Still Cashing In on the ‘Field of Dreams’

The 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” tells the story of an Iowa farmer who reunited with his estranged father by mowing down his corn field and building a baseball diamond for long-dead players. Starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones, the tale of redemption was an ode to a simpler time when baseball was a joyous game uncluttered by commercial interests.

Within months of the movie’s release, fans began trekking to the fictional field that Universal Pictures built in Dyersville, Iowa, an hour’s drive from Cedar Rapids, searching for some of the emotion they’d felt watching the movie. The pilgrimages haven’t stopped.

Many of the tens of thousands of fans who visit the site each year gush about how the grounds seem as peaceful as they do in the movie. Most people pose for photos near the corn stalks and in front of the house’s picket fence.

But the site, at times, has also given way to commercialization: The house on the property rents for $600 on a weeknight; $79 bottles of “Field of Dreams” whiskey are made with corn grown at the site; a group of re-enactors perform vaudeville acts on weekends; and nationally televised Major League Baseball games have been played there.

“We’re not commercializing the site, we’re keeping it alive,” said Keith Rahe, who runs the entire property and has been a fixture at the Field of Dreams for decades. “It’s Iowa’s Mount Rushmore.”

Others see it more like baseball’s Disneyland. Depending on who you ask, that’s either a very good or a very bad thing.

Plenty of other movie sites have become tourist attractions. More than 100,000 people a year visit the former prison in Mansfield, Ohio, where “Shawshank Redemption” was filmed; tours start at $40. A tattoo festival, INKcarceration, is held there.

The Field of Dreams is different not just because the site is also a working farm — corn is harvested there — but because the film itself sneered at money. In the movie, which is based on the W.P. Kinsella novel “Shoeless Joe,” Mr. Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, throws caution to the wind and nearly goes broke building his field.

And the movie itself weaves a homespun morality tale out of fictional characters who celebrate the ghosts of real ball players who were thrown out of the game for cheating (the infamous 1919 “Black Sox,” including Shoeless Joe Jackson).

If you start to think too hard, the logic doesn’t cohere. But with its simple backstop and bleachers, corn ringing the outfield and the dads throwing baseballs to their kids just like in the movie — well, why think too hard?

The Ghost Players Are Born

The actual field of dreams was built on two properties.

Left and center field belonged to Al Ameskamp. Right field and the infield belonged to Don Lansing.

Both men loved the movie, but they maintained separate entrances to the field and over time, their visions for the site diverged.

After the Hollywood crews went home, Mr. Ameskamp plowed his portion of the field and replanted corn. Mr. Lansing left his part alone and put out some bats and balls for family and friends to use.

Mr. Rahe, who is running the site now, had a hand in its early success. In 1990, he dressed in vintage uniforms with three friends and walked out of the corn and tossed a ball around with visitors. It was meant to be a joke. But by chance, a reporter from the Cedar Rapids Gazette was there and wrote a story entitled, “They’re Still Coming to the Field of Dreams.”

The next weekend, hundreds of people showed up to see Mr. Rahe, then 32, perform. The Ghost Players, as the troupe of “Field of Dreams” re-enactors became known, were born.

Soon after, the trading card company Upper Deck hosted charity softball games with Reggie Jackson, Bob Gibson and other former greats playing celebrities like Kelsey Grammer and Meat Loaf.

Mr. Ameskamp and his wife, Rita, sold ice cream and souvenirs from a renovated caboose they bought and encouraged visitors to take dirt from the field.

‘Listen to That Inner Voice’

Those early efforts to monetize the site changed in the mid-1990s when the Field of Dreams came to Becky Dubuisson in her sleep.

A widow living in Colorado, she had a series of vivid dreams about the site that left her perplexed. Ms. Dubuisson’s neighbor, who grew up 45 minutes from Dyersville, encouraged her to visit. So two days after Christmas 1994, she headed to Iowa.

“I drove out there to the site because I felt like I was being led,” she said. “I am inordinately spiritual and listen to that inner voice.”

On New Year’s Eve, she and Mr. Lansing spoke by phone. “I don’t know why, but I’m supposed to be at the field,” she recalled saying. She visited him the next day, and they talked for three hours. She visited Iowa several more times, and in July 1995, Mr. Lansing proposed. They were married in February 1996.

The now Ms. Lansing wasn’t an avid baseball fan, but she felt the Field of Dreams had a higher calling.

