Kevin Costner wasn’t at the Field of Dreams on July 30 — but I was there.
My girlfriend, Jacqui, and I toured perhaps the world’s most well-known made-for-the-big-screen baseball field on that day. Having heard, read and watched coverage of the “If you build it, they will come” place since my high school years, it was sort of a dream come true to finally see the spot where Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones made their famous film.
The trip from central Iowa to the area east Dyersville has several legs, though the field really isn’t far off of Highway 20. The signage around town easily directed us to the park.
The first surprise was children and adults actively running drills and/or playing various variations of a baseball game. I’m not sure what I expected — maybe only groundskeepers and tarps covering it, as if it were Wrigley Field — but it was refreshing and captivating to see young and formerly young players playing catch or swinging for the fences.
Speaking of fences, there aren’t any — only the high July field corn that lines the outfield and creates a natural wall around it.
One of the best parts of visiting the field in July was the height of the corn. While it wasn’t really practical for Jacqui and I to go running through it, children seemed to have no trouble with it.
The families who own the land must have accommodated this. The corn stalks seem planted further apart than nearby fields where maximizing bushels per acre is clearly a priority. To watch and hear children running and playing in it, even if it doesn’t have the same mysterious reminiscence for them as for me, it was worth the trip alone.
The dimensions really lean more toward little league’s age 11-12 division than, say, Major League Baseball — but everything looks bigger on the big screen. That includes some of the signs leading up to the facility, though Highway 20 certainly could have better signage to help visitors pick the correct off-ramp to get to the field.
It was magical to stand on the same mound where Bob Costas interviewed Kevin Costner at a film reunion a few years ago. While Costas didn’t ask Costner why he chose to direct or how “Waterworld” nearly ruined the man’s career, he did ask about the magical sport of baseball that Costner has focused on in so many films.
Baseball has a magic all its own. The fact you cannot simply run out the clock is one of its special and unique characteristics, and to see Iowans capitalize on its luster of both complexity and simplicity is testament to knowledge and tradition.
Costner starred in “Swing Vote” — filmed in small New Mexico cities alongside the late Dennis Hopper. It’s a story of a deadbeat guy who turns out to be the deciding vote in a presidential election, and while not the most compelling movie, let’s face it — Costner had set the bar awfully high with his flick to Iowa cornfields and films like “The Untouchables,” “Bull Durham,” “Dances With Wolves” and “The Bodyguard.”
We weren’t able to be at the field for its summer Sunday comedy show that includes local men dressed as the 1919 Chicago White Sox, but that’s next on our list. The introduction on the Field of Dreams’ website, paraphrasing the movie quote, sums up much of what we need to know as if uttered in James Earl Jones’ booming voice:
“Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa — a place of fertile soil, traditional values and simple pleasure.”
Contact Jason W. Brooks
at jbrooks@newtondailynews.com