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Yankees, White Sox to play at Field of Dreams

MLB, New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox

The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox will play a game at the famed Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, on Aug. 13, 2020, the teams announced Thursday.

A temporary, 8,000-seat ballpark will be built at the site where the 1989 movie was filmed to accommodate the first major league game played in Iowa.

"As a sport that is proud of its history linking generations, Major League Baseball is excited to bring a regular-season game to the site of Field of Dreams," commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "We look forward to celebrating the movie's enduring message of how baseball brings people together at this special cornfield in Iowa."

Construction on the ballpark will begin Tuesday, one year before the game will be played. Dimensions of the ballpark were not announced, though MLB posted a video of a rendering of the setup, which will include a pathway through the cornfield for fans and aspects of the White Sox's former Comiskey Park. The right-field wall will be broken up by windows to show the cornstalks beyond the wall.

The game, which will be played on a Thursday and air on Fox, will be considered a White Sox home date. Friday will be an off day before the teams resume their three-game series in Chicago.

The Academy Award-nominated film features Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella interacting with a number of players from the 1919 White Sox who were banned from baseball for intentionally losing in the World Series.

To announce next year's game, MLB unveiled a commercial Thursday that featured Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge jogging onto a field that mimicked the film's iconic baseball-field-in-a-cornfield, and asking of Costner's character: "Is this heaven?"

"No," Costner's character could be seen saying, in one of the movie's most-remembered lines. "It's Iowa."

"I had heard little whispers about it really over this entire year, but hadn't heard much about it lately," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before the Bronx Bombers' series opener Thursday in Toronto. "So to see it, and to see the Aaron Judge commercial, it's great.

"We'll get Costner back to throw the first pitch. James Earl Jones to get a [catcher's] mask, get back there."

Boone was part of ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcast team that aired a 2016 Braves-Marlins game at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He also was on hand for the first of the now annual Little League Classic games held each August in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He said next year's game will remind him of those.

"Going back to the Fort Bragg, I don't know what the attendance was, or what they grew the attendance out to be, but it was small and intimate and it was all the people that lived on the base and everything," Boone said. "It was a really neat experience. This will be different than that, obviously, but I would imagine the same kind of cool, intimate, but also will feel like a really big deal. Something that we'll start to look forward to."

The White Sox also are eager to take part in the game.

"Field of Dreams is an iconic, generational baseball story built upon a deep love of the game that transcends even the most impossible of circumstances," White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. "The filmmakers tell a beautiful story that resonates to this day. It is an incredible honor for the White Sox franchise to be the home team against the Yankees in a special setting that will capture everyone's imagination just like the movie does. It seems very fitting that 30 years after the film's debut, MLB will build a ballfield in an Iowa cornfield where we will come to play a game so that baseball fans can create their own memories to be cherished for decades."

The one-off game in Iowa is part of the sport's recent trend of hosting games outside of traditional ballparks and cities, such as the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and a matchup between the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals in Omaha, Nebraska, in June ahead of the College World Series.

The Yankees also took part in a two-game series in London against the Boston Red Sox earlier this season.

"The Yankees organization is proud to participate in such a unique celebration of baseball," Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said in a statement. "Field of Dreams captures the pure essence of baseball, and it continues to bring generations of fans -- and families -- together to embrace its timeless roots."

ESPN's Coley Harvey and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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