Lost among the other highlights of Thursday’s “Field of Dreams” game between the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds — a projection of long-dead Harry Caray singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” a Reds infielder being airlifted to the hospital because his leg muscle was in danger of swelling so badly it might have to be cut off, okay maybe “highlights” was the wrong word — was the news that earlier in the week, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds had allocated an additional $12.5 million to building a permanent ballpark in the cornfield made famous by zombie Ray Liotta, bringing the total public funding for the project to $45 million:
Reynolds’ $12.5 million allocation comes from Destination Iowa, a $100 million grant program for projects that are supposed to raise the state’s profile and encourage tourism. The governor created the program using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, a March 2021 congressional coronavirus relief bill that channeled billions in funding to state and local governments, including $4.5 billion for Iowa.
Reynolds previously allocated $11 million from the fund to build water and sewer lines to the Field of Dreams stadium site. The U.S. Economic Development Administration awarded another $1.5 million for the same purpose in September.
Locally, Dubuque County has agreed to give $5 million to the stadium project. The city of Dubuque awarded $1 million. Travel Dubuque, a nonprofit largely funded with hotel-motel taxes, gave the stadium $500,000.
In Dyersville, the City Council contributed $1 million. Between two tax breaks for private developers — one already awarded and another in negotiation — the city is poised to contribute another $13 million to the project, Michel said.
That’s a pile of dough, or rather several piles of dough, with the largest pile coming from ARPA, the Biden administration’s bill to send federal money to COVID-cash-strapped state and local governments. Only the feds, as usual, didn’t put a whole lot of strings on how the money could be spent beyond “economic development,” and we all know how local governments tend to interpret that. Other private-sports-related ARPA spending has included $12.5 million for a Hudson Valley Renegades minor-league baseball stadium and $15 million to try to bring 2026 World Cup games to New Jersey, plus probably more examples that we don’t know about because the Treasury Department is doing such a crappy job of providing info on where the money is being spent.
Gov. Reynolds, meanwhile, not to be stopped at building a permanent baseball stadium to honor a movie about teams playing in a cornfield with no permanent baseball stadium, previously gave $6 million in tourism money to NBCUniversal for a TV adaptation of the film — despite the series getting turned down by Peacock, the streaming service that NBCUniversal itself owns. University of Texas-Austin government professor Nathan Jensen told the Des Moines Register that this was an especially awful use of public funds since even if the TV series is made, most of the money will go to film crews flying in from out of state, who will take that money back to California and spend much of it there: “What’s the opposite of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? Two terrible things, put together.”
What happens when the novelty of the Field of Dreams MLB game wears off? I’ve been to Dyersville Iowa. I know the stupid line from the movie, but unless dead cheaters really start appearing out of the corn, I doubt people are really going to come sit in a white elephant of a stadium to watch corn grow.
MLB hasn’t even committed to holding future Field of Dreams games, so it may already have worn off.
Also, side note: Shoeless Joe wasn’t a “cheater,” he was a “game thrower,” and possibly not even that, given that while he certainly agreed to take money to throw the 1919 World Series, he also hit .375 in that series. (This is all made clear in “Eight Men Out” the book and the movie, neither of which will likely ever get made into a made-for-TV baseball event because the owners are the clear bad guys.)
Eight Men Out is a much better movie than Field of Dreams, and honestly Field of Dreams and all the faux-nostalgia it evokes makes me a little nauseous.
Cheater was the wrong choice of words. But as Joe Posnanski points out, the .375 average doesn’t tell the whole story:
“There is no question he took the money. Not only that, but he admitted later he threatened to reveal the whole plot unless he got paid. He famously hit .375 for the series with a homer and did not commit an error, but a close look at the play-by-play showed he went hitless with runners in scoring position and didn’t really start hitting until after gamblers failed to come up with the money and the White Sox players decided to try to win.”
Oh, Jackson absolutely took the money. But Joe Pos is wrong about the stats: Jackson got five hits with runners in scoring position, drove in six runs in eight games, and got three hits in Game 2 and two more in Game 3, well before the White Sox players started suspecting they were getting stiffed on their payments.
So “cheater” and “game thrower” are probably both wrong. What’s the term for someone who accepts a bribe and then doesn’t do what they promised to do?
Rob Neyer did an at-bat by at-bat break down of his performance many years ago. Basically he pointed out that there were games that they tried to win (they lost a best out of 9 series 5-3 so they did try in the 3 games) but overall the hits he did get weren’t key hits in games that the rest of team was trying to lose. Also a few things that get lost in the Shoeless Joe legend:
1) without him agreeing to go along it would have been harder for them to get the rest of the players to go along
2) .375 sounds insanely high these days but that was a different era. He had seasons were he bat .408, .395, and .382. That .382 came in the 1920 season before the guys got suspended
3) He confessed.
Do you mean this, Aqib?
https://www.espn.com/classic/s/2001/0730/1232950.html
If Jackson was able to hit .250 when he didn’t want to get hits, and .500+ in situations where he did, then he was an even better player than we’re giving him credit for. Lollygagging after triples is maybe more suspicious, but keep in mind Cicotte and Williams were serving up meatballs inning after inning, so that’s going to result in a lot of balls rattling around the outfield corners.
(I’d go along with Neyer that Buck Weaver is the only truly blameless player, certainly. Though Fred McMullin getting banned just for demanding a cut for not ratting out his teammates was also a little harsh.)
