Building baseball dreams in Dyersville museum
'Field of Dreams' actor plans May 6 grand opening for downtown Dyersville baseball museum as work continues
DYERSVILLE-- Dwier Brown's back in Dyersville.
He made one visit here that millions of people have seen over and over for the past 35 years --- when he played catch with Kevin Costner.
And he asked a three-word question that made its way on bumper stickers and highway signs all over the state, and movie screens worldwide.
He asked Costner, "Is this heaven?"
"No, It's Iowa," Costner said.
It was the closing scene to the 1988 film "Field of Dreams," which received a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. But it wasn't a close to actor Brown's association with Dyersville, or with baseball.
Borrowing another line from the film, Brown decided to "go the distance" for the town of 4,500 on the Delaware-Dubuque county line, known for farm toys, a Catholic basilica, and baseball.
Brown, who played John Kinsella, the father of Costner's character Ray Kinsella, has purchased a building downtown — located a few blocks southeast of the picturesque Basilica of St. Francis Xavier and five minutes from the National Farm Toy Museum along U.S. Highway 20 — and created a "Baseball Hall of Dreams" museum, about 4.5 miles or a 10-minute drive from the movie site northeast of town.
It's concurrent with, but separate from, a major initiative by an investment group including baseball Hall of Famer Frank Thomas to expand the Field of Dreams movie site, which has been the site of two nationally televised and overwhelmingly well received Major League Baseball games over the past two years.
Brown's objective is to tell less-well-known portions of the baseball story, as it pertains to minorities, women, the disabled and others.
The museum will have a grand opening Saturday, May 6, marking the 35th anniversary of the movie's filming, which started in May 1988.
Brown has appeared in numerous movies and television shows in a 40-year acting career, but his role in “Field of Dreams” is the best known and the one he’s asked most about. He’s come back to many events in Dyersville since the movie was made.
"I just always enjoyed the town," Brown said of Dyersville. "I grew up in a small town in Ohio out on a farm. So it's always had a warm place in my heart, not to mention the movie was shot there.
“When I'd go downtown, I saw the old Tegeler Dairy building. I saw a 'for sale' sign," and the sign remained up on successive trips. "It was in pretty awful shape," damaged by weather over the years.
"When I grew up, my dad, we remade this old 150-year-old farmhouse. So I had some experience with some old buildings. I ended up having a 'Ray Kinsella' kind of moment," referring to Costner's character’s decsion to build the Field of Dreams on his farm in the movie. "I thought, 'Maybe I'm supposed to buy this building,'
"Living in California, as I have for so many years, I knew the real estate prices were slightly more reasonable in Iowa," he kidded. He consulted a friend, David Feigin, experienced in real estate and renovated buildings, about partnering wtih him. "After doing a lot of research and due diligence, we decided to go for it.
"It was a huge effort," he said. "I think we ended up with 40 Dumpster loads of trash we took out of the building, not to mention the roof had to be repaired." And it was a bad time to commence such a project, after the August 2020 durecho which ripped across the state and tied up a lot of contractors with repair work.
But they received support in the form of a $100,000 state Community Catalyst Building Renovation Grant for the work. Brown estimates he and Feigin have spent many times that on the project so far. It’s still a work in progress.
"As usual, a lot of the wonderful things are brought about by hardship, and this is no exception," he said. "We did a lot of sandblasting and rebuilding." Organizers of the "If You Build It" exhibit on the making of the movie — created by a partnership among city, business and economic development groups in Dyersville — signed a long-term lease to locate in the building.
"With all the attention from Major League Baseball and the Frank Thomas group, we decided to rename the building 'The Baseball Building.' " Brown said.
"For so many years I've been coming out to Dyersville. I know many people stay in Dubuque and shuttle out to see the movie site, and a lot of them don't even come into downtown Dyersville. I'd love to give the people of Dyersville something for all the years they've been the stepchild of the movie site. We hope to create a place where people will be able to come downtown.”
"We've got the 'Hall of Dreams,' which is a free baseball museum next to the 'If You Build It' exhibit," Brown said, along with an accompanying Iowa-centric exhibit by local historian John Pregler of Dubuque.
"We're kind of excited for people to have three different little museums for people to come to. We have equipment for batting cages; we hope to get someone to operate a batting center in there for us; we're talking to people about getting a bar and restaurant in there. It's one of those things where you could let the kids go play in the batting cages and go through the museums and have your lunch.
"It's been a labor of love, for sure," Brown said.
The oldest part of the building dates back to the 1860s, "which is kind of great because that's when baseball made its expansion into America," Brown said. "I'm sometimes in the building, looking at these limestone walls that were being built when Abraham Lincoln was president, and being a history buff myself, it gives me pause." Over the years, it's also been a blacksmith shop, a brewery and a metal toy building, in addition ot a dairy.
"The other thing that's amazing is - and this was kind of the candle on the cake for me -- under the building there's two stone-built caverns. They're tunnels under the street and under the sidewalk. It's where they used to store the beer when it was a brewery," he said. "They are so cool."
Dyersville was a big baseball town even before the movie was filmed, with its Commercial Club Park and Events Center, home to Dyersville Beckman Catholic High School and semipro Dyersville Whitehawks baseball teams. Brown recalled that five previously scheduled baseball games in the area had to be blacked out the evening the final scene of the movie was filmed, with an aerial shot of the illuminated field.
With the "Baseball Hall of Dreams," museum, Brown said. "we're trying to focus on the heart and soul of baseball, how it's played all over the world in its different forms - stoop ball, and Wiffle Ball and softball," he said.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., "does a great job with the players who had the incredible statistics and changed baseball in that way. But there are an awful lot of people who contributed - minorities and disabled players and women who advanced the game but didn't have the stats to get into the Hall of Fame,” Brown said. “We try to feature their stories; how baseball bats are made. how balls are put together; there's a whole section on baseball humor” - from Abbott & Costello's “Who's on First?” comedy routine to George Carlin's monologue on baseball versus football. "And umpires and sportsmanship."
In addition, "We've got a whole collection of vintage baseball mitts we let people take out in the front of the building and 'have a catch.' The kids get a kick out of it,” Brown said. “These old split-fingered mitts, they can't believe people played baseball with these things. just hopefully get people's appreciation of the game."
There was a "soft opening" of the "Baseball Hall of Dreams" museum last year; about 7,500 people came through. With the May 6 grand opening, the museum will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends through May, after which it will be open seven days a week during those hours.
"It's been exciting, and I've had a lot of wonderful feedback from people who've been through the museum," Brown said. The museum also features a "Wall of Dreams" where can write their dreams and insert them in the gaps in the walls
"There's like 100 little pieces of paper sticking out of the wall," he said. "Kids do it and I'm surprised how many adults put stuff down. That's sort of the attachment to the movie. Everybody has dreams. And sometimes you need to say them out loud. "
“View from the Cedar Valley” columnist Pat Kinney is a former longtime reporter and editor for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. He works for the Grout Museum District in Waterloo and still does freelance journalism for The Courier, Investigate Midwest/IowaWatch and others.
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