Field of Dreams

Kevin Costner spent part of his weekend in Dyersville, Iowa, to help commemorate the 25^th anniversary of “Field of Dreams.”  The national news picked up on that, if not the controversy surrounding America’s favorite ball field by the corn.

I was a very angry camper in 1989, upset the White Sox were going to abandon a landmark for a free stadium courtesy of our elected leaders.  (The outrageously generous lease agreement based stadium rent on attendance, meaning the worse the Sox did on the field and at the gate, the less they paid; talk about questionable incentives.)  Michele thought seeing the movie might cheer me up.  She was right.

I tend to think the Black Sox took the money in 1919 and threw the Series that year, but I also believe in the quality of mercy, which Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis most certainly did not.  Landis punished the Black Sox, and they got their revenge in a movie.  Call it Hollywood karma.  But Ray Liotta really should have tried to bat left-handed, like Shoeless Joe Jackson.

The news reports said nothing about the turmoil the new owners of the movie site have caused with their development plan.  The mayor and three council members who agreed to a bunch of new softball and baseball fields surrounding the original were voted out of office last November, and a group has filed a lawsuit to stop the city from rezoning farmland for commercial use.  Still, from what I could tell, everyone looked happy watching the movie on an outdoor screen Saturday at dusk, a perfect time for ghosts to move in and out of the corn.