This state’s first-ever regular season Major League Baseball game is set for Thursday, but with just a week to go workers were still assembling the ballpark, an 8,000-seat bandbox carved out of the world’s most famous cornfield.
The pop-up stadium is one strong Eloy Jiménez throw from the site where the iconic baseball movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed. But the story of how the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees came to play at this still-popular tourist attraction might be worthy of its own Hollywood treatment.
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Denise Stillman, a health care consultant and businesswoman from Oak Lawn, led a group of investors who bought the property in 2012 with the idea of turning it into a mecca for youth baseball tournaments. But then came the lawsuits, the financial trouble and finally, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that took Stillman’s life in 2018.
The original 1989 "Field of Dreams" field, left, is next to a new facility, shown Aug. 3, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. The Chicago White Sox are scheduled to play the New York Yankees in an official game on Aug 12. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Yet, like the vision of Ray Kinsella, the obsessed farmer played by Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams,” Stillman’s plan is slowly being realized. Her husband, Tom Mietzel, hopes the major league game Stillman envisioned years ago will be the spark that finally makes the development, dubbed “All-Star Ballpark Heaven,” bloom around the onetime movie set.
“If it was just a baseball field, let’s be honest, it would not be what it is today,” Mietzel said. “We would not be having an MLB game if it was just a baseball field. This one’s special because of what it represents in the American heart.”
“Field of Dreams,” based on the W.P. Kinsella novel “Shoeless Joe,” hit America’s movie screens in 1989, and soon tens of thousands of baseball pilgrims were trekking to the site where the movie was made, a patch of farmland 20 miles west of the Mississippi River.
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But Dyersville Mayor Jim Heavens said that for all the traffic, the field remained a low-key attraction for years.
“It was just kind of something that was there,” he said. “It wasn’t an economic engine. They sold a few souvenirs there to keep the lights on but it was not a big deal.”
Around 2010, the farmer who owned the ball field and surrounding acreage decided to sell the property. Stillman’s then-husband happened to learn that after visiting the field with their son John, a 9-year-old travel baseball player, and when he mentioned it to her, the entrepreneurial wheels began to turn.
Stillman had seen the movie as a student at Bradley University, John Stillman recalled, and though he’s not sure if she visited the Iowa set before learning it was for sale, she knew that throngs of young players attended tournaments at another sacred baseball site — Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“My mom said, ‘Well, what if we build a Cooperstown in the Midwest?’” John Stillman, now 20, recalled. “That’s how the original idea came to mind.”
She rounded up investors to buy the 193-acre parcel for $3.4 million and set about trying to transform it into a baseball and softball complex that would hold as many as 24 fields. Though many in town were on board immediately — “From an economic development (standpoint) we couldn’t pass this up,” Heavens said — some neighbors were not so agreeable.
“In our minds, it’s farm country,” Matt Mescher, who lives near the site, told the Tribune in a recent interview. “There’s a lot of tractor traffic up and down that road, and now you want to introduce a bunch of people out there? Plus you’d be losing quite a few acres of agricultural production on that property. It’s just misplaced.”
After Dyersville rezoned the property to allow the complex, Mescher and other neighbors sued, saying the village failed to adhere to its comprehensive plan. The case ground through the legal system for more than four years before the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the village in 2016, clearing the way for development.
But by that time, Heavens said, the momentum had slowed. Some investors bailed, Stillman and her husband divorced, and the project stagnated.
A photo of the late owner Denise Stillman is on display at the offices of the original set of the Kevin Costner baseball movie "Field of Dreams" on Aug. 4, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Tom Mietzel, husband of the late Denise Stillman, stands in iconic rows of corn on the original set of the Kevin Costner baseball movie "Field of Dreams" on Aug. 4, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Mietzel, who married Stillman in 2016, said finances grew so tight that at one point they were hours away from losing the property before they scraped up enough money to make a payment. Meanwhile, he said, other Midwestern cities were building their own youth sports complexes, cutting into the potential market.
All-Star Ballpark Heaven needed a fresh angle. And as Stillman’s daughter Claire remembers, it came to her mom as suddenly as that spectral voice whispering to Costner in the cornfield.
“I vividly remember when she had the idea,” Claire Stillman said. “She was sitting in her office in Chicago and said, ‘I want to have a major league game there.’ I said the field was too small, but she said, ‘No, this is going to happen.’”
As luck would have it, MLB had begun scheduling games in nontraditional locations such as Fort Bragg, Williamsport (the Pennsylvania town that hosts the Little League World Series) and even London. Stillman invited Commissioner Rob Manfred to the field and pitched the idea of holding a game there, though Mietzel said financial complications prevented an immediate deal.
As talks continued, Stillman fell ill with a rare form of liver cancer. Mietzel said she sought treatment from doctors across the country and ultimately received a liver transplant at a hospital in India. But gradually her condition worsened, and she died in November 2018.
The Field of Dreams game would not be finalized until a few months later, but Claire Stillman said her mother knew before her death that she had succeeded.
“She was ecstatic,” Claire Stillman said. “I’m very grateful she got to know that it was going to happen before she passed.”
