Will White Sox-Yankees come to Iowa this season?
Last week, Major League Baseball canceled the London Series between the Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals.
Originally scheduled to be played June 13 and 14 at London Stadium, the two-game set is likely to be pushed back to the 2021 season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Aug. 13, the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees are scheduled to play a game in Dyersville, Iowa, where much of the iconic baseball movie "Field of Dreams" was filmed.
It remains to be seen if the game will be played, but The Gazette in Cedar Rapids reported the 8,000-seat stadium is still being built.
"As of now, the game is still on," said Roman Weinberg, operations manager for Go The Distance Baseball LLC, the group that owns the Field of Dreams. "All other comment must come from Major League Baseball."
Ed Cassin, the White Sox's director of team travel, also has confirmed MLB has the final say on the game's status.
On the original schedule, the Sox and Yankees were going to play each other in Iowa on Aug. 13, take the next day off and meet up for the final two games of the series Aug. 15-16 at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The White Sox were set to fly into and out of Dubuque for the "Field of Dreams" game. Those travel plans obviously have been placed on hold.
When the game was first announced last August, the Sox were fired up about the opportunity to play the first major-league game in Iowa.
"It's going to be cool, super cool," starting pitcher Lucas Giolito said at the time. "I've been looking around the league the last couple of years and teams going to all these different places to play baseball, and now we get to do one. That's pretty cool. Get to head out to Iowa and play right in the cornfields.
"That's where they shot the movie, right there? Yeah, that's really cool. It's going to be cool to check it out. Hopefully I get to pitch that one."
They are still building the stadium. Hopefully, the White Sox, Yankees and some fortunate fans will come.
Tickets have not yet gone on sale, but Major League Baseball will soon be making an announcement on how to get them if the game is played.
The ballpark used in "Field of Dreams" still exists, and the original plan when the White Sox-Yankees game was announced last year was for fans being able to walk on a pathway through a cornfield from the original park to the new stadium.
Windows are expected to be installed in the right-field wall of the stadium to provide views of the cornfields beyond the ballpark.
Sox outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson was a major character in "Field of Dreams," and the new stadium is supposed to resemble his old home field, Comiskey Park.
The stadium also is expected to be used in the future for minor-league and collegiate games, along with possible high school and Little League tournaments.
While the White Sox and Yankees are hoping to play the first regular-season game in Iowa, the Sox and Cubs did play an exhibition game in the Hawkeye State (Fort Dodge) in 1942.