'Everybody wants to be a part of it': Cubs, Reds fans share heavenly day on Iowa cornfield

DYERSVILLE — Chicago Cubs fans were having a catch with Cincinnati Reds fans in the outfield of the world’s most improbable baseball field Thursday afternoon.

Giddily. Reverently.

Maybe this really is heaven.

This scene was playing out hours before those Major League Baseball teams were scheduled to square off at the Field of Dreams movie site. It was the 2,357th meeting in a rivalry that stretches back 130 years.

But the first in Iowa.

Or on a diamond carved out of a cornfield.

Or with bliss replacing animosity among the fans dressed in red and the ones in blue.

“It doesn’t matter who wins,” said Tim Land, wearing a faded red shirt and standing next to his son, Evan, who was sporting his bright Cubbie blue.

“Just getting here and spending time together, it was worth it.”

The Lands drove to Dyersville from their southern Indiana homes, spending Wednesday night at a Wisconsin hotel that was the closest they could find to the baseball game that Tim purchased two tickets for just last month.

Players arrive: Field of Dreams setup wows Reds, Cubs

Follow the action: Read our live story here of all the action today

Tim Land is a lifelong fan of baseball’s oldest professional team, which can trace its roots to 1869 and an era when the sport was still written out as “base ball.” Somehow, his son looked to the west instead of the east when forming his baseball allegiance. Tim winced when he mentioned this.

Evan was watching the home run derby ahead of July’s MLB All-Star game and saw a commercial advertising the second Field of Dreams game, with two very familiar teams. It felt like a calling. He hopped on the Internet and saw that only eight tickets remained, gratefully scooping up two of those and then calling his dad with an unexpected message.

“He said, ‘Hey, don’t make plans for Aug. 11,’” Tim Land recalled. “I said, ‘What’s Aug. 11?’ He said, ‘We’re going to Iowa.’”

Neither Land had ever been to Iowa, and seemed surprised by how close it was. Neither seemed in any hurry to leave, either. They asked a reporter where they could get their mitts on a couple of gloves. The next order of business was a game of catch.

About 60 feet, 6 inches south of the Lands, Brittani Ridener was tossing a special Field of Dreams baseball back and forth with her boyfriend, Kevin Tex. This was an old-school game of catch, with either bare hands or the sole of a shoe being used to stop the ball.

Ridener had on a white Cubs jersey, while Tex sported a Reds jersey with his name on the back. He got it while attending one of the team’s fantasy camps in Arizona, a spring training trek that revealed his devotion to his team.

Tex owns Schneider’s Pub in Indianapolis. Ridener works there. They knew when this game was announced last year that they had to attend, but getting the time off was not easy.

The matchup, and the chance to visit the site of a favorite movie, were too alluring to pass up.

“We watch it constantly,” Ridener said of the 1989 Kevin Costner classic “Field of Dreams.”

“But we had never been here. There’s so much emotion, so much excitement. Your whole body is super stoked about what you’re about to walk into. This was a movie, and now it’s real life. And everybody wants to be a part of it, and I think that’s the coolest thing.”

Ridener and Tex weren’t concerned about who emerged victorious at the end of their jaunt to northeast Iowa.

“Cubs and Reds fans fight enough,” Ridener said. “Him and I don’t need to do it. We don’t take it to heart over a win or a loss. Especially not tonight.”

There was no sequel to the “Field of Dreams” movie, based on the 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe” by then-University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate W.P. Kinsella.

Why would there be? It ends with father and son reuniting in a familiar American ritual. Two gloves and a baseball.

But Thursday’s game was a sequel to last year’s White Sox-Yankees debut at this stadium.

That was good news for Jay Schulfer of Madison, Wisconsin. He watched the White Sox win that nationally televised game at home with his son, Bentli, a baseball enthusiast at age 10.

A week later, the Schulfers decided to make the 2 ½-hour drive to Dyersville to see the movie site for themselves. A security worker told Jay he should apply to work at the next MLB game here.

And that’s how Schulfer found himself standing on a gravel road that meanders from the baseball stadium to the movie site Thursday, sweating in the hot sun as he directed pedestrians and kept his son updated on everything he was seeing.

“My son’s not too happy with me, because I couldn’t bring him,” Schulfer said. “He’s texting me, calling me, asking me what I’m doing. I’m sending him pictures, just to let him know. He’s living this thing through me. But we’ll keep coming back.”

The spirit of the day was not lost on the players, either. The Cubs were the first to arrive, and they quickly got into uniform and found their way to the outfield where the movie was filmed.

Pitcher Anderson Espinoza surveyed the scene: Players and fans mingling, talking, posing, a quietness about it all that suggested a family picnic more than the lead-in to a baseball rivalry.

“I like everything old-school. And this is the perfect place to represent baseball,” said Espinoza, 24, gesturing to the century-old style of uniform being players donned only for this matchup.

“This uniform is so good. I hope they let me keep it. I need to show my mom this.”

Espinoza had one other postgame plan: The native of Venezuela said he was going to make sure to finally watch the movie that was the reason he found himself here, in this uniform, on this field, living this dream.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Field of Dreams: Cubs, Reds fans share heavenly day on Iowa cornfield