MLB opts for a unique atmosphere

DYERSVILLE, Iowa – The Yankees will wake up in Kansas City Thursday morning, while the White Sox will wake up in Minneapolis.

Then, they will find themselves in another time zone: the beginning of the 20th century.

One of the most high-profile regular season competitions in Major League Baseball history will take place Thursday night (the weather forecast is encouraging), when the Yankees and White Sox face off in the Field of Dreams Game, certainly the first real competition to take place on a de facto film set. The MLB built a 7,911-seat pop-up baseball stadium next to the small field created for the 1989 Oscar-nominated film (and maintained since).

“It made sense that we moved the home plate 1,000 feet west,” said Murray Cook, MLB coordinator for these one-off games (not the former Yankees GM, apologies) on Wednesday, as ‘He was standing in the Yankees dugout on the side of first base.

In the spirit of this unique opportunity, MLB hosted the media on Wednesday for a tour to show off its investment of more than $ 5 million. The objective will be to offer fans a unique experience while minimizing the inconvenience for the players.

For the fans, well, “They managed to put up an amusement park in six months,” said Dwier Brown, who played John Kinsella in the movie and has been here about two dozen times. There is a corn maze. There are cardboard cutouts of the most popular Yankees and White Sox players. There’s audio from the movie as you walk a quarter-mile from the original grounds, where patrons will enter, to the temporary pitch, and a wooden sign with arrows pointing towards Yankee Stadium (997 miles), the home of the White Sox Guaranteed Rate Field (206 miles) and downtown Dyersville (very close).

There is also a culinary concoction called “Apple Pie Hot Dog”, created by Guy Fieri and sponsored, of course, by Chevrolet (remember the 1970s commercial?). It’s a hot dog wrapped in an apple pie crust, with a filling. Glad I tried it and won’t eat another one.

Viewers, on the other hand, can get their dose of cinematic nostalgia watching players enter corn stalks in the right field, just like in the movie; the manually operated dashboard; and barn wood on the outer field walls and behind the marble. The place certainly captures the old school ethic.

Players, of course, don’t want an all-old-fashioned experience, so the pavilions are larger than, say, the visitor’s locker rooms at Wrigley Field, with a few training bikes ready as well as a gym. ‘coaching. , manager’s office, coaches’ changing rooms and punching cages Due to the remoteness, both teams will head to Chicago, where they will resume their streak on Saturday at the guaranteed rate (the worst stadium name ever), after the end of the match. It will be the very rare road trip where clubs do not spend a single night near the stadium.

It won’t turn out perfectly, because those efforts never do. Still, if the players come out healthy and somewhat happy and the fans (both on site and at home) are entertained, then this most daring MLB venture to date will be considered a success.

“It’s really spectacular,” Brown said. “I was really crying [exploring it]. “

“I don’t want to piss you off,” Cook said of his latest creation, “but it’s pretty impressive. “

Yes, it will be a very family-friendly event, even if sometimes cheesy. A celebration, a reminder and an advertisement for the highest ambitions of sport.

“It’s a magical place,” Cook said of the entire venue, and for one night, baseball hopes to make all of its modern concerns go away. It’s hard to imagine a better setting to make this trick a success.