Baseball plans game at Field of Dreams, but will they come?

DYERSVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Spurred by a voice telling him, “If you build it, he will come,” the Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner dutifully carved a baseball field out of his cornfield and then watched as Shoeless Joe Jackson and his Chicago White Sox teammates strode out of the stalks and onto the Field of Dreams.

Major League Baseball is building another field a few hundred yards down a corn-lined path from the famous movie site in eastern Iowa but unlike the original, it’s unclear whether teams will show up for a game this time as the league and its players struggle to agree on plans for a coronavirus-shortened season.

The owners of the Field of Dreams and residents of the farming community of Dyersville desperately hope so, saying that after months of isolation and loss caused by the virus, not only their area but the entire country could use a boost like seeing the scheduled Aug. 13 game between the New York Yankees and White Sox go ahead as planned.

“For both baseball and the general public, what a match made in heaven that would be for this year,” said Keith Rahe, now a tourism official but who previously farmed a half mile from the Field of Dreams and vividly remembers the scorching summer of 1988 when the movie was filmed. “Just to have something to feel good about -- how do you measure that?”

Major League Baseball announced plans for the game nearly a year ago, making it the latest regular season game held at irregular locations, from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a July 4th celebration to annual games at the home of the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As Commissioner Robert Manfred said in announcing the game, “We look forward to celebrating the movie’s enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa.”

But more than...

source https://www.chron.com/news/article/Baseball-plans-game-at-Field-of-Dreams-but-will-15333134.php