Yankees and White Sox to Play on 'Field of Dreams' Diamond in 2020
If you build it, they will come, including Major League Baseball.
Under a backdrop of corn as high as an elephant’s eye, the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox will play a regular season game Aug. 13 next season on the diamond in Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie "Field of Dreams" was shot in 1988, multiple sources told SI. The game will be broadcast by Fox.
The venue will feature more seating than it did in the movie, when Ray Kinsella, a corn farmer played by Kevin Costner, included a small bleacher section on the first-base side of the baseball field he carved out of his cornfield. Later this month MLB will begin construction on a temporary, 8,000-seat ballpark at the site.
Remaining in all its cinematic glory will be the cornfield in the outfield–whence emerged eight actors portraying the banned players from the 1919 White Sox, led by Joe Jackson–and the adjacent red barn and two-story white clapboard farmhouse.
(In 1988 the corn, which was taking too long to grow for filming, needed irrigation to reach its proper height. Severe spring rain and flooding this year delayed the planting and growing seasons in Iowa.)
The movie, released in 1989, received three Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture.
In recent years Major League Baseball has played regular season games in Fort Bragg, N.C., Williamsport, Pa., and Omaha, Neb., in addition to international venues, including London this year. The "Field of Dreams” site for an MLB game was suggested here on SI.com as far back as 2013 and again in 2015.
The Dyersville field has operated as a tourist destination since the movie became one of the most popular baseball films ever made. MLB will need to reconfigure the outfield dimensions for the game between the Yankees and White Sox. The corn begins 280 feet from home plate down the leftfield and rightfield foul lines and 300 feet in centerfield.
