Tag Archives: Field of Dreams Game

11 Aug

guests in the corn

A pair of Mississippians will make the walk through the corn field and onto the Field of Dreams tonight in Dyersville, Iowa: George County High alum Justin Steele for the Chicago Cubs and ex-Southern Miss star Chuckie Robinson for Cincinnati. Robinson was called up as the Reds’ 27th man for the special event. He’ll be the third catcher on the roster, so it’s unlikely he’ll make his MLB debut — but you never know. There’s magic in that corn field. Steele, a second-year big leaguer, pitched Wednesday for the Cubs, so he’ll be down tonight. Robinson, who helped USM win a Conference USA title in 2016, was drafted by Houston that summer. Considered a strong defensive catcher, he was a Midwest League All-Star in 2017 and MVP of the Class A league’s championship series. He had a seven-RBI game in A-ball in 2018. The Reds took him in the Rule 5 draft in December 2020. He started this season at Double-A Chattanooga and was at Triple-A Louisville when he got the call-up. He is batting .263 with five homers and 23 RBIs overall in 2022. … Ole Miss product Lance Lynn started last year’s Field of Dreams Game for the Chicago White Sox, and ex-East Central Community College standout Tim Anderson memorably won the game for the ChiSox with a walk-off homer into the corn. … Pascagoula’s Willie Joe Garry played in Tuesday’s minor league Field of Dreams Game for Cedar Rapids, a Minnesota affiliate. P.S. Mississippi State product Brent Rooker was called up from Triple-A by Kansas City on Wednesday but did not make his Royals debut that night and isn’t in today’s lineup. He was mashing at Omaha (.450 with three homers in five games). Rooker has big league time with both Minnesota and San Diego.

09 Aug

just stuff

There is a Mississippian on the roster of one of the two Iowa-based teams slated to play tonight in the minor league Field of Dreams Game in Dyersville, Iowa. Former Pascagoula High star Willie Joe Garry is an outfielder for the Cedar Rapids Kernels, Minnesota’s High-Class A affiliate. Garry, who recently came off the injured list, is batting .179 with 10 steals in his fourth pro season. Drafted out of ‘Goula in 2018, Garry is a .199 career hitter who stole 24 bases in 2021. (Listed on Quad Cities’ roster but on the season-long IL is ex-Mississippi State pitcher Eric Cerantola, drafted by Kansas City in 2021.) Tonight’s game will be televised by MLB Network at 6:30 CDT. … Ex-State standout Logan Tanner, the second-highest drafted Mississippi product this summer, made his pro debut on Monday with Cincinnati’s Arizona Complex League team. The Hattiesburg native, a second-round pick by the Reds, went 0-for-3. … The Mississippi Braves are at Tennessee this week for a six-game Southern League series in which they could encounter a couple of Magnolia State products. Ex-Southern Miss star Walker Powell is 2-2 with a 2.88 ERA in six games (three starts) for the Smokies, a Chicago Cubs affiliate. The 6-foot-8 Powell has nine wins over three levels in the Cubs’ system in 2022, his second pro season. Infielder Delvin Zinn, a Pontotoc native and Itawamba Community College alum, has played sparingly this season and is batting .095. He is a .237 career hitter. … The big league Cubs have announced that former M-Braves star Jason Heyward will be released after this season with a year left on his eight-year, $184 million contract. He is batting .174 with seven homers and is on the IL, probably for the remainder of this season. Heyward, 32, a key figure for the Cubs on their historic World Series winner in 2016, arrived in Mississippi as one of the top prospects in baseball in 2009. He hit .352 with seven homers and 30 RBIs in 47 Double-A games. He famously homered in his first MLB at-bat with Atlanta the next year. The Cubs also have released former M-Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons, a defensive whiz who was hitting just .173. Simmons, 32, hit .293 for the M-Braves in 2012 and carries a .263 career average in the big leagues. … In Atlanta’s deflating series against the New York Mets last weekend, there were good signs from ex-M-Braves star Ronald Acuna, who went 8-for-19 with two doubles and a home run. He also won the Chevrolet Electric Play of the Week award for a home run-robbing catch in right field in Friday’s game, the only one the Braves won. Acuna is batting .267 with nine homers, 28 RBIs and 23 steals. Atlanta, playing at Boston tonight, needs more from him.

13 Aug

center stage

“Baseball, among many other things, is theater, a definition that mandates that a very small number of players will be strikingly distinctive because of productivity and ‘presence.’” – Donald Honig, Baseball America.
There has never been a stage quite like the one MLB created for Thursday night’s Field of Dreams Game. A cornfield in Iowa. So, of course, leave it to Tim Anderson, the former East Central Community College star who relishes the spotlight as much as any player in the game, to bring down the curtain with a game-ending home run into the corn stalks beyond right field. You might call it a Roy Hobbs moment, though that’s from a different movie than the one that inspired this game. Anderson’s second career walk-off bomb gave the Chicago White Sox a 9-8 win against the New York Yankees. “These are the moments you want to be in,” Anderson, the effervescent leader of these Sox, said in a postgame interview. “These big games like this, this is the time to show up.” The game actually lived up to the hype, which was not easy to do. There were five lead changes. Though 17 runs crossed the plate, pitchers also enjoyed some moments with 23 strikeouts. Anderson’s game-winner was the last of eight balls that left the park and crash-landed in the cornfield. Dramatic doesn’t quite get it. As Ray Kinsella might have said, “It’s more than that. It’s perfect.”