The Lansings rebuffed many offers, including one from an investor in the United Arab Emirates and another from someone who wanted to build a water park. They filed a cease-and-desist order against the Ghost Players. (For the next decade, they performed only on the Ameskamp’s land.)

The Ameskamps continued to market their side of the field. They built a maze in the corn behind the movie site and charged visitors $5 to enter.

But after Mr. Ameskamp died in 2001, activity slowed. In 2007, Ms. Ameskamp sold her farm to the Lansings. The Ghost Players went into exile. But fans still kept coming.

In 2010, the Lansings finally met buyers they felt would preserve what they believed was the essence of the site. A Chicago couple, Mike and Denise Stillman, wanted to transform the farm into a youth baseball mecca called All-Star Ballpark Heaven with 24 fields, dorms and an indoor training facility.

The Stillmans met in college and “Field of Dreams” was one of the first movies they saw together. They bid for the site after they visited and played catch with their 9-year-old son.

Ms. Stillman promised to assemble a group, including Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, that would spend $70 million to preserve the site by expanding it. “It seems to transport you,’’ she said of the property.

Civic leaders loved the prospect of attracting caravans of young players and their parents. The city and state promised millions in tax rebates. But the project was so divisive the mayor and several council members were voted out of office. Matt Mescher, a farmer who owns seven acres next to the site, sued the city along with 16 other landowners for failing to allow for proper public input. The case was dismissed, but it slowed investment.

“People said it was good timing and it would bring people to town, but they don’t live out here,” Mr. Mescher said of the Stillmans’ planned investments.

Despite Ms. Stillman’s high hopes, little got built, though she did renovate the house and invite the Ghost Players back. In 2016, she also met with M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred to discuss playing a game at the site.

Mr. Manfred was eager to play one-off games in iconic locations, and the Field of Dreams fit the bill. However, the field sat on a gentle slope, so the M.L.B. spent several million dollars on a new field about a quarter-mile away.

On a warm August evening in 2021, the Stillmans’ vision became a reality. In front of 7,800 fans and millions more watching on television, Mr. Costner emerged from the corn fields beyond the outfield fence before the Yankees faced the White Sox.

Ms. Stillman never saw the game. She was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2018. She was 46.

‘Money They Have, Peace They Lack’

Not long after, the Field of Dreams got a new owner for the third time in three decades.

But other than a second pro game, little of that materialized. Last year, Mr. Heidner’s group sold to Dyersville Events, the nonprofit organization that now owns and manages the property.

The new owners ditched Mr. Heidner’s most grandiose plans and pursued something closer to the Stillmans’ original vision: Youth tournaments and big events.

A new event space was opened. Visitors can order $12 Big Fly burgers in the Dugout restaurant. Guided tours of the site are $20.

The tournament business is expanding. About 650 teams played this season, up from 107 in 2022. Most games are played in city parks while the field at the movie site is used for skills competitions and championship games. Entrance fees are up to $849 per team.

Summers in Dyersville are now more crowded with minivans and S.U.V.’s with out-of-state tags.

That’s great for local businesses, but tiresome to some locals. “We got four stop lights in town, which is three too many,” said Doug Recker, who was having breakfast in the Dyersville Family Restaurant.

The Lansings, who recently moved into a independent living retirement community in Dyersville, miss the peace they found on the farm. But Ms. Lansing said “with the commercialism, there’s good and bad.”

Mr. Rahe and Dyersville Events are plowing ahead. New stands, locker rooms and batting cages are being built around the M.L.B. field. Nearby, seven more fields are being added for youth tournaments.

At a tournament in July, hundreds of kids on 52 teams played on parks around Dyersville.

Many parents said they watched the film with their kids before arriving in Dyersville.

“This was the big experience we wanted because of the ambience,” said Doug Ulaszek, whose son, Ben, and his team were visiting from Mequon, Wis. “We used this trip as a capstone, like the peak of their boyhood.”

In a triumph of art over life, James Earl Jones’s character, Terrence Mann, foretold what would become of the field, down to the price of parking.

“They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom,” Jones’s character said in the movie’s best-known speech. “They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it, for it is money they have and peace they lack.”

Indeed, Mr. Ulaszek and other dads tossed balls with their kids at the site as John Fogerty’s song “Centerfield” blared over the sound system. Boys and girls ate soft-serve ice cream and roamed in and out of the corn fields. The Ghost Players performed in front of 3,000 people, and fans lined up to get autographs from the fictitious players.

Bottles of corn kernels harvested from the site went for $12.

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