If you build it, the Phillies will come: Tracing their ‘Field of Dreams' ties originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
If you build it, the Phillies will come.
That’s the quote, right?
On Thursday, the Phillies will play the Minnesota Twins at the Field of Dreams site in Dyersville, Iowa, in the third edition of MLB’s showcase game. First pitch is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on Netflix, marking the first game played there since August 2022, when the Cubs and Reds faced off.
There is no better backdrop in the sport. A big-league field tucked into the Iowa corn, built around a movie that leans into baseball’s past, gives the Phillies a different kind of stage as they close in on the final stretch of their season.
It also makes sense that the Phillies are one of the teams featured.
Their connections run through the 1989 film, the state of Iowa and even a few other baseball movies over the years.
So before the Phillies walk through the corn, here is how they connect to the Field of Dreams.
THROWBACK THREADS FROM FORGETTABLE YEARS
The Phillies will wear uniforms from a much different time in franchise history.
They will don their road grays from 1939 to 1941, featuring the red Phillies script across the chest, navy and red piping and the baseball centennial patch on the sleeve, with the years 1839-1939. They will pair them with the navy cap and red block P from that era.
The uniforms are sharp.
The baseball was not.
Here were the Phillies’ records during that three-year stretch:
1939 — 45-106
1940 — 50-103
1941 — 43-111
The 1941 team lost the most games in franchise history, and it did so in a 154-game season.
That period was so rough that Hugh Mulcahy, the Phillies’ ace at the time, earned the nickname “Losing Pitcher,” even though he made the All-Star team. Mulcahy also became the first major leaguer drafted into the military ahead of World War II.
So yes, the Phillies will look good Thursday.
The era they are honoring looked a lot better on a uniform than it did in the standings.
A LEADING FIGURE
When Field of Dreams hit theaters in 1989 and became a national phenomenon, people began flocking to Dyersville to visit the movie set and the field.
That gave the area a chance to build something bigger around the film.
One of the people who helped was a former Phillie.
Joe Hoerner, a 14-year major-league veteran who pitched from 1963 to 1977, grew up on a 250-acre farm in Dubuque, Iowa, roughly 20 miles from Dyersville. He was living in St. Louis when the movie took off, but his connection to the area made him a key figure in the Field of Dreams’ baseball life after the film.
Hoerner helped organize celebrity exhibitions that brought fans to the site and raised money for local charities. He was instrumental in lining up former players and baseball legends to come to Dyersville, helping build a tradition of bringing real games and real baseball figures to a place that already felt magical.
His Phillies connection is significant, too.
Hoerner was part of the infamous seven-player trade that sent Hall of Famer Dick Allen to St. Louis in exchange for a package headlined by Hoerner, Tim McCarver and Curt Flood.
Flood, of course, never reported to Philadelphia. He challenged baseball’s reserve clause, a fight that helped pave the road toward free agency.
Hoerner did pitch well for the Phillies. He made his only All-Star team with them in 1970, then followed it with a strong 1971 season, posting a 1.97 ERA. That remains one of the lowest single-season ERAs by a Phillies pitcher with at least 70 innings since 1920.
Long before MLB brought regular-season games to Dyersville, a former Phillie helped keep baseball coming back to the corn.
MOONLIGHTS
The Phillies even have their own Moonlight Graham thread. Graham appeared in one major-league game for the 1905 New York Giants but never came to the plate, a brief baseball life later turned into one of Field of Dreams’ most memorable storylines.
The Phillies’ version is the phantom ballplayer — someone who reaches an active major-league roster but never gets into a game.
Tim Gradoville, Tim Lahey, Jeff Singer and Will Toffey all wore a Phillies uniform, reached the roster and waited for a moment that never came. It is not exactly walking out of the corn for one lost at-bat, but it carries the same ache: getting close enough to touch the dream without ever getting into the box.
They’ll be in attendance and be honored during the pregame festivities.
PHILLIES ON FILM
One of the most famous baseball movies ever has long been connected to a former Phillie.
The Natural is widely thought to have been inspired, at least in part, by Eddie Waitkus.
In the film, Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, is a teenage phenom whose career is derailed when Harriet Bird, a woman obsessed with athletes, lures him to a hotel room and shoots him.
The real-life Waitkus story was also terrifying.
In 1949, Waitkus was in the middle of an All-Star season in his first year with the Phillies, batting .306. On June 14, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a fan who had become obsessed with him, bribed a hotel bellboy to deliver him a note. She lured him to her room, saying there was a surprise, then shot him with a rifle.
The bullet missed his heart but punctured his lung.
Waitkus survived and returned to baseball the next season.
That is not exactly the same as a Phillie appearing in a movie, but a few have.
Mike Schmidt made a cameo in the 1987 film Slow Inning. Mitch Williams appeared in 1994’s The Scout. John Kruk played “Lanz” in The Fan, the 1996 movie starring Wesley Snipes and Robert De Niro.
That movie also featured an obsessed fan. This time, De Niro’s character, Gil Renard, stabs Kruk’s character, who had little to do with the main conflict.
Strange stuff.
Kruk later appeared in The Sandlot 2, too.
Any more Phillies cameos would be pretty corny, but there is also a now-Phillie who appeared in The Simpsons.
Don Mattingly guest starred as himself in Season 3 in 1992, in an episode that featured several major leaguers recruited by Mr. Burns to play on his softball team. In the episode, Burns repeatedly tells Mattingly to shave his sideburns, even though they do not exist.
That gag played off Mattingly’s real-life feud with the Yankees during his playing days over the team’s clean-cut policy.
BETWEEN THE LINES AND THE CORN
So how do the Phillies match up between the lines, and the corn, on Thursday?
The Field of Dreams park resembles the dimensions of old Comiskey Park, now Rate Field in Chicago. But without upper decks and with the way the air moves through the open site, the ballpark has played hitter-friendly.
In the first Field of Dreams game in 2021 between the Yankees and White Sox, the teams combined for eight home runs. The ball can carry there, even with 335 feet down the lines, much deeper than the movie field.
That might not bode well for Aaron Nola, who has surrendered a league-leading 29 homers this season.
There is one catch.
Part of what has kept Nola from looking more like his old self at times has been the ABS system, and there will be no automatic balls and strikes in Dyersville. Interesting, and controversial enough.
Nola has also been better lately.
The Phillies’ offense, which has struggled mightily in recent weeks, will face Twins right-hander Taj Bradley, who has not allowed a homer in his last three starts.
The event should be entertaining. It should be different. It should give the Phillies one of the coolest settings of their season.
But they also need to get moving in the right direction again.
Maybe that starts in heaven.
Correction: Iowa.