Field of Dreams game was a perfect blend of past and present

Tim Anderson brings an end to a special night in an Iowa cornfield, showing that, while the game may be the same, today’s players are changing it

Sorry to disrupt your trip down memory lane, but the biggest star of the Field of Dreams game has no use for nostalgia.

Tim Anderson may have been wearing the same White Sox uniform once worn by Shoeless Joe Jackson, but that’s as far as comparisons between the two go. Anderson admits he’s never watched Field of Dreams; he wasn’t even born when the movie was released in 1989. He’s too busy playing the game his own way to look back at what the men of yesterday did.

When Anderson hit a walk-off home run to beat the New York Yankees 9-8 on Thursday night in Dyersville, Iowa, a short walk from the field where the movie was filmed more than 30 years ago, it brought a glorious end to a special moment for baseball. Older fans who remember fondly playing catch with their fathers, just as Ray Kinsella does in the movie, got to relive those memories for one night. For the younger generation, they got to witness a dynamic star flash his talents the only way he knows how, with a modern flair.

That was the magic of the Field of Dreams game: it brought together different generations. There was a unique dose of nostalgia for a day gone by and an appreciation of what today’s players, like Anderson, bring to the game. Anderson isn’t afraid to speak his mind or show emotion. The pallid old ways of the past aren’t present when he’s on the field. He’s part of a new breed, one that is rapidly changing baseball into what they, and not your fathers, want it to be.

The White Sox and Tim Anderson show how much baseball has changed

In the movie, the eight “Black Sox” players who were banned from baseball for life for throwing the 1919 World Series emerge from this same cornfield. The game today is the same as they played it: the same positions, the same number of innings, even two franchises that existed in their present form a century ago. But in other ways, it’s one they wouldn’t recognize. There were no players like Anderson back then: flashy, flamboyant, and, of course, African-American.

In 1919, just six percent of the runs scored by the White Sox came off home runs. Jackson tied for the team lead with seven. Eight of the White Sox nine runs on Thursday were off home runs, including Anderson’s two-run walk-off in the ninth inning off Yankees closer Zack Britton. Both teams combined for eight home runs. The game itself hasn’t changed; how it’s played has dramatically.

The success of the experiment MLB was pulling off on Thursday will likely ensure the game is played again next year and even well into the future. But there can only be one first time, and Anderson and the White Sox got to live it.

“Coming here playing in the middle of corn, who would have thought of that. Who knew that I would be able to walk it off here too, as well,” Anderson told Fox Sports’ Tom Verducci after the game. “We made history tonight.”

History, and the memory of a movie that was released before most of these players were born (just three players on both teams were alive when it came out), was in the air in Iowa on Thursday. But so was the sense that baseball is slowly changing, becoming more of a modern game full of long balls and colorful characters. Young and old were brought together for one night, and it was the new generation, exemplified by Anderson, that led the way.