dream made real, in iowa, with kevin

The two guys giving comments throughout the game had him in the booth with them for the 4th and 5th innings.

Kevin Costner, back in Iowa more than three decades after making the movie, "Field Of Dreams", now just a regular guy there to watch a Major League Baseball game with his wife...

amid the other 7998 fans there with them, and the millions, including me, watching the game on their televisions.

I was overwhelmed.

So many memories I have of walking on the movie diamond, sitting on the movie bleachers, standing in the outfield and breathing in the scent of warm cornsilk on a hot summer day...

that remains, and will ever be, a crystallized moment for me.

I'm sure he could say the same, having had those same experiences while making the film.

And, now, so can these few thousand sitting in the seats of this new diamond, built over the last two years to MLB standards, still surrounded by cornfields, still under an enormous wealth of sky.

That's right, this regulation stadium is the actual playing field for the pros, but the little leaguers and others were happy to still be able to walk the bases and play a game of catch over on the smaller diamond.

The edge of left field on the movie's site is about 150 meters from the rightmost edge of right field on the game site.

Between the two?

Corn, rows and rows of corn, with paths through all of that summer feed corn for folks to walk from the parking lots at the movie site to their seats in the new stadium.

Those that won the lottery to purchase seats might even have been able to grab them on the movie-style bleachers set up along the edge of left field.

Those would most likely be Iowa residents.

They would be more accustomed to the view, perhaps, of no towering buildings looming nearby, of no lights shining everywhere one looked, of nothing but sky, as deep and wide as any ocean, as far as the eye could see.

They would be more accustomed to the silence soaking the air, with the lack of traffic noises and sirens and car horns serving as distractions to the action on the field.

They are the truly fortunate ones...

in case the modern world might have made them forget.
Every person there tonight, including all the ballplayers from the big cities of Chicago and New York City, were able to experience that magic for themselves.

Every person there tonight was able to slow down the pace of life, to marvel at the stars above, to breathe air that whispered of summers in their youth, before work and the responsibilities of adulthood intervened.

By the top of the 8th inning, every muscle in their bodies would have been relaxed and their minds free of worry as they watched a baseball game under that heavenly dome of sky.

Every hit was a home run, or so it would seem, as ball after ball arced into the surrounding 12-foot tall stands of corn, with those balls lost to the dirt at the base of those stalks.

And what a magnificent game it was!

There weren't many hits, of course, but the few that occurred were, indeed, home runs, with those batters bringing in those who had been walked.

The score was exciting, with a good amount of the right kind of stress, with a good amount of belief that either team might win...

but, in the end, Chicago was victorious.

What classic baseball, taking it down to the bottom of the ninth inning to seal the walk-off finish with a two-run homer!

A classic baseball game... 

just as it should be, on a field full of dreams.

(smile)

I'm so thankful to have been there, on THE Field of Dreams, and to have been here, in my living room, watching as they played on this new one.

i thank You, God.