COVER STORY
Photo by Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images
In the iconic 1989 film “ Field of Dreams ,” Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella , played by Kevin Costner , has a vision of building a baseball diamond in his cornfield . Thanks to years of planning and hard work , Major League Baseball and its partners came together to make that vision a reality . Leading that effort was BrightView Sports Turf , which built and managed the field .
“ Everything just came together there at the end ,” said Murray Cook , president of BrightView Sports Turf . “ We started this project two years ago , in August 2019 . Obviously , we had to sit it out in 2020 because of COVID , but we still had hope the game would be played in 2021 . I ’ m just really proud of the staff we had on board . Our design team of Populous and BaAM Productions , our project manager , and our BrightView team worked together in such a great way with the Commissioner ’ s office to bring their vision to reality . When I say it was a team effort , I really mean that .”
According to Cook , when game day rolled around , the best part for him was witnessing the reactions of everyone who was seeing the field in person for the first time – from the fans coming through the gates to the players stepping onto the field to representatives from Major League Baseball and the Commissioner ’ s office taking their first tour of the field .
“ I ’ ve been doing these types of events for a while , and I really enjoy being able to share the experiences with so many people ,” said Cook . “ When we were sent to inspect the site in 2015 , we first looked at the original movie field . It just wasn ’ t going to work , because the field grades were off and there was not enough room to build all the temporary structures around that location . So we found a new site ( in the corn ) about 1,000 feet to the west of the movie field to build the MLB field . When you look at all that went into the planning over the past several years to build the ballpark and the field for this game , it ’ s something pretty incredible . I was always reminding new members of our team to live in the moment , because this game is going to be special for a lot of people .”
Getting to game day was not without its challenges . The Field of Dreams game was originally scheduled for August 2020 ; but , like most things in 2020 , it was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and was delayed until this year .
22 SportsField Management | October 2021 sportsfieldmanagementonline . com