This Thursday, August 13, 2026, Major League Baseball will return to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, for another chapter of its storied summer ritual. The pageantry will unfold—the ceremony, the rows of corn framed by broadcast flourish—presented as a moment to stir the soul. A new 8,000-seat permanent home awaits, and perhaps it will live up to the myth.

But, it will not be like the first.

In August 2021, Bill George and I made the pilgrimage to Dyersville—a quiet hamlet tucked among the Iowa cornfields, some 90 miles from my hometown of Milan, Illinois—to see the first Field of Dreams Game. Even amid a pandemic and all the inevitable buildup surrounding it, the night somehow felt untouched by hype. With just 7,800 people gathered in the middle of Iowa, in the middle of the corn, it was as if we had stepped through the screen and into another time—another America, and maybe another version of baseball itself. There were no masks, no pretense, no manufactured spectacle. Just the heat, the fields, the crack of the bat, and a kind of freedom that seemed to hang in the summer air. It was hot, yes. But it was pure—and, in my mind, still the best Field of Dreams Game ever played.

That game gave us eight home runs, beginning with Jose Abreu’s leadoff blast and ending with Tim Anderson’s two-run walk-off shot in the bottom of the ninth, lifting Chicago’s White Sox to a 9-8 victory over the Yankees. In between came six more balls launched into the night, including two by Aaron Judge, and homers from Eloy Jiménez, Brett Gardner, Giancarlo Stanton, and Seby Zavala.

I have never been one to place the home run above every other beauty in baseball, but there was something altogether different about watching one disappear into a wall of corn. It reduced the game to its purest form and carried me back to childhood—to the Sandlot, to 1966 Eaglewood Park in Milan, and to 1968 Mills Little League in Rancho Cordova, where the simple sight of a baseball sailing into the distance could feel like magic.

In Dyersville, there was no crowd scrambling for a souvenir. No theatrics. No intrusive stadium soundtrack demanding that you feel something. There was only the crack of the bat, the long flight of the ball, and the stillness of an Iowa night. When Giancarlo Stanton launched his ninth-inning blast to give the Yankees an 8–7 lead, it sounded less like a home run than a force of nature—a violent, mythic shot that seemed to tear through the corn itself.

That night felt unforgettable not because of fireworks or pre-game stunts, but because of what surrounded the game—pageantry that was perfectly measured, not over the top. Kevin Costner, the star of the film, signed autographs for kids near the movie-site ballfield. Docents wore early-20th Century White Sox throwback attire. The old movie magic lingered in the air. Meeting baseball author and historian Joe Posnanski and his wife during the game felt fitting, as if baseball had arranged one more small, welcome surprise for the people who cared enough to show up.

And the place was electric.

It felt as though 7,800 people, many of whom traveled great distances, were seeing baseball with fresh eyes — like they were witnessing something sacred and realizing it in real time.

I had been there once before, back in 1993, when my mother and I made the drive out to the movie site, long before the place became a destination, long before it was wrapped in commerce and ceremony.

But 2021 was different. This time, the turnstiles were essentially built through rows of corn. You entered through the right-field cornfield itself, past cardboard cutouts of White Sox and Yankees players, through dirt and bugs and heat and imperfection. And somehow that was exactly what made it beautiful. It was clunky, unpolished, and utterly perfect.

It brought tears to my eyes because it felt like being returned to the era of Shoeless Joe — not just baseball’s past, but something deeper than that. Something honest. Something timeless.

On Thursday, another Field of Dreams Game commences. Philadelphia’s Phillies and Minnesota’s Twins will take the field. They’ll wear throwback uniforms. Netflix will carry the broadcast, and one can only hope it does better than its clumsy All-Star Game effort. But the truth is, no matter how grand the production or permanent the park, the soul of that first game cannot be recreated.

Last summer, while visiting my brother Jim and his bride, Lois, I made the drive to Dyersville and spent an afternoon checking in on the town that had briefly become the center of the baseball universe. Near the edge of downtown, I wandered into the Palace Saloon, a charming establishment that dates to the 1880s, and struck up a conversation with a local named Hank. He had called the area home for half a century. At one point during our conversation, he looked toward the door and said, almost wistfully, “They’re building stuff out there—it’ll never be the same.” His words have stayed with me ever since, carrying the quiet ache of someone watching a familiar place become something else.

What once felt temporary, intimate, and almost fragile has yielded to something permanent—polished, expanded, and designed for far more than one unforgettable night of baseball. Maybe that is progress. Maybe it is simply business. But it is not the same. The real magic belonged to that first game: the corn standing tall beyond the outfield, the soft Iowa grass, the August heat hanging in the air, and the shared disbelief that this impossible scene was real. The players emerging from the corn and into the glow of the field and the home runs vanishing into that Iowa darkness became part of a night far bigger than baseball. They did not simply clear a fence; they disappeared into a once-in-a-lifetime moment that can never be recreated, because it belongs only to that first Field of Dreams game.

Baseball has a way of changing things once it finds them. It brands them, expands them, packages them. But it also takes something away. MLB’s efforts only serve to diminish the original. There will never be another Field of Dreams Game like the first.

When life offers you the chance to witness a moment being born—the first game, the first journey, the first experience that feels larger than you ever imagined—take it. Don’t wait for a better time or a better price. Go. Pay the freight.

Some moments become memories before you realize they were history.

Those are the memories that stay with you forever.

As one fan held aloft a sign that read, “This Is Heaven,” I realized she had it exactly right.

It…was.