The original piece actually listed each at-bat and the situation but that is the story I was referring too. It also makes my point that without him the fix might not have happened.
Also, more importantly he got paid after the series so whatever he did or didn’t do, clearly the guys footing the bill were satisfied that he did enough to “earn” his cut.
Weaver clearly is overlooked throughout history. I hadn’t heard of him until seeing the movie 8 Men Out and then later reading the book.
“What’s the term for someone who accepts a bribe and then doesn’t do what they promised to do?”
I never knew Joe Jackson was a politician!
Hologram Harry didn’t sing the national anthem, he conducted the seventh-inning stretch, as he famously did for years at Wrigley Field and as celebs have done since his death.
(Also, supposedly it was not even a true hologram.)
Sorry, I knew that, just apparently forgot that “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is not the national anthem. (Fixing now.)
Also, correct that it wasn’t a true hologram, as apparently all the recent “holographic” appearances are Pepper’s Ghost–style illusions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost
Part of the original film’s lure was the simplicity of the oldtime baseball game … no need for the bells and whistles, holograms and lights-cameras-action ! A sandlot field or cornfield diamond is all that is needed.
Plowing under a cornfield and building a complex at Dyersville is like creating a Universal City Amish World amusement park. A terrible idea.
Have you been to Lancaster? Some of the touristy stuff is kinda like that
Part of the original film’s lure was the simplicity of the oldtime baseball game … no need for the bells and whistles, holograms and lights-cameras-action ! A sandlot field or cornfield diamond is all that is needed.
Plowing under a cornfield and building a complex at Dyersville is like creating a Universal City Amish World amusement park. A terrible idea.
I just had to Google to confirm that “Universal City Amish World” is not actually a real thing. I will still never be able to unthink it, though.
I’m looking forward to the Field of Dreams field getting a corporate name.
It’s already named after NBCUniversal intellectual property, that doesn’t count?
Actually, Universal City Amish World is a fantastic idea and I’m completely sure they will build it just as soon as they can figure out a way to include Marvel Universe characters in it… or is that “the other guys”?
It says something (maybe everything) about MLB that there are literally thousands of renditions of the actual Harry Caray singing TMOttBG committed to video, and yet they do this weird creepy guy who doesn’t really look like Harry up in “the booth” not replicating Caray’s normal mid song antics with the voice over playing behind him.
Why have the real thing when you can spend a bunch of (someone else’s money) to create a reproduction which utterly fails to impress anyone and creeps some people out?
This should be MLB’s new motto.
He’s not a zombie, he’s a ghost.
I never thought it mattered if he threw games. Comiskey was evil and players were underpaid. And it was 100 years ago, so I think we can forgive them.
I think the movie is better than the book. The film focuses on the father-son part more directly and has fewer characters to keep track of. The end has more impact.
And Terrance Mann is a more interesting character than the fictitious version of JD Salinger in the book. As we learned later, the real Salinger was kinda awful, probably.
It’s sad to watch it now, because in 1989 it really did feel like baseball had successfully endured the 20th century and that people still wanted to watch it because it was something reliable that connected them to their dad and the past.
The 80s were actually a good decade for baseball even if the stadiums were ugly.
The 90s were not so much.
And now I think it really is dying. I know people have been saying that since the 19th century, but unless something big changes, I don’t know who is going to be interested in sitting through 3.5 hours of mostly just strikeouts, walks, pitching changes and home runs in 25 years.
It’s interesting isn’t it Reed?
The game itself has changed dramatically under the malign influence of millennial MBA holders. This may not last, however.
Baseball itself will always be with us in some form.
Will the current iteration of MLB remain?
That is not clear to me, but certainly the future does seem relatively dark. Pro sports in general have moved upscale and no longer present themselves as the entertainment of the masses… it certainly seems as though this ‘migration’ will continue as the leagues require ever more revenue to be extracted from each fan in attendance (and, indirectly via stadium and other subsidies, money from ordinary citizens who do not attend games and may not even be sports fans).
If we take the long view on any of the major sports (here or in Europe), we must ask what is the long term vision for sustainability when most of the team’s and league’s games are not available to the general public at anything like reasonable cost?
A significant portion of the current fanbase of any modern team was cultivated through either free ticket donations or free to air tv and radio broadcasts of games in decades past. Those options have largely disappeared in the modern era. So where will the 2080 MLB fanbase come from? Many of us ‘return’ to baseball later in life after a period away… will there be anyone to ‘return’ in 60 years?
There’s certainly much more revenue to be derived in the short term from PPV and premier tier sports channels, but we are already past the point where the ultra fan can get “everything” by purchasing one premium channel… and streaming services will just make that worse (really, they already have).
There will be no shortage of Red Sox and Cub fans emptying their wallets into the collection bins of their respective franchise owners in 2050. I am less sure that, should baseball or humanity itself still exist, we will still be able to say this in 2100.
For all the talk (yes, an FoD quote) about baseball being “timeless” and a “constant”, professional sports in their entirety are a fairly recent arrival to human culture. The first professional (more or less) teams have existed for about half the time America has and for roughly a fifth of the time many modern nation/states have existed (it depends on the country, of course, but 1400-1600 is a reasonable starting point for several. Many existed before then, but not in what historians often consider their “current” or at least modern form).
Horse racing and falconry have much longer histories (and were once far more popular) than modern professional team sports do. The relative decline of those forms of entertainment suggests that modern professional sports should not take their prized position for granted.