MLB Field of Dreams: Reviving ‘America’s Pastime’ in America’s Heartland
Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams showcase succeeded in grand fashion and romanticized baseball for one goosebump-filled night on national television.
On Thursday, roughly thirty years after the tiny Iowa town of Dyersville hosted Kevin Costner and crew for the filming of one of the most iconic baseball movies in American history— Field of Dreams— MLB turned back the clock and sent Americans on a nostalgic journey by hosting its first official Major League game, an American League matchup between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees, in the Hawkeye State.
According to USA Today, the game was originally scheduled to be played between the Yankees and White Sox last year, however the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to that plan.
However, it’s safe to say that it was worth the wait as this matchup wasn’t just an ordinary run-of-the-mill regular season game. No, in fact, baseball fans were treated to an old-school, traditional American baseball game in a makeshift field with a wooden scoreboard surrounded by a field of corn stalks. Prior to first pitch, players from both teams rendered tribute to Costner’s 1989 film by entering the field through that same sea of corn stalks.
Speaking of Hollywood and movie sets, the roughly eight thousand fans in attendance plus players and staff in attendance could visit and enjoy the old Field of Dreams movie set— which sat behind the right field fence.
In typical Hollywood fashion, the Field of Dreams game broke MLB’s sixteen-year record for most watched regular season game with a total of 5.9 million viewers across FOX Sports and FOX Deportes. Yes, the nostalgia played a huge factor in the ratings boost, but the game itself was actually a tightly contested matchup between two historical franchises as well.
Led by stellar pitching performances and a couple of early home runs, the Sox dominated the Bronx Bombers for just about the entirety of the game; that is until the ninth inning. Fueled by two, two-run home runs by sluggers Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the mighty Yankees took a one-run lead over the first-place White Sox. However, that joy would be short-lived as Chicago’s All-Star shortstop, Tim Anderson, would break their hearts in the next half inning.
The Yankees and the White Sox combined to slug eight home runs in the game, including Anderson’s two-run walk-off blast into the sea of green corn stalks that sealed the game for the South Siders.
Before the game, Major League Commissioner Robert Manfred Jr. confirmed that the MLB would in fact return to Dyersville next season, however the matchup has yet to be announced.
The Field of Dreams Game was part of Manfred’s attempt to revive baseball as ‘America’s Pastime’ and keep the game relevant in a country that seems to continue to gravitate to more lively and action-packed American leagues such as the National Football League and the National Basketball Association.
While the Field of Dreams Game was a step in the right direction, it’s going to take a whole lot more than one yearly nationally televised regular season game to draw more fans towards the game on a consistent basis. Needless to say, the effort is commendable and respectable.
Manfred and the MLB built it, so the fans, players and their families came. But there’s still work to do before Americans can start calling baseball ‘America’s Pastime’ once again.