MLB is moving farther afield in its quest to play regular-season games at non-traditional venues.
The Yankees and White Sox will face off next season on the "Field of Dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa, MLB announced Thursday. The game will take place Aug. 13 and be broadcast nationally by Fox.
Is this heaven?@Yankees-@WhiteSox, see you in Iowa on 8.13.20. pic.twitter.com/5GGbH7TWuq
— MLB (@MLB) August 8, 2019
“As a sport that is proud of its history linking generations, Major League Baseball is excited to bring a regular season game to the site of Field of Dreams,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a release. “We look forward to celebrating the movie’s enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa.”
The iconic diamond cut out of a cornfield was created for the 1989 Kevin Costner movie, and the families that owned the land on which it was built capitalized on the movie's popularity by keeping the field intact as a tourist destination.
A company called Go The Distance Baseball LLC took over the property in 2011 and estimated in a 2016 Dubuque Telegraph Herald story that about 100,000 people visited annually.
While the field works fine as a draw for nostalgic fans, it will need significant modification to host a major league game. The corn that serves as the outfield wall is only about 300 feet away from the plate in center field and 280 feet down the lines, Sports Illustrated noted Thursday.
MLB said work will begin next week to construct a temporary 8,000-seat ballpark for the event.
The news comes a day after MLB announced the Orioles and Red Sox would face off in the 2020 edition of the Little League Classic, which is held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in conjunction with the Little League World Series.
That will be the fourth annual iteration of that game, while earlier this year the Royals and Tigers played in Omaha ahead of the College World Series — the first major league game ever played in Nebraska — and the Yankees and Red Sox played two games in London.
The Braves and Marlins also played at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2016.