More at: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...0210809-qin6h7voxfb5tfeuylfsc5mjve-story.html
The pop-up stadium is one strong Eloy Jiménez throw from the site where the iconic baseball movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed. But the story of how the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees came to play at this still-popular tourist attraction might be worthy of its own Hollywood treatment.
ADVERTISING
Denise Stillman, a health care consultant and businesswoman from Oak Lawn, led a group of investors who bought the property in 2012 with the idea of turning it into a mecca for youth baseball tournaments. But then came the lawsuits, the financial trouble and finally, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that took Stillman’s life in 2018.
The original 1989 "Field of Dreams" field, left, is next to a new facility, shown Aug. 3, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. The Chicago White Sox are scheduled to play the New York Yankees in an official game on Aug 12. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Yet, like the vision of Ray Kinsella, the obsessed farmer played by Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams,” Stillman’s plan is slowly being realized. Her husband, Tom Mietzel, hopes the major league game Stillman envisioned years ago will be the spark that finally makes the development, dubbed “All-Star Ballpark Heaven,” bloom around the onetime movie set.
“If it was just a baseball field, let’s be honest, it would not be what it is today,” Mietzel said. “We would not be having an MLB game if it was just a baseball field. This one’s special because of what it represents in the American heart.”
The dream begins
“Field of Dreams,” based on the W.P. Kinsella novel “Shoeless Joe,” hit America’s movie screens in 1989, and soon tens of thousands of baseball pilgrims were trekking to the site where the movie was made, a patch of farmland 20 miles west of the Mississippi River.
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TLC and DQ® are mixing up your backyard summer fun!
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But Dyersville Mayor Jim Heavens said that for all the traffic, the field remained a low-key attraction for years.
“It was just kind of something that was there,” he said. “It wasn’t an economic engine. They sold a few souvenirs there to keep the lights on but it was not a big deal.”
Around 2010, the farmer who owned the ball field and surrounding acreage decided to sell the property. Stillman’s then-husband happened to learn that after visiting the field with their son John, a 9-year-old travel baseball player, and when he mentioned it to her, the entrepreneurial wheels began to turn.
Stillman had seen the movie as a student at Bradley University, John Stillman recalled, and though he’s not sure if she visited the Iowa set before learning it was for sale, she knew that throngs of young players attended tournaments at another sacred baseball site — Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“My mom said, ‘Well, what if we build a Cooperstown in the Midwest?’” John Stillman, now 20, recalled. “That’s how the original idea came to mind.”
She rounded up investors to buy the 193-acre parcel for $3.4 million and set about trying to transform it into a baseball and softball complex that would hold as many as 24 fields. Though many in town were on board immediately — “From an economic development (standpoint) we couldn’t pass this up,” Heavens said — some neighbors were not so agreeable.
“In our minds, it’s farm country,” Matt Mescher, who lives near the site, told the Tribune in a recent interview. “There’s a lot of tractor traffic up and down that road, and now you want to introduce a bunch of people out there? Plus you’d be losing quite a few acres of agricultural production on that property. It’s just misplaced.”
After Dyersville rezoned the property to allow the complex, Mescher and other neighbors sued, saying the village failed to adhere to its comprehensive plan. The case ground through the legal system for more than four years before the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the village in 2016, clearing the way for development.
Inspiration and tragedy
But by that time, Heavens said, the momentum had slowed. Some investors bailed, Stillman and her husband divorced, and the project stagnated.
A photo of the late owner Denise Stillman is on display at the offices of the original set of the Kevin Costner baseball movie "Field of Dreams" on Aug. 4, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Tom Mietzel, husband of the late Denise Stillman, stands in iconic rows of corn on the original set of the Kevin Costner baseball movie "Field of Dreams" on Aug. 4, 2021, in Dyersville, Iowa. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
Mietzel, who married Stillman in 2016, said finances grew so tight that at one point they were hours away from losing the property before they scraped up enough money to make a payment. Meanwhile, he said, other Midwestern cities were building their own youth sports complexes, cutting into the potential market.
All-Star Ballpark Heaven needed a fresh angle. And as Stillman’s daughter Claire remembers, it came to her mom as suddenly as that spectral voice whispering to Costner in the cornfield.
“I vividly remember when she had the idea,” Claire Stillman said. “She was sitting in her office in Chicago and said, ‘I want to have a major league game there.’ I said the field was too small, but she said, ‘No, this is going to happen.’”
As luck would have it, MLB had begun scheduling games in nontraditional locations such as Fort Bragg, Williamsport (the Pennsylvania town that hosts the Little League World Series) and even London. Stillman invited Commissioner Rob Manfred to the field and pitched the idea of holding a game there, though Mietzel said financial complications prevented an immediate deal.
As talks continued, Stillman fell ill with a rare form of liver cancer. Mietzel said she sought treatment from doctors across the country and ultimately received a liver transplant at a hospital in India. But gradually her condition worsened, and she died in November 2018.
The Field of Dreams game would not be finalized until a few months later, but Claire Stillman said her mother knew before her death that she had succeeded.
“She was ecstatic,” Claire Stillman said. “I’m very grateful she got to know that it was going to happen before she passed.”
More at: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...0210809-qin6h7voxfb5tfeuylfsc5mjve-story.html
