(Reuters) – Major League Baseball’s “Field of Dreams” game, scheduled to be played on Aug. 13, has been postponed until next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB said on Tuesday.
The game between the Chicago White Sox and St Louis Cardinals to be played on a ball diamond cut from the Dyersville, Iowa cornfields adjacent to the site of the whimsical 1989 Hollywood baseball film, will now become part of the MLB’s 2021 regular season.
“We made every effort to go ahead with a first-class event for the people of Iowa, admirers of the film and fans generally,” said MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement.
“Unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion that it would not be prudent to ask clubs to step outside their normal routines, given the evolving public health challenges.
“We hope to host this event in Iowa in 2021.”
The Field of Dreams game was to be the highlight of a 2020 regular season that has been left in tatters by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Due to the outbreak, the regular season was chopped from 162 games to 60 and even that reduced number has proven problematic with several teams seeing contests postponed by outbreaks of positive tests.
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Toronto; Editing by Ken Ferris)
