Heaven

Field of Dreams is as emblematic of the state of Iowa as Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting. The film’s love letter to baseball delivered alongside a touching father and son reconciliation spawned the iconic exchange between Ray Liotta’s “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella that still resonates with every proud Iowan: “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.” The Dyersville, Iowa film site – where the baseball diamond and farmhouse still stand – attracts upwards of 100,000 annual visitors to the town of less than 5,000. It’s where cinematic history slides into home, capturing the nostalgia and tradition of baseball through little league games, “Ghost Player” reenactments, and even two MLB games (played in an adjacent field).

Over Labor Day Weekend, the film site, in cooperation with Dyersville and nearby Dubuque, brought U.S. Concert Agency’s festival experience to the small town, easily eclipsing all previous events with an estimated 33,000 concert attendees to see Tim McGraw on Saturday and Nickelback on Sunday. The all-day events were held in a former cornfield across from the Kinsella family home, with the Nickelback show being dubbed Velocity in anticipation of becoming an annual rock festival. The events were marketed separately, with tickets being sold for individual days instead of as weekend passes. Still, taken together, the day-fests proved the famed Field of Dreams quote Dyersville Mayor Jeff Jacque invoked on Saturday: “If you build it, they will come.”

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The McGraw show featured Loess Hills, Dani Rose, Cody Lee, Timothy Wayne, Iowa-native Hailey Whitters, and rising country star Ty Myers as supporting acts. Crowds arrived slowly throughout the day to the sold-out event, eventually peaking between Myers and McGraw. Conversely, Sunday’s Nickelback-led lineup, featuring No Fly List, Lakeview, Fuel’s Brett Scallions, Buckcherry, Default, and Brantley Gilbert, saw both a convergence of rock and country sounds as well as a more enthusiastic crowd, which largely arrived in full by the time Buckcherry took the stage. If music does indeed help plants grow, the corn in Dyersville got an earful.

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Saturday’s concerts gave more attention to the Field of Dreams movie site itself – with good reason. Tim McGraw’s father, “Tug” McGraw, was a pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies, famed for delivering the pitch that won the Phillies their first-ever World Series in 1980. He also happened to be born on August 30th, 1944; for Tim, playing the Field of Dreams on his late father’s birthday was an emotional endeavor, and footage of that winning pitch played as the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to the late All-Star.

As James Earl Jones’ Terence Mann said in the movie, there is something nostalgic about a site like this that “reminds us of all that once was good and could be again,” and some attendees were certainly surrounded by memories “so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.” Concertgoer Scott West came from West Monroe, Louisiana to see McGraw, his college fraternity brother and former college baseball player. He’d stopped in Gattinburg, Tennessee to pick up another mutual friend, “Scoop” Maurice, whose nickname came from his time as a first baseman.

Ty Myers said of performing at the festival, “Baseball was such a huge part of my childhood. When I got the opportunity to open for Tim at [the] Field of Dreams, it was an immediate yes. I’ve been looking forward to this show all year. Tim is such an icon, and it was a real honor.”