He noted that the ticket prices were higher than for any MLB game on record save for the 2016 World Series, when Cubs fans paid skyrocket prices to see their team win its first World Series in 108 years.Ī couple of fans rented a hot air balloon enabling them to watch the game from above. Late in the game, Ken Rosenthal noted that demand for tickets was so great that a lottery system – limited only to Iowa residents – was used to select fans who could purchase tickets at prices ranging well up into four figures. I kept waiting for him to invite Brown out of the corn to “have a catch,” but that moment never occurred.įox does get credit for dealing, if tardily, with one of the obvious but little-discussed aspects of the setting, the crowd of only 8,000. Both were at the game and Costner was on the field with a ball during pre-game. The other significant lost opportunity was MLB’s/Fox’s failure to invite Costner to throw out the game’s first pitch to fellow actor Dwier Brown, the man who played his father in the movie’s climactic scene. That was the team that threw the World Series, prompting eight of its players to be banned from baseball for life…and decades later laying the backdrop for the film. Perhaps the most prominent omission was the absence of any mention of the actual 1919 Chicago White Sox, whose story provided a backdrop for the movie. Alluding to playing catch with his adult son on the original Field of Dreams one day earlier, he blurted out that it was like they do at home when “we just throw s – – t.” When Burkhart, A-Rod, Thomas and Ortiz interviewed Costner during pre-game, somebody forgot to remind the movie’s star that they were live in front of an audience of millions. There were errors, both of omission and commission. “It was a night to fall in love with the game,” Burkhart concluded in a hitting-the-nail-on-the-head wrapup. The only time Fox really overindulged was in a pre-game skit that allowed commentators David Ortiz, Frank Thomas, and Alex Rodriguez to more or less pointlessly slop through all those Field of Dreams tropes one gratuitous time too many.īut for the romantic who liked - and still likes - the movie, it was possible to overlook that misstep, especially given that the Sox and Yanks gave MLB a classic game to grace a classic setting. The real-life use of actors Kevin Costner – who was on hand – and James Earl Jones, present in voice – made much of that schmaltz acceptable. It was inevitable that Fox would rely heavily on the oft-quoted tropes from Field of Dreams – if you build it…wanna have a catch…etc. Inevitably, for a game based on a movie, there was more than a bit of schmaltz in the presentation. “Of course we have a movie-like ending,” post-game host Kevin Burkhart observed. But that only set the stage for Tim Anderson’s two-run walk-off in the bottom of the ninth, making the White Sox a 9-8 winner. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton both drove balls deep into the corn to rally the Yankees to an 8-7 lead. The game featured eight home runs, three coming in the ninth inning. Related Story: White Sox complete bullpen buzzsaw
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