They Will Come ...

I’m assuming you’ve heard the news but just in case — Major League Baseball is coming to the Field of Dreams next year! On August 13, 2020, the Yankees and White Sox will play a game at the ballpark in Dyersville, Iowa where they filmed Field of Dreams. It figures to be an impossible ticket. But one way or another, I must get there.

I don’t think I need to say again how much I love Field of Dreams. I totally get why some people don’t. I totally get how corny and absurd the movie is. I totally get the many problems with Field of Dreams, many of them reflected by the incomparable Nick Offerman on the PosCast.

1. Kevin Costner is ostensibly an Iowa farmer. Yet he wears no belt.

2. Why is he standing out in the field with shovel when he first hears The Voice? What was he going to do with that shovel?

3. When Costner goes into the seed store, he buys one bag of corn seed … at harvest time. You can do the math on that.

4. When Shoeless Joe comes out of the corn, Kevin Costner has a bag of bats and balls waiting on the field. How are these items not waterlogged and warped if he leaves them out there all the time?

5. The entire plot is based on the fact that Kevin Costner and family will lose the farm by building a baseball field out there. But the field would take up no more than two acres; the average acreage of an Iowa farm is 345 acres. It’s absurd that the field would in any way cut into profits.

Of course, my passion for Field of Dreams is already desperately compromised by the fact that there are NO NEGRO LEAGUES PLAYERS BROUGHT BACK. This, and this alone, is such an unforgivable defect of the movie that I have no excuse for liking it. But I do anyway.

I will say: My friend Buck O’Neil liked it.

In any case, I could not be more excited by the Yankees-White Sox game at the Field of Dreams, and in celebration — picking up on my Twitter feed — I’m going to give you 10 dreams I have for the game.

Dream 1: That during the game, a little girl will choke on a hot dog, and Aaron Judge will step off the field to save her, securing his legend as a great guy but also ending his Yankee home run reign of terror forever.

Dream 2: That James Earl Jones will call the game: “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a … Gardner swings and hits a high fly ball to centerfield. Leury Garcia is under it and the side is retired.”

Dream 3: That the Timothy Busfield character will just aimlessly wander on the field at some point during the game because he lacks the belief necessary to see Aroldis Chapman.

Dream 4: That every lefty-hitting, righty-throwing player (this was Shoeless Joe Jackson in real life) will, for this game alone, become a righty-hitting, lefty-throwing player (like Shoeless Joe Jackson in the movie). Yes, I’m looking at you Didi Gregorius.

Dream 5: That the ghosts from the Deadball Era will wander out to the field and reminisce with CC Sabathia about the games they played together.

Dream 6: That Gio Urshela, Mike Tauchman, Cameron Maybin and DJ LeMahieu will remember that they’re not this good. This is not specific to the Field of Dreams game but more like a general wish (“And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?”)

Dream 7: They wear old flannel uniforms (obviously) and use an actual deadball — one baseball for the whole game.

Dream 8: That before the game Yankees manager Aaron Boone relives the “Dad, wanna have a catch,” scene with his father, Bob Boone. The more I think of this, the more I believe this at least MUST happen.

Dream 9: They explain to us, once and for all, how the 5-foot-7 Frank Whaley grew up to become 6-foot-2 Burt Lancaster.

Dream 10: Instead of starting the game with “Play ball,” they bring out Amy Madigan to say, “Far out!”