It is a nice one off gimmick.
In 2016, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred went to Dyersville, Iowa to the site where the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, was filmed as part of an MLB promotional tour. It was then Manfred thought that an existing cornfield could be knocked down and replaced with a baseball diamond and a Major League Baseball game under the right set of circumstances could take place. Five years later, the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox will play at a temporary stadium in that cornfield. Baseball was once interwoven with American culture but that’s not the case anymore. Baseball was the king of sports and dominated the spring, summer and fall American sports landscape. But did the American culture embrace baseball or did baseball force its way into the American culture? Could a game in the cornfield where a movie was filmed lift the baseball industry and generate more interest in the sport?
Baseball became very popular after the Civil War and in 1888, the poem Casey At The Bat was turned into a stage show. That poem was recorded on a cylinder for the home in the 1890s. The song Take Me Out To The Ball Game was released in 1908 and remains popular to this day. Baseball players performed on stage and in the movies. Babe Ruth was known around the world in the 1920s. Abbott and Costello introduced Who’s On First on the Kate Smith radio show in 1938. Baseball was part of the American way of life and remained that way into the 1960s. The glory days have been gone for a couple of generations. Still, Manfred is excited. “The national attention that this game is drawing is a promotion for our sport that you can’t buy otherwise.” But it will be forgotten in a week. Baseball is no longer king.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
