Whose Field of Dreams?

I consider myself fortunate to have such a child as my daughter, who took to baseball even faster than I did. She was hitting wiffle-ball line drives before the age of four. She was already cheering for Frank Thomas by then. The Big Hurt had no bigger fan than the Little Hurt. We took her to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, twice during grade school, the summers after second and sixth grade, if memory serves. The second time, Clare was lining baseballs to the alleys, and, yes, they rolled out to where those spectral White/Black Sox stepped out of. The picture I have of her in her stance in front of the corn remains one of my favorites. By the time Michele and I stopped at the field in the fall of 2013, the property had already been sold to a group of investors. The field that viewers saw Thursday night wasn’t the site used for the movie; it just felt like it. And that was enough for Clare to say, “I’m probably the only person under thirty to care about this.” Out of the mouths of babes… Indeed, I wonder how many of the players from either the Yankees or the White Sox felt the connection to Dyersville my daughter did. And, really, why would they? Many if not most of them had played at similar facilities in the minor leagues; this one was just closer to the crops. And hardly any of them admitted to ever having seen the movie, let alone read the book “Shoeless Joe” that it was based on. Affection for the book, the movie, the site comes mostly from adults seeking one more game of catch with a now-gone parent; the rest comes from rare birds like Clare. For me, there was no magic to Thursday night beyond Tim Anderson providing walk-off heroics, that and watching the game with my daughter and grandson. Try as I might, I couldn’t detect any ghosts caught on-screen. According to a story in Thursday’s Tribune, the idea for a major-league game originated with the lead investor as a way to rekindle interest in the project; the idea of a travel-sports complex in the corn didn’t catch on quite as much as she had hoped. I doubt if many fourteen-year olds care about W.P. Kinsella or Kevin Costner or Shoeless Joe Jackson after a full day of playing—or not playing—under the summer Iowa sun. Maybe some of their parent and coaches, but apparently not enough to make for the financial bonanza investors envisioned back when the 193 acres sold for $3.4 million. Plans now call for a waterfall and pizza restaurant at the site. Who goes to Iowa for the pizza or the falls? It’s the ghosts that make Field of Dreams special, along with memories of pitching to a precocious twelve-year old.