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A professional baseball game played in an iconic corn field ended with a walk-off home run in a field of corn. A two-run home run pop by Tim Anderson in the bottom of the ninth gave the Chicago White Sox a 9-8 win over the New York Yankees in Major League Baseball's first Field of Dreams game Thursday night in Iowa.
The White Sox led the Yankees, 7-4, after eight innings of play, but New York scored four runs in the top of the ninth to take an 8-7 lead. Chicago's Danny Mendick grounded out to first to start the bottom of the ninth, and then Seby Zavala reached first on a walk after getting out to an 0-2 count. Anderson then approached the plate and bolted a home run into right field—the opposite field—to give Chicago the walk-off win.
It capped a night of heavy emotions with baseball holding an MLB game at the Dyersville, Iowa, site where "Field of Dreams" was filmed and later released in 1989. It's widely regarded as one of the best baseball movies ever made.
The game, broadcast in primetime on Fox, had an hour-long pregame show with snippets from the movie, an appearance by actor Kevin Costner (the movie's leading star) and a narration by James Earl Jones, who played a pivotal role in the movie as well.
The game was played at a specially-made stadium that held nearly 8,000 fans. The stadium was constructed next to the original cornfield made for the movie, and fans had to maneuver their way through a corn pathway to get to the stadium.
Before the game began, Costner walked through the corn in center field to get to the field, and then he was followed by the Yankees and White Sox players walking through the corn and onto the rare site.
The crowd audibly had more White Sox fans, who erupted in the first inning after Jose Abreu homered to the corn field beyond the left field wall. The Yankees took a 3-1 lead in the top of the third, courtesy of an Aaron Judge three-run dinger to right field.
Eloy Jiminez hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the third to give the White Sox a 5-3 lead. Chicago tacked on two more runs in the fourth to take a 7-3 lead. The Yankees added a run in the sixth, setting up a fireworks finish in the desolate Iowa corn to cap the night.
There were a total of eight home runs by seven different players on the night, including two by Yankees star Judge.
About the writer
Scott McDonald is a Newsweek deputy night editor based in Cape Coral, Florida. His focus is assigning and writing stories ... Read more