'Field of Dream' game lost on some

As the teams are being introduced Thursday night, walking in from a corn field to a play the first MLB game in Iowa next to the movie set built for “Field of Dreams,” my wife admits she’s never seen the movie.

“It looks stupid,” she adds as I try frantically search the TV to see if we can watch it.

To be fair, this ground had been covered before, well before our marriage, but the fact that we had not rectify the situation in the time since sent my head spinning. We missed a chance to see “Field of Dreams” this summer following the Semoball Awards held at the Rock N Roll Drive-In near Chaffee.

Still, how is it possible that she never saw it when it came out in her lifetime?

After pulling up the list of top movies from 1989 when “Field of Dreams” debuted at No. 14, we figured she had seen all but five of the top 50, including another baseball movie “Major League.”

For at least one viewer of Thursday’s game between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees, all those wonderful movie references were lost.

Why build a stadium near Dyersville, Iowa, population 4,058?

“If you build it, he will come.”

Like the movie itself, the game may have been about one thing but it was really about something else. MLB teams have also played at the home of the Little League World Series, trying to capture some nostalgia and at the same time people’s attention and money.

It’s nothing new for baseball, which located the hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, the mythical birthplace of the sport.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the game, which the White Sox won on a walk-off homer into the corn, will likely be back next year.

“Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Kevin Cosnter, who stared in the movie, agreed that this should be a yearly event.

He reprised his role of Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella for the pregame introductions and the soaring musical score set the mood.

People took to social media requesting that their favorite baseball movie also be honored, perhaps “The Sandlot” in Los Angeles, and debating the best of the baseball movies.

Costner also weighed in on the debate that the film’s ending created — is it “have a catch” or “play catch”?

“I guess that’s an East Coast thing — ‘Have a catch,’” Costner said during a press conference before the game. “I read that and immediately it was just like it was fingernails on a chalkboard for me.”

Costner made a lot of movies tied to sports, including “American Flyers,” “Chasing Dreams,” “Tin Cup,” “For Love of the Game,” and “Draft Day.”

“Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams” were released within a year of each other and at a time when a baseball-loving kid my age might watch repeatedly on a VHS tape. Same for “Major League” or “The Natural” and even movies with just a hint of the game, like “Brewster’s Millions” or “Max Dugan Returns.”

Give me “The Bad News Bears” with Walter Mattheau, hysterical or historical movies that capture the fun or history of the game. It doesn’t matter. A top five, 10 or 25 list might be too hard to pin down even after earning a degree in film history and criticism (look mom, finally putting that thing to use).

There was one baseball movie that I probably watched more as a pre-teen than any other that few people remember, with the exception of my wife oddly enough.

Produced by HBO in 1987, “Long Gone” starred William Petersen, Virginia Madsen, Dermot Mulroney, Henry Gibson and Teller (of Penn and Teller). It’s about a worst-to-first run by low minor league team in the 1950s South and its star player-manager, Cecil “Stud” Cantrell (Petersen).

It’s a more racy version of minor league baseball like “Bull Durham” but it also deals with race in a way that few baseball films have until “42.” It’s funny and faithful to what baseball was like in the post-war South.

Since there are no DVD versions, I probably had not seen it since the VHS tape wore out 30 years ago. It’s not on HBO Max, which lost the rights to the movie, but I did find a version on YouTube.

Watching it again all these years later I wonder how I didn’t get in trouble with my parents for watching it. There were plenty of one-liners I still recall and one I probably heard dozens of time but only now found interesting when the main character is introduced.

“The pride of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, No. 7 Cecil ‘Stud’ Cantrell.”