Nearly four decades after “ Field of Dreams ” brought a group of dead baseball players to life with a homemade diamond on an Iowa farm, Keith Rahe and his traveling troupers are still dedicated to keeping the cornfield mystique alive.Once the long days of filming had passed and the fantasy flick had shifted from movie theaters to video cassettes, the farmhouse and ballfield where those idyllic scenes were shot was naturally becoming a tourist attraction. Rahe lived near the site on the edge of his native small town of Dyersville, with convenient access by way of a back road the Universal Studios crew had made just for the movie shoot. He and his neighbors began showing up to make sure the pitcher’s mound and home plate were in place, mingle with the visitors, and play catch.Then one summer Sunday afternoon in 1990, Rahe persuaded a handful of his friends to put on some old wool uniforms he’d found, walk through the cornfields with him, and see what happened.
The young girl standing nearby sure was surprised.“Mommy! Daddy! It’s the ghost players!” she shrieked as she retreated to her parents in the infield.After playing catch with and pitching to the tourists for about an hour, Rahe and his pals doffed their caps, waved goodbye and disappeared into the corn. An enterprising newspaper reporter happened to be there, and in the next day’s edition of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids there was a headline touting the magical appearance of the “Ghost Players” at the site. Just like in the movie.
