DYERSVILLE, Iowa — My first pitch sailed inside, forcing Shawn O’Hare to step back from the plate. But, really, how many opportunities does a person get to take a few hacks in the batter’s box at the Field of Dreams movie site?
So O’Hare swung anyway, doing the only thing a right-handed hitter could reasonably do with the pitch. He pulled it foul.
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“Aargh,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”
The second pitch drifted inside, too. Another swing, another foul left of the third-base bag, this one a pop-up. Same thing with the third pitch, though this one was too far inside for O’Hare to even attempt a swing. “I don’t suppose we could pretend you winked at me, like in the movie,” I said, “and that I’m intentionally throwing at you to send a message?"
O’Hare laughed and didn’t skip a beat: “Don’t wink, kid.” A dead-perfect quote from the 1989 movie every baseball fan has seen over and over.
Gripping the wooden bat tightly — it wouldn’t have felt right to bring an aluminum bat to the Field of Dreams baseball field — O’Hare dug in and grounded the next offering, which was actually over the plate, toward where the shortstop would have been if we weren’t the only two people on the field at the moment.
Then, another pitch inside brushed him off the plate. Again.
“I swear, I’m not trying to hit you,” I mumbled.
O’Hare shot back, “Well, I am wearing an Anthony Rizzo shirt. So that seems about right.” I laughed. Rizzo, the Cubs’ cleanup hitter, was drilled by a pitch 30 times this season. Obviously, I thought, this guy knows his Cubs baseball.
@shawnohare1: FACT: @ryanfagan is not scared to pitch inside. #TheBarber @fodmoviesite
— Battleaxe (@shawnohare1) October 22, 2015Both O’Hare and I were on this hallowed Hollywood field because of Rizzo and his Cubs teammates, actually. As with most interactions at the field, I’d imagine, complete strangers became friends while inside the very same lines that helped Moonlight Graham live out his baseball dream, if only for a minute, in the film.
I was there because, when the Cubs lost Game 4 of the NLCS to finish off a surprising sweep by the Mets, I suddenly had a rare free(ish) day during an always-hectic playoff season, and I decided to take the meandering route to Kansas City for Game 6 of the ALCS on Friday. What better side trip than finally making my long-delayed first pilgrimage to the place where they filmed of one of the best baseball movies of all time?
Though I admittedly felt a bit touristy, and I recognize it’s just a movie site, not a place where actual baseball history happened, the whole thing was pretty cool. I stood with my feet on the line, where Archie "Doc" Graham crossed back and forth between the worlds.
update: did not transform into a turn-of-the-century ballplayer. damn. pic.twitter.com/SoX4U8mcUa
— Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan) October 22, 2015I sat in the wooden bleachers where Terence Mann sat with Ray and Annie Kinsella and their daughter, Karin, to watch Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of his banned 1919 Chicago White Sox teammates play baseball.
I walked into the corn beyond the outfield grass where the players would disappear at night, and I walked back out from the corn, imagining what the players must have felt like the first time they saw the field (yeah, maybe it’s hokey but I don’t care).
the Field of Dreams, as Shoeless Joe saw it for the first time ... pic.twitter.com/vhy0wmRo4Z
— Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan) October 22, 2015When I arrived, there were maybe a dozen people on the field. Turns out, there was a concert that night in nearby Epworth, Iowa, with a couple Christian bands — headlined by Chris August — taking the stage. So of course all of the musicians stopped by the movie site before the show. And judging by how much fun they were having while having a catch, pitching and hitting, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the first notes that night were a bit delayed.
O’Hare had been at Game 4 of the NLCS, too, sitting in the right-field bleachers. He’d put his name on Chicago’s season-ticket waiting list way back in January 2008, and he finally got the call last offseason telling him it was his turn. The life-long Cubs fan jumped at the chance to buy a ticket package. Didn’t matter that he lives in Clear Lake, Iowa, which is a solid six-hour drive, and that’s if you’re making good time.
He’d grown up in the Chicago suburbs, but his family moved to Iowa in 1984, when he was 11 years old. “With WGN, the Cubs were the one thing I could take with me,” he said.
O’Hare guessed this was his 15th trip to the movie site, but only the second time he’d actually gotten the chance to take a couple swings. Because Dyersville is more or less on a direct path from Clear Lake to Wrigley, it’s been a common stopping point.
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His senior year of high school, his baseball team did the double-dip trip, stopping at both fields of dreams. “It was a night game, and it was 14 innings, and it was fantastic,” O’Hare said of that 1991 Cubs’ game, which, coincidentally, was against the Mets. “George Bell’s game-winning home run landed about 15 feet from us.”
So, after the Cubs’ amazing 2015 season ended in disappointment with the NLCS loss to the Mets, O’Hare made sure to stop in a place that’s guaranteed to put a baseball smile on your face. The Field of Dreams didn’t let him down.
When I finally stopped brushing him back with every pitch, O’Hare got in a couple of solid hacks. On my best batting-practice offering of the day, he sent a line drive soaring into the outfield.
We both watched as it hit the grass, bounced a couple times and rolled into the corn stalks — the magical corn stalks — that made up the outfield wall.
“That was nice,” he said a few minutes later, looking back out toward the corn and savoring the memory. “I couldn’t pull anything to save my life in high school. Never was any kind of power-hitter in softball, Wiffle ball, whatever. So that kind of amazed me.”
Maybe it shouldn’t have, though. This place has a way of making amazing happen.
