THE CORN PORN GAME THRIVED — NOW, WHAT’S NEXT FOR MLB?

Just what baseball needed — a reminder of its romance — came through in the cornfields of Iowa, putting the onus on commissioner Rob Manfred to create other magical venues and help his struggling game

     We need to fall in love with baseball again. The sport has punished us for decades, with scandals coming faster as pace of play drags slower, and no amount of innocence, nostalgia and gooey romance is too much.

     Granted, a regular-season game tucked into the Iowa countryside is only a microdose of escapism. But damn, wasn’t it creative and fun and down-to-the-last-pitch breathtaking? Never has a scripted event so corny — literally — provided such a cool and urgent moment in time. For once, baseball felt good and wholesome, as it did when we were kids, before we grew up and saw the adults muddle it with steroids, gambling, electronic sign-stealing, illegal pitching substances, 4 1/2-hour games, ownership collusion and other self-destructive, ratings-eroding behavior.

     On a warm summer’s night in either heaven or Iowa — you choose — they made another pilgrimage to the “Field of Dreams,’’ a sentimental splash that could have been sappy if overdone. Instead, as Kevin Costner said after he emerged from the cornstalks and was followed by spellbound members of the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees, the scene was “perfect.’’ Every televised shot of the old movie set, juxtaposed against the famous house nearby and miles of rural green, was mesmerizing. It was because this was new and intensely original, hatched from a dream, including a reddish sky at sundown.

     When sports keeps us inspired, it keeps us wired. They built it, again. And they came, again, this time for an authentic competition that sent the same ethereal message.

     The Corn Porn Game succeeded wildly, with Chicago’s Tim Anderson ending it, more Roy Hobbs-style than Ray Kinsella, with a two-run walkoff bomb accentuated by his dancing and neck-gesturing as traditional South Side fireworks exploded in Dyersville. Sox 9, Yankees 8. All that lacked was a standing ovation from the cows.

     “Thirty years ago — 30 — on the other side of that corn, we filmed a movie that stood the test of time,’’ said Costner, as silence fell over the makeshift, 8,000-seat ballpark minutes before the first pitch. “Tonight, thanks to the enduring impact that little movie had, it has allowed us to come again. But we’re on a field that Major League Baseball made. We’ve come to see the first-place White Sox play the mighty Yankees in a field that was once corn. The dream is still alive.’’

     The actor, now 66, projected a Pope-like image as he stood in the infield in an untucked white shirt, greeting each player warmly. “It’s like we’re in church,’’ Joe Buck said on the Fox telecast. What could have been a cynic’s party actually served as a poignant reminder: Baseball still can be sacred when it returns to its roots. “We’re down and out in terms of technology here,’’ said Gerrit Cole, the Yankees’ $341-million pitcher. “To go through the cornfield, to be playing in Iowa in the middle of a cornfield — it’s surreal, to be honest.’’ Between the endless rows of DeKalb corn behind the outfield, the faux barnyard wood on the fence, the hand-operated scoreboard, the basic light standards and retro-style uniforms, MLB really did pull this off. It made you want to play catch with your dad, a spiritual theme in the movie.

     Soon enough, the religious experience gave way to what America wanted to see. How many home runs would be deposited into the corn? Eight, for the record. Jose Abreu went first for the White Sox, Aaron Judge countered for the Yankees (in his custom Field of Dreams cleats), then Eloy Jimenez and Seby Zavala gave the Sox a big cushion. Brett Gardner nailed a cob himself for New York, as did Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the ninth, both burning Liam Hendricks with two-run homers. Maybe the closer was too wrapped up in the scene — and his in-game interview with Fox — to focus on the job at hand. He said it was a lifetime memory to run through the cornstalks, so what was a blown save in the scope of life, I guess?

     “Who wouldn’t be excited? There are certain things that resonate with a game like this,’’ said Hendricks, who first saw the movie as a boy in his native Australia. “Some of the guys were concerned about travel and things, but I’m always interested in games where they have a specific meaning or add character. … I ran through the corn. I did the maze. I went through the house. And I got to shake Kevin Costner’s hand, never a bad thing.’’

     If you looked hard enough, sure, 2021 was everywhere. Fans in the front row behind home plate, where seats went for a MLB-regular-season-record $4,400 on the secondary market, were on cellphones. Signage for “GEICO’’ and “MATTRESS FIRM’’ was crammed into our eyeballs. A big-screen TV was in left field. Nike swooshes were on the throwback jerseys. Iowa-based fans protested blackout rules for MLB games in the state, even erecting a nearby billboard that said, “LET IOWANS WATCH THEIR FAVORITE TEAMS.’’ When Fox wasn’t flying drones and using 39 total cameras, the network was tacky — promoting a $10,000 jackpot on its FoxBet Super 6 promotion. Did the network bosses not realize members of the 1919 White Sox, who threw the World Series that year, showed up in the movie to play on Costner’s field?

     For a night, we could hold off on the scoffing. “It’s a live event you’re not going to forget,’’ Fox executive Michael Davies said.

     Said baseball lifer Tony La Russa, who couldn’t manage the Sox in this game while attending the funeral of his sister’s husband in Florida: “I was raised to embrace the history of the game, and I think too often we lose parts of it. ‘Field of Dreams' is a great movie, and it embraces everything about family and all the game's all about."

     The only concern is if MLB dilutes the magic with too much of a great thing. Predictably, commissioner Rob Manfred was so taken by an unusual amount of positive MLB publicity that he announced the game will return to Dyersville next August. “I think the reception that this event has received has been so positive that we will be back," Manfred said. “I think it's pretty clear we're going to be back next year and we'll have to talk about it after that. But it's just been so successful that it's hard not to take the opportunity to do it again."

     Please, don’t overdo it and ruin it. MLB has performed well in its stated goal of bringing the sport to the people, as seen at the Fort Bragg military base in 2016, in Williamsport games since 2017 and, oddly, in London two years ago. Mix it up. Think. There are great minor-league parks — a “Bull Durham’’ reprise, anyone? — and proud Negro League towns. How about the Cape Cod League? An Indian reservation? The Grand Canyon?

     Too much Iowa becomes too corny.

     But for a night, we can stop beating up Manfred and praise him. He gave us a cathedral for a fairy tale. “A forever moment,’’ Costner said. “Like anything else in life, you want this to overdeliver. This did.’’

     Or, as Anderson said in a more present-day twist, “Definitely dope.’’

     Baseball, somehow, has managed to enthrall us. Now, try to keep us hooked for more than one night.

     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.