4 SOURCE | Summer 2021 photo courtesy of MLB
If You Build It , They Will Come
How Two Iowa Brothers Helped Major League Baseball ’ s Field of Dreams Game Become a Reality
Chris Grogan , Publications and Media Relations Manager cgrogan @ growmark . com
“ Is this heaven ?”
“ It ’ s Iowa .”
In what ’ s become one of the most iconic scenes of a sports movie , the spirit of Shoeless Joe Jackson asks Kevin Costner about the beauty of the field he ’ s built in the middle of Iowa . The nostalgia of Field of Dreams and its impact on the sport wasn ’ t lost on Major League Baseball when it decided to host a game at the location that ’ s made Dyersville , Iowa and baseball synonymous with each other for more than 30 years .
For brothers Adam and Andy Rahe , who farm the land surrounding the field , the days leading up to the game were a complete whirlwind .
“ Every spot is important when there ’ s drones with high-tech TV cameras flying around ,” said Andy Rahe . “ You want everything to be perfect .”
That perfection almost didn ’ t happen after a storm with 70 mile per hour winds tore through the area just a few nights before the game .
“ We ended up zip tying about 1,100 stalks that had blown over by the large LED video screen in left field to make it look good ,” added Adam .
The Rahe brothers had never intended to get into the baseball or broadcasting arenas when they first started farming the land surrounding the original Field of Dreams back in 2013 . But in 2017 , Major League Baseball came calling and did a site assessment . By 2019 , the league made it official , announcing the event , which caused local hotels to book up almost immediately for the originally scheduled date in August 2020 .
Adam , who has worked on the agronomy side of Three Rivers FS for almost 20 years now , says MLB ’ s decision to delay the game a year due to COVID actually worked out better for on-site logistics .
“ I liken show corn to a big garden ,” added Adam . “ We ran irrigation to the corn around the MLB site and watered it almost every night . The three acres of corn around that MLB site is more for show than it is for go . In a typical Iowa field , we ’ re normally planting 36,000 plants per acre and here we ’ re down to 30,000 plants per acre because it ’ s about