1995 Baseball Vacation: Day 4

Looking back at a baseball vacation taken 13 years ago...

Wednesday, August  9, 1995

Michael took the wheel shortly after midnight and drove from Des Moines to Iowa City and up to Cedar Rapids.

I napped.

The only vehicles we passed in Iowa were 18-wheelers.

I began driving again at Cedar Rapids, where we left the interstate for 70 miles of two-lane highways. We finally arrived at 4:45 a.m. and slept in my truck outside the "Field of Dreams" until the sun peered over Iowa's endless miles of cornfields.

The movie site didn't open until 9 a.m., so we ate breakfast at Hardee's and waited.

We arrived at the "Field of Dreams" promptly at 9 a.m., itching to play. The baseball diamond, which was carved from a cornfield, and two-story house were just as they looked in the Academy Award-nominated movie.

There were a handful of guys taking batting practice. We immediately joined them. After an hour and a half, there were about 60 tourists at the field.

"We have anywhere from a couple of hundred to a thousand visitors a day," said Rita Ameskamp, who owns the left side of the "Field of Dreams" with her husband, Al.

Another farmer owns the house and the right side of the diamond.

Both owners operate souvenir stands on their respective sides of the diamond, and there's obviously enough business for each to be successful.

Around 11:30 a.m., we hit the road in order to reach Minneapolis in time to see the Minnesota Twins play Oakland. 

We were running on 30-plus hours without any "real" sleep, and it was another five to six hours to Minneapolis.

I half-heartedly mentioned camping again, but Michael balked. "I don't know about you, but I'm sleeping in a bed tonight," he said.

We showered at the hotel, then drove to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but baseball in a dome stadium just didn't seem right. I liked it for one reason only -- air conditioning.

Oakland beat the Twins, 6-3, in 10 innings. After the game, we crashed at the hotel.

Coming tomorrow: Remembering Day 5 of the trip

C'mon. Trade Me That Card!

Some 30 years ago, all the boys in our Bruceton, Tenn., neighborhood played baseball daily.

When we weren't playing, we traded baseball cards and talked about our baseball heroes.

One summer I took a liking to the specialty cards that Kellogg's inserted into its cereal boxes.

Most of the Kellogg's cards were 3-D, but one of my buddies traded me the majority of cards from the 1973 set, which were printed in 2-D.

It took some time, but I somehow managed to collect all of the cards in the '72 set except for stubble-faced Joe Torre of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Marty Roberts, who was a few years my junior, had the card that I coveted.

And he wasn't prepared to let it go without trading for something of greater value.

Smart guy.

It finally came down to a standoff between my prized card of Minnesota slugger Harmon Killebrew and Marty's card of Torre.

The standoff lasted for at least three days, long enough for everyone in the neighborhood to shout "Killebrew for Torre" at each of us until the swap was finally made.

Killebrew for Torre, anyone?