My unplanned road trip to Field of Dreams

DYERSVILLE, Iowa -- Field of Dreams needed its epic road trip.

In the film, Ray Kinsella has traded his crops for a ballfield when he is moved to track down reclusive author Terrence Mann. They attend a game at Fenway Park and are urged by a ghostly whisper to “go the distance,” prompting an interstate trek to tiny Chisholm, Minn., and then back to Iowa.

In my version of the Field of Dreams journey, spiritual inspiration came at Newark Airport’s Gate C85 in the form of an automated text message: “UA 1232: We’re sorry to let you know that your flight on August 11 has been cancelled because of thunderstorms across the East Coast.” A few phone calls later, a travel agent apologetically told me there was no way that I’d be getting to Chicago that night, and the next morning’s flights were packed.

“What about cars? There have to be cars,” I replied, calculating the miles between Terminal C and the fertile soil where Kevin Costner’s character asked his father to have a catch, a half-mile from where the Yankees and White Sox would be playing on Thursday evening. “There is no way I am missing this game.”

And so, after a disastrous travel day that had earlier featured a cancelled flight, I found myself sliding behind the wheel of a rented white 2019 sedan, about 51,000 miles on its odometer and a California license plate bolted to the bumper. With streaming satellite radio, a navigation app and a packed duffel bag as my companions, I darted toward I-80 and began to count down the 992 miles to baseball heaven.

“This movie had a chance to be great,” Costner would say later on Thursday. “It was a perfect little movie that didn’t lean on its final climax, its big car chase, a big crash. It was, ‘Do you wanna have a catch?’ And it worked.”

Costner’s character drove through the night to Boston in a beat-up Volkswagen bus, and when he and Mann (James Earl Jones) swapped off the driving, they scooped up a young hitchhiker named Archie who spoke of seeking an opportunity to play ball. I looked for Archie but saw only deer grazing in the pitch-black darkness. My giddy adrenaline faded in the rolling mountains of western Pennsylvania, where I began to question the logic of this endeavor.

Would it have been more logical to call the travel agent again, searching for an early morning flight from Pittsburgh or Cleveland? Perhaps. But as my wife Connie texted at 1:05 a.m. ET: “It will be a good story. Maybe you can even write about it. It’s basically the same trip Ray makes in the movie.”

She was right. At her urging, I posted updates on Twitter and Instagram -- it was amazing how people latched onto this journey, cheering my progress. I ransacked a gas station in Loganton, Pa., for energy drinks, pepperoni pretzel snacks, sunflower seeds and candy, splaying them buffet-style across the vacant passenger seat. First rule of a road trip: eat like an 8-year-old.

“Welcome to Ohio: So much to discover!” read the large white sign standing sentry over the highway shoulder, representing my personal point of no return. Recalling montage scenes from the movie, I blasted the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” and the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove,” providing boosts when audiobooks and stand-up comedy specials lost my attention.

I killed the engine at 4 a.m. in Amherst, Ohio, snoozing for 90 minutes in the parking lot of the Middle Ridge Service Area. Another 15-minute cat nap came in Genoa, Ohio (did you know your iPhone tracks every stop you make?). The sun rose and I felt refreshed, cruising through Indiana and Illinois. My young daughters Penny and Maddie called via FaceTime during a gas-up break, asking to see the car and urging: “Go, Daddy, go!”

“_The people of Iowa welcome you: Fields of Opportunities_,” read the sign along I-80. I snapped a photo, heard a tractor trailer blare its horn and jumped back behind the wheel to power through the last two hours. Friends and family members buzzed my phone to check on my progress, as did a handful of radio and television stations. It was truly amazing -- as was my first sight of the light standards rising over the cornfield, weaving through small-town America to crawling through traffic on the same dirt roads that the characters traversed in the movie.

Squinting through hot, beautiful sunlight, I saw no ghosts parading through the corn maze that leads to the ballpark. Instead, I walked shoulder to shoulder with fans wearing Yankees, White Sox and all other matter of paraphernalia, all of them on a journey just as significant as the one I’d just concluded. “If you build it, they will come” still rings true today, more than 30 years after the film’s release. Costner gave the field to the players and the game was fantastic, cinematic theatre -- Major League Baseball couldn’t have asked for a better show.

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Long after the teams, fans and many workers had departed, I had the ballpark nearly to myself. I inspected the corn stalks from the warning track of the big league park, then stood at home plate on the movie set, reflecting on 24 of the most memorable hours of my career. I know Shoeless Joe didn’t really materialize here (at least, I don’t think he did), but for anyone who loves baseball, there is truly something special about this place.

I can’t wait for the Field of Dreams series to continue in 2022. Yes, I’d most definitely come again. This time, you take the first shift.