come back to Dyersville and, certainly, come back to Iowa is something that is really important for the league to be able to continue to program these special event games at different times of the year,” he said, “in locations that are not always getting Major League games.”
During an online news conference hosted yesterday by Major League Baseball, Yolkut told reporters there’s “real plumbing” at the site now, a reference to restrooms for fans in the stands, and he noted there are now permanent locker rooms for the players. “It didn’t take away the authentic ways in which the fan will come to venue on the original field, they’ll walk through the corn as they did four years ago,” Yolkut said, “and so I think of it now as the perfect blend of the nostalgia of the movie and being on a farm watching a baseball game, but having some of the creature comforts that I think people seek out when they’re coming to big events.”
Yolkut indicated Major League Baseball worked closely with Dyersville officials as they were designing the ballpark. “Much the way that we would for a Major League club who’s building a new ballpark,” Yolkut said. “…It’s a scale that’s much smaller than what the Athletics are building in Vegas, but there are some things that are interchangeable and so we wanted to make sure that it was easier for our broadcast partners, for the fans and everybody involved to be able to be able to put on the game in the future and I think you’ll see that they achieved that and certainly took a lot of that feedback into consideration.”
The dimensions of the field for the Major League games staged in Dyersville in 2021 and 2022 are the same, but the stadium now has permanent seating for 8000. Murray Cook, the Official Field Consultant for Major League Baseball, told reporters a farm property has been turned into a Major League venue. “There’s a lot of corn though,” Cook said. “The corn’s nice and tall, so we’re excited how that’s cropped up this year.”
In addition to Thursday’s Twins-Phillies game, events at the field start Tuesday with a Triple A game featuring the Iowa Cubs and St. Paul Saints. Yolkut said the High School All-American game will be played in Dyersville on Wednesday, in front of a crowd of scouts. “We’re not only showcasing the best MLB players,” Yolkut said, “but we’re also showcasing the next generation of players that will come along.”
The games on Tuesday and Wednesday will be shown on the MLB Network. The Twins-Phillies game will be on Netflix. Gabe Spitzer, Vice President of Sports for Netflix, said Kevin Costner, the star of the movie, will be part of the broadcast in some way, but he isn’t confirming whether Costner will be on the field. “The ‘Field of Dreams’ game represents the best of sports,” he says. “It highlights baseball in its purest form. It showcases a lot of the game. It’s a communal experience. It’s nostalgia.”
Spitzer told reporters the goal is not to overshadow the game that will be played on the field. “It’s a game that matters, obviously, for these two teams in the playoff chase and it’s this iconic venue and I think we want to let that do most of the work,” Spitzer said. “…It’s August baseball, right?…Both these teams are in the wildcard chase, so we have to make sure it’s, you know, game broadcast first.”
Netflix broadcast the season’s Opening Night game between the Yankees and Giants as well as the Home Run Derby on July 13. “The only thing we can root for is an ending as dramatic as we had at the Home Run Derby in this game,” Spitzer said, “and some good weather.”
Friday has been reserved on the schedule for a make-up game if there’s bad weather Thursday. “I’ll say I’ve learned a lot more about Iowa weather as I’m checking that out, because obviously we want to make sure we get this game in,” Spitzer said. Local people hired for the “tarp crew” are going to start their training this weekend.
Major League Baseball officials say 25 Hall of Famers will be at the Field of Dreams game, the largest gathering of Hall of Famers since the 2008 All-Star game.
