DYERSVILLE, Ia. – As Tom Mietzel crosses the gravel behind the home plate of the “Field of Dreams” movie site and gazes into left field, he can’t help but think of his late wife, Denise Stillman.
Less than half a mile from where it is held is a specially constructed 8,000 seat baseball stadium. The site is off-limits to fans, and even to Mietzel, who runs the company in charge of the property.
If the CEO of Go The Distance wants to venture out, he must receive special permission from Major League Baseball, which limits foot traffic until next year’s game. So this place behind the marble is about as close as it usually is.
But even from that distance, and with rows of Corn and other fans standing in front of him playing on the famous pitch, Mietzel can see much of the new park.
“She would have loved it,” Mietzel said of Stillman.
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And she certainly would have. The former owner of the Field of Dreams movie site spent years lobbying for an MLB game to come to Iowa. His dream will come true… at some point. The Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals were scheduled to play at the new park on Thursday. But the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed back MLB’s plans for a game in Dyersville until 2021.
Whenever that day comes, it will be because of Stillman’s dream, which was pursued by his friends, family and colleagues after his death from liver cancer in 2018.
“I’m proud of the fact that we’re the ones who are able to do this for her,” said Roman Weinberg, Go The Distance COO. “I know she would be happy.”
The dream
A poster Mietzel keeps on a cupboard in his office is a daily reminder of Stillman and his dream. This illustrates Stillman’s passion for what she called All-Star Ballpark Heaven, a softball and baseball complex on the Field of Dreams site that could host youth tournaments. The plans, put in place last year after his death, include parks for young people.
Another of Stillman’s hopes are fulfilled just beyond the film’s left-field diamond site: the ball field where the MLB game was to be played.
“She knew that if she could get MLB to come in and play a game, she would do a number of things,” Mietzel said.
Stillman, who started Go The Distance, was hopeful that an MLB game could add credibility to his project and add much-needed insight to the site. Mietzel said Stillman even called MLB to come up with a plan. Stillman wasn’t the only one interested in a game being played in Iowa City.
In fact, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who ran games to play at various unique venues like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, asked MLB senior vice president of special events Marla Miller to contact Stillman to play it. Manfred, who visited the site in 2016 for a 25th anniversary celebration, was adamant in bringing baseball to Dyersville.
“He always thought we could go back,” Miller said.
But getting there was not easy. The plan was put on hold when Stillman was involved in a lawsuit with a group of neighboring landowners, who argued that the film site had been improperly rezoned by Dyersville from farmland to commercial land in a deal to make way for his plans. And by the time the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the process in 2016, the damage was done. Meitzel said some of the project’s investors were no longer all-in.
Then, in April 2017, Stillman was diagnosed with hepatic endothelial hemangioendothelioma, a rare vascular liver tumor. She had less than a year to live. By the time Stillman was gone, she kept focusing on the project.
In 2018, she called Miller to let MLB know about her legal victory and let them know she was still interested. Stillman did not tell Miller she was close to death.
Instead, she walked away from the project until her death on November 7, 2018.
“It was one of the last things she was working on,” Mietzel said. “Some of the last emails she sent were to MLB. So that was on her mind until the end.”
The dream come true
Mietzel made sure that Stillman’s wish for an MLB game would come true. When he took over Go The Distance, he made it his main focus.
“I promised him when he died that I would take over,” Mietzel said.
He followed.
In 2018, discussions with MLB heated up. That winter, Mietzel gave a tour of the site to a group of MLB officials. They tested the soil to make sure they could dig deep enough into the ground to create a field that would meet MLB regulations.
Mietzel helped negotiate a deal – part of which took place at the table inside the farm – that called for the game to be played on land separate from the film’s iconic diamond. Miller said MLB has discussed the possibility of playing on the film’s site. But there would be too many adjustments and Stillman had made it clear before her death that she did not agree with this approach.
“She was very, very worried that we were losing the magic of the original field, and she was right, which is why we started looking at the lands adjacent to the field,” Miller said.
In February 2019, Mietzel signed the deal with MLB. In August, the MLB announced that the White Sox and New York Yankees would play at the temporary stadium. MLB would pay for all the construction and even create a path through a cornfield taking fans to the baseball stadium and overlooking the famous movie location. Miller said that without Stillman’s dream and his company’s commitment to making it a reality, the game would be unlikely to come to fruition.
“It was really his family who tried to keep this dream alive since his passing,” Miller said.
But the dream is on hold again. When the pandemic hit, MLB pulled the Yankees out of the game and replaced them with the Cardinals.
Then earlier this month, MLB announced it was pushing the game through to 2021.
The plan is to keep the White Sox in the game, with an opponent and a date to be announced. Mietzel doesn’t mind, who knows the game will eventually come. He even hopes it becomes an annual event on the MLB calendar.
“I have waited so long,” Mietzel said. “I’m not going to lose sleep over this. They said they were coming back. So, why worry?
Plus, the way Mietzel looks at him, Stillman’s dream is finally coming true. Not only is MLB gaming making its way in Iowa, but his dream of the multi-use complex, which Mietzel hopes to begin construction on next year. It’s a bittersweet accomplishment because Stillman can’t be there to see it built.
“Part of the appeal of Field of Dreams is that it is spiritual, in that you can almost feel the souls of loved ones and people who were here and made such an impact on our lives. And I feel that every day when I get here, ”Weinberg said. “I can feel her here. And it’s reassuring and keeps us going.”
Tommy Birch, the sports company and journalist for the Register, has worked for the newspaper since 2008. He was the 2018 Iowa Sportswriter of the Year. Contact him at [email protected] or 515-284-8468. Follow him on twitter @TommyBirch.
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